Got To Get You Into My Life

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (1.00)
McCARTNEY: " 'Got To Get You Into My Life' was one I wrote when I had first been introduced to pot. I'd been a rather straight working-class lad but when we started to get into pot it seemed to me to be quite uplifting. It didn't seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some of the other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off. I kind of liked marijuana. I didn't have a hard time with it and to me it was mind-expanding, literally mind-expanding.
"So 'Got To Get You Into My Life' is really a song about that, it's not to a person, it's actually about pot. It's saying, 'I'm going to do this. This is not a bad idea.' So it's actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret. It wouldn't be the first time in history someone's done it, but in my case it was the first flush of pot. I haven't really changed my opinion too much except, if anyone asks me for real advice, it would be stay straight. This is actually the best way. But in a stressful world I still would say that pot was one of the best of the tranquillising drugs; I have drunk and smoked pot and of the two I think pot is less harmful. People tend to fall asleep on it rather than go and commit murder, so it's always seemed to me a rather benign one. In my own mind, I've always likened it to the peace pipe of the Indians. Westerners used to call it 'native tabacco'. In the sixties we all thought this was what they were smoking." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

LENNON: "I think George and I helped with some of the lyrics, I'm not sure." Hit Parader (April 1972)

LENNON: "We were influenced by our Tamla Motown bit on this. You see we're influenced by whatever's going." Beatles in Their Own Words

RECORDED
April 7 and 8, 1966, at Abbey Road, with overdubs on April 11, May 18, and June 17

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass, lead vocal (double-tracked)
LENNON: tambourine
HARRISON: lead guitar
STARR: drums
GEORGE MARTIN: organ
EDDIE THORNTON: trumpet
IAN HAMER: trumpet
LES CONDON: trumpet
ALAN BRANSCOMBE: tenor sax
PETER COE: tenor sax

McCARTNEY: "It was the first one we used brass on, I think. One of the first times we used soul trumpets." Playboy (December 1984)

McCARTNEY: "We got some cool horn players, and they played some good screaming high stuff and got into the spirit of it." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

Paul hired two members of Georgie Fame's Blue Flames for the job: Eddie Thorton on trumpet and Peter Coe on tenor sax. The other musicians were session jazzmen. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

COMMENTS BY BEATLES
LENNON: "I think that was one of his best songs, too, because the lyrics are good and I didn't write them." September 1980, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono