Saturday, January 3, 2015

"Run For Your Life/ Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" Outtakes

The Beatles started recording sessions for what would be the "Rubber Soul" LP starting on October 12 1965 which was a bit of a late start considering EMI wanted the LP released for the Christmas season. It turned out to be the classic we all know and love.
The first two songs attempted were both Lennon original compositions: "Run For Your Life" which would end up closing the LP on side two and "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" which would not be released in this particular form.
There are no real outtakes of "Run For Your Life" per se, but there has been some dialogue released including the "take one" announcement from the engineer (Norman Smith) and some drifting chat between the group. There is also an early recording of a playback coming from the studio monitors that is floating around as well.
"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" was attempted on this day as well. This is an early version of the song with more sitar and in a lower key than the official recording. This attempt would eventually be discarded and re-made at a later date down the road. This October 12 recording has the lyrics intact with a change of "Drinking her wine" and "Biding my time" reversed as well as having an "answer" of the sitar in the middle part of the tune.
The studio chat from "Run For Your Life" can be heard on booted material from the "Live at Abbey Road" multimedia presentation such as the vinyl LP "Abbey Road Video show". I've included a youtube version where there is chat about the backing section of the song by Lennon followed by a slowed down version "sans backing vocals"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQQ3LQWsTUc

Take 1 of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" can be found on the bootleg CD compilation "Turn Me On Dead Man". Take 1 of "Norwegian Wood" has been officially released on the Apple 3-LP/ 2-CD "Anthology 2".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYJmktPgjDo


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