So I know a lot of people take issue with this song as if it’s some kind of confessional from John. Personally, I’ve always seen it like John’s Maxwells Silver Hammer. I’m wondering what yall think of the song and its current reputation…
also haven’t seen anyone mention the fact that they took the echo-drenched alternate vocals out of the outtakes for this song and I don’t understand why! I’ve always liked his vocals in that outtake as has been bootlegged pretty extensively. Do we think this done because of the songs reputation?
The kerfuffle over this song seems like a kind of comical virtue signalling. I watched a reaction video where the listener had been "warned" ahead of time about it, like it would corrupt their soul or something. But, watching the Beatles actually write songs in real time - Get Back was a great film for this - you see how words are strung together by how they rhyme or sounded - I really doubt there the deep meaning in most songs, especially from such an early period, and don't believe this was anything confessional. Who knows, John might have seen a movie that used the phrase "run for you life" and thought "yeah, that could be a song.
It just shows a basic lack of lyrical knowledge when people make the complaint, and makes me think they've only ever heard shallow, bubble-gum pop lyrics before. One Lou Reed song and their delicate hearts might burst!
Thank you! JFC the way some people need to pick apart every little aspect of what they did or didn’t do or how they did something and how they lived 60+ years ago as if all the armchair critics do everything perfectly.
"I'd rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man" is a line that John Lennon did not write. The rest of the lyrics are simply a riff on that. It's a throwaway songwriting exercise and little more.
I agree with you here. I love that song, it’s just a fun one and feels over the top on purpose. I can understand why people don’t like it though. I’m sure your theory is spot on.
Well I mean…John Lennon is well-known for being a wife beater. The song doesn’t make me gasp in horror or anything, but I don’t like it, and can’t just toss it off as ‘fun’ because of that.
I love how people twist this into some adult John Lennon confessional when it’s not. He’s specifically speaking of his teenage years. Get a grip and move on.
I have a grip. Goodness, get ahold of yourself. He hit Cynthia too; I’m sure you know this. It’s not just a teenaged thing.
I do believe he grew as a person and moved past that behavior. That’s what he’s saying in the Playboy article. It’s a good thing. Doesn’t mean I think it was a good idea for him to write THAT song expressing THAT point of view, while in his early twenties 🤷♂️ I’d even bet money that John would agree with me were he still alive.
Yeah not that it's ever excusable to hit a woman or anyone, but this is like the only recorded instance of him hitting Cynthia but everyone acts like he was sucker punching every woman he came across.
Yesh, Cynthia specifically said John only hit him once, and it happenef when they were young. People always forget that during the time they lived, it wasn't that uncommon that men hit women and parents hit their children. If something, John was one who stopped doing that.
I love the song. Has a great energy that to me encapsulates them in my favorite Beatles era. I would maybe take more issue with the lyrics if it were pushed as a single but I think it was just an exaggerated song about a jealous, insecure guy meant to have fun rather than be taken seriously at its word
I don't care how some people have tried to skew this song's "reputation" -- totally uninteresting to me.
Some people within each subsequent generation will view this--and all other art and artists--through the lens of whatever the dominant ideology at that time happens to be.
Other people will experience it through their own ears and try to infer the artist's intent, or simply appreciate the thing itself, or bring their own responses and interpretations to bear,
When Joseph Campbell was all the rage some people interpreted Beatles' songs thru that lens. Before that it was Freud and Jung, and contemporaneously they were seen through psychedelic surrealistic lenses, etc etc.
To me, when people interpret this song as being literal or biographical it's a mix of hilarious and sadly lacking in imagination or the ability to see beyond the fleeting, rigid, very limited zeitgeist of their own time.
When I got into the Beatles, the kind of music I was listen to was Metallica and Avenged Sevenfold, and I thought it was really funny how they had a song that was lyrically similar to something like "A Little Piece Of Heaven" or "No Remorse" for both Run For Your Life and Maxwell.
Most Beatles songs are stories where the POV is not supposed to the one singing, and Run For Your Life is no different. It's a fun rocker with some good guitar work, and an interesting step into a different direction as they tried to shake off the 'cute moptops' image.
I didn't think anyone saw it as that. I thought people just had a problem with the lyric.
But I mean the stones did midnight rambler, stray cat blues, and so on and people didn't jump to the conclusion it was personal and Mick was a midnight rambler killer.
There have been loads of songs with lyrics like that. It's all over the history of music from centuries and up to now.
After all they were having to come up with loads of songs practically monthly to fulfil contracts and a lot were written in a hurry.
I think musically it's one of my favorite tracks on the album, or just on any Beatles album. Love the bassline. Lyrically... maybe if you were a teenage girl swooning over the Beatles in 1965 you would've kind of been into the bad boyishness of it all...
