My Favourite Beatles Song

You Won't See Me – Samira Ahmed

• Tim Tucker • Season 2 • Episode 20

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Tim is joined by journalist, writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed to explore Rubber Soul's 'You Won’t See Me'. 

The conversation explores the song’s double meanings, its portrayal of relationship tension, and McCartney’s ability to transform personal experience into art. They also discuss the evolving depiction of women in Beatles songs, the broader social changes of the 1960s, and how Rubber Soul captures a band (and a culture) in transition.

Musically, they highlight the track’s rich harmonies, inventive structure, and standout bass line, as well as its subtle sophistication beneath an apparently simple surface. Along the way, Samira shares insights from her new BFI Film Classics book on A Hard Day’s Night.


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Original music by Joe Kane

Logo design by Mark Cunningham

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to my favourite beetles song, the podcast where we celebrate the music of the Beatles with a distinguished guest. I'm Tim Tucker, and with me today is journalist, writer, BBC broadcaster and podcaster Samira Ahmed. Welcome, Samira.

SPEAKER_00

Hello, I feel I've come to a good, safe place.

SPEAKER_01

Safe place to talk about the Beatles, yes. And in fact, let's start with your first memory of the Beatles.

SPEAKER_00

So this is a really tricky one for me. I have I have an early memory, I have a very good early memory, of seeing archive footage of the Beatles, possibly at the Cavern Club, on a TV programme when I was really tiny. And it was black and white, and I mean not quite understanding who they were, but knowing they were important and sort of being puzzled. And I must have it must have happened a couple of times. And then around 1975, I s I somehow, I think my because my older brother by then was playing a lot of their music and was making me tapes and things, I realised who they are, and a big piece of my jigsaw is filled in.

SPEAKER_01

Felled it fell into place, brilliant. Yeah. And uh, do you have a favourite period of the Beatles from um it's sort of early mop tops to mid-period folks like Adelia or the late sort of scary, I call the scary, hairy Beatles.

SPEAKER_00

I I definitely, even though it's a young age, I think I was exposed more to the later hairy scary stuff. Um I think my favourite period is the early stuff from Please Please Me to A Hard Day's Night. And I I do think A Hard Day's Night is their greatest album for all kinds of reasons. But I have a the album I play most often is Please Please Me. And I think it's because of what they're doing with you know that older sound, all these American tracks they're doing in a new way. And they've helped me discover bands like The Marvelette. So yeah, I can I can listen to that. I think you know what it is, it's the image of you know, people talk about a flower uh opening up. For me, it's the bud with the promise of the bloom to come that is more exciting than it in full bloom. So if you think of Sgt. Pepper as a as a big open bloom, I prefer it a bit earlier.

SPEAKER_01

And you've been uh, as I mentioned at the beginning, a journalist, writer, broadcaster. So you've you've no doubt had contact with many people. Have you met any of the Beatles and or their entourage during that time?

SPEAKER_00

So I'm I'm lucky in that I I got to interview Paul McCartney. I was asked by Penguin Random House to interview him for his book launch the lyrics. I spent months preparing for that, listening to all his music, reading the book. It was a joy. And I it was a very strange thing. I have done a sound check with Paul McCartney at the Royal Festival Hall. We had a really lovely evening together, and I met his daughters and his grandchildren, and it was a really thoughtful interview with him and Paul Maldoon. Um and then because I'm on the Blue Plaques panel for Historic England, which advises on recognising important cultural figures around England. One of the first we put up was to George Harrison at Arnold Grove, which was his early childhood home. So I met Olivia Harrison, who was incredibly wonderful about her memories, and she came up. And some of George's family were there too, including I think his sister-in-law, his brother was too ill to come, but some of his cousins and nephews and nieces. So something very moving about meeting that extended family and realizing, you know, what a huge living imprint the Beatles still have.

SPEAKER_05

So I continued.

SPEAKER_01

So the song you've chosen to speak about today is You Won't See Me. It was recorded on November the 11th in a marathon 13-hour session for Rubber Soul. That was released on December the 3rd, 1965, in the UK and December the 6th, 1965, in the US, and in both territories was a huge hit, reached number one in both those and many more worldwide. So those are the facts. But tell me what brought you to this song?

SPEAKER_00

So having said that, my favourite period is Up to a Hard Day's Night. There's something very magical about these middle albums when they are I it's like the sound is fully matured, so you've still got the harmonies, um, but there's something slightly darker and more seasoned about it. And the the the sort of the more twangy guitar and the presence of the dars and things on some of their songs. And this is very much Paul McCartney's sort of poetic writing where he uses a lot of metaphors. If you think about a song like Um Looking Through You, You Won't See Me is the same sort of thing. It's got double meaning. So there's a whole double meaning of you won't see me because I'm not going to be there, but also you won't see me because you refuse to see me. There's all kinds of stuff in the biography. If you I mean I'm I'm not someone who cares to delve too much into biography because I kind of think the songs sound on their own merit. And I I think it's very one's got to be careful of imposing interpretations of their real life onto all their songs. But I think it's not unreasonable to think at this time his relationship with Jane Asher was probably a bit tricky. She was living in um in Bristol where she was a huge star and had her own career. And I think there was some tension. You know, he we you know, we know that his relationships with women were complicated. And I think this song reflects that. I think what's interesting is how even if he's going through something difficult in his personal life, there's a part of his brain that can just filter it into a song, which is sort of almost like it's his job to turn uh real things into songs, and he's got a kind of distance from it. I find that that's a sign of a great songwriter.

SPEAKER_01

For a long time people thought of John as the sort of confessional poet of the Beatles, and and Paul to be more surface. But when you look at these songs, they do all seem to be about his experiences.

SPEAKER_00

It's strange, isn't it, to think that you know you're in a relationship with someone. This song sounds like it's about your partner and and yet it's quite a it's a song full of tension. And I wonder what it would have been like to be at the other side of that relationship and see things which would be ascribed to you turned into songs. Even if you can say, well, it's just a song like someone writes a novel, just because there's a sex scene in it doesn't mean it's it's something that happened to the novelist. But inevitably people are looking for those connections, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, and yeah, as you say, there are a whole suite of songs like Things We Said Today.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, well, Things You Said Today, which are side two of Hard Day's Night, is a great um early it's like the start of these new more um mature songs. And in my, I mean, the book I've written about Hard Day's Night, the film, I talk about the fact that there are career women in the film as characters who are the kinds of women they were probably encountering more now that they've become successful. So their early songs, it's partly they're writing uh to a formula for for young fans, which is what 50s songwriters were doing, you know, about teenage girls and she loves you and all that stuff to flatter them. Didn't necessarily sound like they were convinced by it. And then they start to write these songs which seem to be more like written in the first person. And they are about more complicated relationships with women who aren't at their beck and call. I think that is quite intriguing. I mean, I think things we said today I've I've often thought of as it's like it's a kind of BBC play for today drama. There's quite sophisticated emotions at play, and that's amazing. You think of the speed at which they're writing those kinds of songs, and then the next few albums are full of songs like that. I mean, I don't want to spoil the party, um, is another song, you know. They they they're all there's complications going on, and it's sort of a life in progress, and yeah, just the tensions of is this relationship going to last or not?

SPEAKER_04

We have lost the time that was so hard to find, and I will lose my mind.

SPEAKER_05

If you won't see me, you won't see me. You won't see me, you won't see me. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Why you related to that musically is a sophistication in the way that it's conveyed because um things we said today is famously in a sort of minor mode, isn't it? A minor. In You Won't See Me, the bridge part where he sings you refuse to even listen, which if you read the lines is quite angry.

SPEAKER_00

Read the lines to me again. Yeah, read it together.

SPEAKER_01

Um time after time, you refuse to even listen. I wouldn't mind if I knew what I was missing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The music is it's a D minor chord and a D-diminished chord on that um refuse to even listen. It it feels different the way it's projected, doesn't it? I think that's part of the distance you talked about is the emotion in the music is slightly different to the emotion in the lyrics.

SPEAKER_05

I would mind if my new one was missing all the days.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think there's also there is stuff a play about time there. Um it feels like it's been years. You know, there's there's a sense of time moves differently when you're in a tormented relationship. I was I I just think there's a lot of poetic imagery, which comes very naturally, I think, to Paul McCartney's writing. And it's deceptively simple, but actually once you sit down and listen to it repeatedly and think about the effect it has on you, that's real poetry. It you know, it conveys complex emotions.

SPEAKER_01

It's funny to think that by this time they're starting to consider writing about their past nostalgically, aren't they? In my life is on that album, the rubber soul album. And then later they wrote Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. So it's almost like time is stretching, isn't it? I mean, I always think things we said today is interesting because it's it's about creating a memory, isn't it? It's about thing thinking forward to a time when this will be a memory.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. Yeah, that's the thing. I think I think the way that Paul McCartney, these songs of Paul McCartney's play with time and memory and are already projecting forward into a time when the present will be a memory. That's fascinating, isn't it? As part of the power of this song. Yeah, and also I just want to mention the the harmonies, um, the kind of backing harmonies on this track. Their voices are definitely darker and deeper and older. And the harmonies are exquisite. They remind me of you know Nowhere Man, which also is just a beautiful song. It's sort of, I mean, I I've given the analogy of if they sing like angels on Please Please Me. They're singing like older angels here, you know, it's it's still quite beautiful, but it's just it's sort of going almost into an early autumn period in terms of the sound of the harmonies.

SPEAKER_01

And you won't see me, you won't see me, you won't see me, you won't see me time after time, you refuse to re- I just want to pick up on what you said about the relationships, though, because I had Christine Feldman Barrett talking about uh Norwegian wood, um, and she was saying how as you just said, there's a a sophistication to the women, uh the woman in that song. And I think perhaps this permeates the whole album, certainly this song as well, where it's a career woman, she's doing her own thing, she's not beholden to the protagonist of the song, whether it's fic fictional or not.

SPEAKER_00

Have you got the um just listen to me the the tracks of rubber soul? Let's just go through them in order and let's pick them out.

SPEAKER_01

So it starts with Drive My Car.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, which is pretty much about a sophisticated woman, I would have thought. With her own driving license.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. Uh and then we get Norwegian wood. Yes. That's very much about John's frustration in what presumably was a misunderstanding about the nature of the Well, about an affair he was trying to have.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I do I do keep thinking about um Cynthia Lennon through all this period, what a miserable time it must have been for and how difficult, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Then we get You Won't See Me. Um, then Nowhere Man, which is obviously introspective, George Harrison's Think for Yourself, which is an entirely different vibe, um, The Word, and then Michelle. Uh, and then on the second side we got what goes on, girl, I'm looking through you in my life, wait, if I needed someone, and then run for your life.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I mean, how how individual men choose to regard women who have a mind of their own is you know, is an issue for those individual men. But I think socially, you know, it's definitely the start of the 60s. You've got more women going into the workplace in in careers. So I gave you the example in A Hard Disney in the film, you've got all these makeup artists who may well have just been school leavers, but you, you know, you're getting a trade craft, you get a qualification, places like the BBC ran their own makeup schools. And I knew women who joined in the 60s as teenagers. That's the world that's opening up, and of course, employment was growing massively, and you've got the whole white heat of technology moment when um Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister, and I think there was a big optimism for young people entering the workplace. Um it's not to say that it's you know it's all fun and games, because I think it's quite complicated. I mean, the thing about people say, oh, the pill came in in 1963. There's a double-edged sword that um on the one hand, yes, but it makes it harder for women to say no. So there's all that sexual pressure on women, which many women of that generation now talk about. But equally, it wasn't available for women who were unmarried until I think 1967. That's why Cynthia Lennon had to, and Cynthia and John got married because she, you know, she fell pregnant and there was no legal abortion. So they got married, and she her own potential career as an artist disappeared at that moment. I mean, it was it was she was caught on the cusp of this decade of change. But you know, but in a way, the 60s didn't really begin until 1967, you could argue, for women's liberation.

SPEAKER_05

You won't see me, you won't see me. I don't know why you should want to have I can get through the hand.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, you know, I I don't know what was quite going through their minds, but I don't think it's a secret that you look at the world they grew up in, which was a pretty old-fashioned world. Um, you know, and and and I do think northern patriarchal values had a particular thing about women who were expected to, you know, p please their men and look after the home. Even though, I mean, you know, famously Paul McCartney's mother was was a midwife and a nurse and you know had an important role in society. Um and he was raised after she died for a while in a single-parent home until his father remarried. So, you know, they I mean three of them grew up without both natural parents in a way. And that's quite striking at the time. So straight away you think, well, they're not from kind of traditional families in one sense. And yet I think the values of society at the time are kind of in them, and it's not until quite late into the 60s that they start changing their attitudes. But that happens very fast. I mean, they they're very willing to experiment, aren't they, whether it's with um hallucinatory um products or with the kinds of friendships that they form and they you know and all the art that they get involved with. I mean, I think that's a real sign of open minds, isn't it? Willing to to meet musicians and artists and you know, obviously Paul McCartney's time living with the ashes in Wimpholstery um opens his mind to do what it's an exciting period in in London. I mean, it's part of the practicality that they're by this time they are living in a complete bubble of fame, and it's become almost impossible for them to function in ordinary society in any meaningful way because of the the kind of hysteria around them. But also the the the stuff that they're taking, you know, things like um pot would I mean they're they're presumably in a haze a lot of the time, which gives you a sort of a a further bubble around you. So they're I don't know what that I mean I've never taken drugs, so I don't know what it feels like to um to have that. But that obviously has an effect on the songwriting and there's there's this sort of perma haze, isn't there? There's a kind of glow around their them and their songs on these albums.

