Yer Blues (4:00)

“Yer Blues” is a song by The Beatles, the second song on the third side (or second disc) of The Beatles, also known as the White Album. It is credited to Lennon/McCartney, but was written by John Lennon while in Rishikesh, India. Lennon said in a Rolling Stone interview that he used the humorous title as something of a defence mechanism, so that if anyone criticised the song, he could write it off as a parody. The lyrics are extremely suicidal, and include references to Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” as well as cosmology, and were possibly reflective of Lennon’s well-documented battles with his psychological demons. In the original demo of the song, Lennon sings I feel so insecure now, just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones, as opposed to suicidal. “Yer Blues” was recorded in EMI Studio Two’s “annexe”, which was actually a large closet in the control room. In interviews for the Beatles Anthology series, Ringo Starr affectionately recalls recording this song in the stripped-down conditions, saying it was like the old days of Beatles live performances. The stripped-down, bluesy nature of the song bears similarity to much of Lennon’s early solo output, including “Cold Turkey” and his 1970 John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album and marks a retreat from Lennon’s concern with studio experimentation that marked such songs as “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”.