I Need You (Beatles song)
"I Need You" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Help! It was written by George Harrison, the group's lead guitarist, and was the second composition of his to be released by the Beatles. The track appears in their film Help!, in a scene filmed on Salisbury Plain where the group were under military protection from a murderous cult. Harrison wrote "I Need You" about Pattie Boyd, the English model whom he married in January 1966. Recorded in February 1965 at the start of the sessions for Help!, it features the Beatles' first use of a guitar volume pedal. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played the song in tribute to Harrison at the Concert for George in November 2002. Background and inspiration George Harrison presented "I Need You", along with "You Like Me Too Much", for consideration for the Beatles' second feature film, Help!, in early 1965. Before this, he had struggled to complete a song since the band recorded his first composition, "Don't Bother Me", for their 1963 album With the Beatles. In a September 1964 press conference, Harrison said he had written three "bits" of songs, but nothing "whole". George Martin, the band's producer, attributed his lack of productivity to the fact that "none of us had liked something he had written", and Harrison had felt disheartened. He subsequently resolved to ensure that his occasional vocal spots on the group's albums were his own compositions rather than Lennon–McCartney songs or cover versions. According to biographer Gary Tillery, Harrison's creativity was most likely inspired by his habitual marijuana use, a legacy of the Beatles' first meeting with Bob Dylan in August 1964. Harrison wrote "I Need You" about his girlfriend Pattie Boyd, whom he met in March 1964 while the Beatles were filming A Hard Day's Night. Their relationship provided Harrison with a sense of calm amid the frenzy of Beatlemania; for Boyd, however, the jealousy of the band's fans was confronting. The song's lyrics address a time when she left Harrison. Shortly before recording the songs, Harrison routined "I Need You" and "You Like Me Too Much" with John Lennon at the latter's house in Weybridge. The pair worked together into the early hours of the day of Ringo Starr's wedding to Maureen Cox, which took place on 11 February 1965. Composition As recorded by the Beatles, the song is in the key of A major. Its distinctive lead guitar cadences were achieved by using a volume pedal and through common guitar suspended chords in the key of A. These form the introduction and most of the verse of the song and give a quasi-modal effect relieved in the verse by a line in the relative minor, the whole making a fourteen-bar ternary verse-structure. This, after a repeat, segues easily into a second bridge melody, which is based on a simple IV-V-I chord progression that passes through the dominant key to resolve back on the verse. The song has characteristics typical