SPEAKER_04

I don't have much to say, but I can turn away.

SPEAKER_05

You won't see me, see me. You won't see me, see me.

SPEAKER_01

You won't see me is an interesting title. You mentioned its double meaning. I mean, obviously it has uh two meanings in terms of he's saying she refuses to see him. Yes. And it's also um a sort of threat. Yeah, you won't see me.

SPEAKER_00

Because I won't be around or I'm gonna not go and refuse to see you. Well, there's another song, I don't know if it's on Help, which is um Tell Me What You See. And I remember when I was at Channel 4 News, I was making a little film about the um designer Alan Fletcher, who did things like the VA logo, and he did these amazing adverts, and I'm a hugely influential art designer and director, and he had just died, and I had interviewed him in the past. So and I was making a film where we looked at one of his famous bus adverts, which was designed to be seen on the upper upper deck of a bus. And you know, on a on a double deck of a bus, you see the real faces of people sitting in those windows, and there's a long poster just underneath, and the poster was designed to look like their bodies, but I can't remember what it was selling, but it was so witty, and I used the song Tell Me What You See to sort of um lay over the opening of that film because it seemed to capture his playfulness, and that's that's the thing that the Beatles do. They have this playfulness about words and about vision, about tell me what you see, I'm looking through you, you won't see me. I I I think it's it's so deceptively simple when you hear the words, but actually to have written those songs and to have those double meanings is is delightful.

SPEAKER_05

I just can go on if you won't see me.

SPEAKER_00

Whatever was really happening in Paul McCartney's life, as as a piece of art, the song reveals the fact that the protagonist is weak. You know, he's trying to say, You won't see me, but actually, you won't see me, and I'm really missing you. You know, there's a vulnerability. It's it's that's that's like a great novel.

SPEAKER_01

It is, and he does say the days are filled with tears, doesn't he? So um he does vacillate between quite extreme emotions in this. Yeah. You know, tears, frustration, anger. It's it's as if he's and you know, we we think if we are going to be biographical, or at least relate to songs, um, things we said today is quite yearning. We can work it out, obviously optimistic on a similar theme. But this one has reached a different place and it's almost like a disintegration, I think.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, otherwise it's at the point where you know it's probably going to end, but um so i I I love the way that great literature, whether it's songwriting or novels or plays, they can capture any point in a relationship, you know, the point where it's taking off, the point where it's about to collapse like this song, or the point where it's all over and you're looking back. But they're all moments that are worth celebrating as art in their own right, you know? I mean he's I mean, you know, he is he he was born to be a songwriter, clearly. And I I've I've got a story I always tell people which is um the the the late actor Murray Melvin was a good friend of mine, and he he had met Paul McCartney a couple of times through Rita Tushingham because they were both in a taste of honey together, and he he remembered one day he was walking somewhere near Abbey Road and he saw Paul McCartney walking down the street with his guitar strumming to Linda. It must have been at some point in the late 60s, and you know he waved and Paul waved back, but it was just this image of Paul like always with his guitar and singing and you know, like a medieval troupador. That's kind of who he is.

SPEAKER_01

There's a clip of McCartney in 2016 doing this on acoustic guitar on stage in America, and he reveals something about it, which is how he wrote it, which is this little acoustic descending line that he moves around.