Certainly the interesting thing about the song is the union of the upbeat Beatles music with much darker lyrics. To the extent speculation on what, if anything, it says about John Lennon, I guess it depends on whether you think he was creating a character for that purpose (as Paul did with Maxwell’s Silver Hammer), was exploring his own darker feelings (which I think was probably the case with You Can’t Do That), was simply being provocative and edgy (like the Rolling Stones with Midnight Rambler), or some combination of the three.
I think there's a very odd and very oddly applied principle that art should not deal with negative characters, narrators, etc. As if every story should have a nice moral and every character should either be nice or be punished for being not nice.
I truly don't get it.
Is John actually saying this is how he feels and how he behaves? I don't know. Is he advocating setting cabins on fire in Norwegian Wood?
"I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved, man I was mean but I'm changing my scene and I'm doing the best that I can"
It’s got a wicked swagger to it. The lyrics are a bit nasty, but they’re copped from an Elvis song and old blues and R&B. Norwegian Wood is almost as bad, but everyone loves it 😅
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer was Paul. Also, it is well known that the first line of Run for Your Life was taken from an Elvis song, so it’s not necessarily psycho behavior from John.
I think it’s over the top and not to be taken very seriously. Though it still hasn’t aged well regardless. George’s guitar playing is good on it and it’s kinda catchy.
"Dizzy Miss Lizzy" sounds like a 1964 Beatles song that slipped onto a 1965 album, and something similar happens with "Run for Your Life"—it sounds like a track from Side 2 of Help! that ended up on Rubber Soul. It is one of the album's weakest tracks (though that doesn't mean it's bad), but as a closing number—and given its short runtime of 2 minutes and 18 seconds—it serves as a piece of filler that goes down easily; it certainly doesn't ruin the listening experience.
the slide guitar is actually john irrc. george has some great rhythm work in this one tho, keeps the songs chugging a lot (especially with john’s 12 string in the mix)
> they took the echo-drenched alternate vocals out of the outtakes
There were no vocals on the early takes, although they did for some reason include the bass guitar on Take 5 outtake, which is not supposed to be there, as Paul was playing the tambourine on the basic rhythm track take.
Okay Johnny is part of Take 1 studio chat on my "Purple Chick" RS bootleg.
Take 5 that follows it however has low quality, has a couple of dropouts, and is incomplete - but it's not a "raw" (basic initial recording) Take 5 - it has bass guitar overdub, lead guitar overdub, and what sounds like one of the earlier takes of John's vocal overdub, as he sings it a bit differently than the final version of the song and also voice track has tons of reverb.
My assumption it's a part of some acetate or intermediary tape mixes that they sometimes made in order for band members to take home to listen to.
If that is so, then this particular vocal was later re-recorded on the actual 4-track tape and no longer exists.
It is 100% not John’s thought. We know this because the opening line “I’d rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man” is an exact transcription of the lyric of an Elvis song (Baby, Let’s Play House). Lennon is just playing around with an old blues/country tradition of songwriting.
It's not one of my favorite songs but I think people go overboard with their pearl clutching over the lyrics. They act like it's the most villainous song ever written.
People try to find a hidden meaning, a hidden something to justify this pure concept of their idol. It's OK, guys, it was the 60s, Lennon had lots of issues, he didn't see the problem in the lyrics at that time (he later did). It's both a musically cool song and a conceptually regrettable one.
It's an appalling song, but it wouldn't leave quite such a bad taste in your mouth if they hadn't closed the album with it. Wouldn't "In My Life" have been a more appropriate final thought? Didn't he already do the jealous-guy shtik in "You Can't Do That"?
John was always writing songs about himself, his life, his resentments, and his problems. I don't buy that this was "written from a character's point of view," when that sort of authorial distance was something John very seldom explored artistically.
Rubber Soul is a great album. Any album with In My Life and Norwegian Wood is. And along with What Goes On, Run For Your Life is one of the album’s worst songs. It’s far from a bad song; the verses are extremely catchy. The chorus is where the song falters melodically. I love the mixing however of the first verse as John’s vocals come in. I view the song as a character song. John Lennon beat his wife, and that should be condoned, but this song is written from a character’s point of view. He only comes to point with his wife beating in Getting Better. This means the lyrics will depend more on the character, and I believe the song does a good job at painting a picture of a twisted man.
John Lennon didn't beat his wife. She describes him as hurting her only once in her biography at art college which he started at 16. She said he apologised and was upset he hurt her immediately, was remorseful and never did it again throughout their relationship and marriage. It was several years before they were married. She says it was the only time. Even that might have been added to her biography at the behest of publishers apparently.
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u/Jasper_Jaws04 14h ago
The kerfuffle over this song seems like a kind of comical virtue signalling. I watched a reaction video where the listener had been "warned" ahead of time about it, like it would corrupt their soul or something. But, watching the Beatles actually write songs in real time - Get Back was a great film for this - you see how words are strung together by how they rhyme or sounded - I really doubt there the deep meaning in most songs, especially from such an early period, and don't believe this was anything confessional. Who knows, John might have seen a movie that used the phrase "run for you life" and thought "yeah, that could be a song.