Girl

AUTHORSHIP Lennon (.7) and McCartney (.3)
This song was composed during one of John and Paul's writing sessions out at Kenwood. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

LENNON: "This was about a dream girl. When Paul and I wrote lyrics in the old days we used to laugh about it, like the Tin Pan Alley people would. And it was only later on that we tried to match the lyrics to the tune. I like this one. It was one of my best." Beatles in Their Own Words

LENNON: " 'Girl' I liked because I was, in a way, trying to say something or other about Christianity which I was opposed to at the time." December 1970, Lennon Remembers: The Full Rolling Stone Interviews from 1970

McCARTNEY: "It was John's original idea but it was very much co-written. I remember writing 'the pain and pleasure' and 'a man must break his back', it was all very working-on-the-chain-gang. My main memory is that John wanted to hear the breathing, wanted it to be very intimate, so George Martin put a special compressor on the voice, then John dubbed it.
"It was always amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record, 'fish and finger pie', 'prick teaser, 'tit tit tit tit'. The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it, but not use the same phrase. So we were looking around for another phrase, so it was 'dit dit dit dit', which we decided to change in our waggishness to 'tit tit tit tit', which is virtually indistinguishiable from 'dit dit dit dit'. And it gave us a laugh. It was to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive then we would. George Martin might say, 'Was that "dit dit" or "tit tit" you were singing?' 'Oh, "dit dit", George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it?' Then we'd get in the car and break down laughing. So I credit that as being towards John but I put quite a bit in. It wasn't one that he came in with fully finished at all." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

RECORDED
November 11, 1965, at Abbey Road, during the last session for the album

McCARTNEY: "Listen to John's breath on 'Girl.' We asked the engineer to put it on treble, so you get this huge intake of breath and it sounds just like a percussion instrument." Compleat(b)

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass, backing vocal
LENNON: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
HARRISON: sitar, backing vocal
STARR: drums

McCARTNEY: "I remember going with Jane, Ringo and Maureen on a holiday to Greece, and nobody knew who we were. And we were trying to sell ourselves the whole holiday, 'We are in popular singing group back in England,' and they were going, 'Uh, push off, gringo.' 'No, no, really, we are . . .' The band at the hotel were actually quite good, they really had a bit of acoustic stuff down and had obviously been playing there for years. In fact, in the song 'Girl' that John wrote, there's a Zorba-like thing at the end that I wrote which came from that holiday. I was very impressed with another culture's approach because it was slightly different from what we did. We just did it on acoustic guitars instead of bouzoukis." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now