It’s hard to believe now, when everything Beatles-related seems to have been endlessly repackaged and analyzed, but there was a time when certain songs that were officially released by The Fab Four were hard to find. “I’m Down” was one such song, unavailable on any LP release for almost a decade after its debut as a B-side.
What is the song about? What intent did Paul McCartney have in writing it? And how did John Lennon contribute to a memorable live performance of the song? Let’s take a look back at “I’m Down,” a high-energy rocker that finally got its due exposure.
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“Down” and Out
Because The Beatles often released singles in the UK that were purposely left off their full-length albums, the songs that made up those singles sometimes fell through the cracks with those fans who focused on buying LPs. Occasionally, Capitol Records, The Beatles’ distributor in the U.S., would collect some of those singles, put them together with some tracks from the British albums, and create their own Frankenstein monster LPs (like Something New or Yesterday and Today).
Somehow, “I’m Down,” which originally appeared as the B-side to the “Help!” single in 1965, fell through those cracks and didn’t appear on any LP while The Beatles were together, either in America or Great Britain. It wouldn’t be until the mid-‘70s when anthologies of the group’s work started popping up that the song began to appear.
In 1987, when The Beatles began to release their music on CD for the first time, they made sure to rectify this oversight. Included in the catalog of CDs were a pair of Past Masters collections, which included all the songs, like “I’m Down,” that had been released as singles or B-sides but didn’t appear originally on the group’s UK albums.
A Shouter for Paul
The Beatles had always done a great job with shout-along covers of songs like “Twist and Shout,” “Money,” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy.” With “I’m Down,” Paul McCartney decided to compose one of his own, as he explained in the book Many Years from Now:
“I could do Little Richard’s voice, which is a wild, hoarse, screaming thing, it’s like an out-of-body experience. You have to leave your current sensibilities and go about a foot above your head to sing it. You have to actually go outside yourself. … A lot of people were fans of Little Richard so I used to sing his stuff but there came a point when I wanted one of my own, so I wrote ‘I’m Down.’”
Amazingly, McCartney recorded the vocals for the track on the same day he did the tender ballad “Yesterday.” John Lennon took over on organ for the song, which led to one of the more hilarious moments in Beatles’ live history. When The Beatles played the song at Shea Stadium in August 1966, Lennon went behind the organ to play his part. Unsure of what he was supposed to do without a guitar in his hand, he did his best Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation, which including playing glissandos with his elbow, and proceeded to crack the rest of the band up.
What is the Meaning of “I’m Down”?
On “I’m Down,” Paul plays the role of harried suitor, a guy who just can’t understand how his lover keeps finding new ways of doing him wrong. These indignities start even before the music does, as McCartney goes a cappella to start: You tell lies thinking I can’t see / You can’t cry ‘cause you’re laughing at me / I’m down.
McCartney suggests his narrator is not alone in suffering such heartbreak: Man buys ring, woman throws it away / Same old thing happens everyday. This girl is standoffish in every possible situation: We’re all alone and there’s nobody else / You still moan, “Keep your hands to yourself!”
In the refrain, the narrator asks, How can you laugh when you know I’m down? “I’m Down” offers a jolt of bluesy energy from The Beatles, one that deserves all the belated exposure it gets after being hidden away for so long.
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