SPEAKER_00

Have you got it to hand? Is it worth pausing to play it to me?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, here it is.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, the structure of that song. So th the the tune is descending, um, but he's singing against it. And I forgot there's that great thing about the world of relationships in the past, an analogue relationship where, you know, the it's all about the phone not ringing or her not answering as well.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, I mean just You don't hear that in the finished version, do you? But but it's a lovely line and it translates really interestingly.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's sort of there in in its absence, isn't it, probably? And that's one of the reasons s I love the song, I guess, is because even if it's not f physically there, I maybe mentally your mind is filling in the gaps and you're hearing it. Fantastic. That's really brilliant. I didn't realise he'd performed it live as well. That's so good to hear. I think those songs those th there's so many songs on that album and also on Beatles for Sale that are my favourites, that one and I Don't Want to Spoil the Party. And um what's that song that goes, Look what you're doing, what you're doing to me. Um but those I love those songs. They're like they're like it's like they're in the middle of some kind of complicated relationship set up, and you're like it's like you're watching a couple having an argument in public.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was also um it was the longest song they recorded up to that point, at 3 minutes 22.

SPEAKER_00

Uh huh. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, it obviously that gets dwarfed later by songs like uh Hey Jude and and I Want You See She So Heavy. But uh yeah, they were they were expanding that way as well, weren't they, in terms of stretching out.

SPEAKER_00

It's interesting, Chris Shaw thinks says that it they they only recorded two takes of it, and you can hear a cough at the beginning of the on the album. So they they still want that bothered it. It's felt like the Please Please Me days, and it's it's almost as if, oh no, it'll do. I like that. I like that it'll be a it was.

SPEAKER_01

Well it was yeah, and it was rushed because they were on deadline, it was the last day of recording, and they needed a song, and they did it pretty quickly, really, in 13 hours. So, yeah, I think there's that as well. And also Mal Evans is apparently on the organ. I say apparently most people can't hear it, but he holds down an organ note for quite a long time, and he is credited on rubber soul, Mal Evans the Roadie, who um is much celebrated by Beatles fans.

SPEAKER_00

Oh how lovely. It's got everything that's great about the Beatles in one song. So you've got the harmonising that takes you back to the early days. It's also projecting ahead with its, you know, the the kind of the piano in particular, though, ju, which it's casting ahead to um albums like Abbey Road, I think, and um you know it's sort of got that slightly more musical feel almost coming in. Um and then the way that they harmonise, they're not just harmonising with ooze and o's, they're singing words slightly syncopated, like it's like it's William Byrd or some kind of choral music, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's just magnificent. And the drumming is so good, the drumming is so good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Busier than normal for Ringo and um sort of pre-preempting his rain era magnificence there.

SPEAKER_00

And actually, the bass is really good. It's one of the favourite bass lines on any Beatles song. And you know, things like um, you know, the the great um fades out of Hard Day's Night and the track Help. They're that that's all in here, isn't it? It's like they've they've put together a list of all the best features of Beatles songs, and actually they've all they're all here on one track.

SPEAKER_01

Love it, that's a great assessment. I now I always force people to think of just one song, which is hugely unfair and difficult. Um do you have any other favourites you'd like to just give an honourable mention to um in this episode?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think I would choose something like things we said today. I mean, the side two of A Hard Day's Night is just such a magnificent experience. And I remember I I always remember this. I was used to live Battersea, and I went into our price records as we used to have it on the local St John's Road. Um, and I walked in and they were playing side two of A Hard Day's Night when I walked in, and I remember thinking, God, I haven't listened to this for a while, this is magnificent. And it was a big point for me. I think I must have been about uh I don't know, 23 or 24, and I just thought I've you know not that I'd ever stopped loving the Beatles, but it just re-reminded me of how magnificent they were. And I think I went home and you know put it on immediately, and and that was the point when I realised it was my favourite. But I would say if I had to pick another favourite song, which you know, just because it has a power of me every time I hear it, it is She Loves You. What a single. I mean it's it's an event. It's an event. You can't help but feel that thrill. You know, even if you, you know, I just think it doesn't matter when you were born, you you you can understand the power of the Beatles if you hear that song. It comes out of nowhere and it just so it sounds like nothing else. No one else. People tried to sound like that, but no one else did sound like them.

SPEAKER_01

No, fabulous. Well, and talking of Hard Days Night, let's talk about your book, the BFI Film Classics book on Hard Days Night. I think it's it was published already, isn't it? It'll by by the time we're talking, it'll certainly be out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, it's and I should say there's a separate US edition coming out in June or June the 11th, but the UK edition um has come out at the start of April, so I'm very pleased.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, how did this come about?

SPEAKER_00

So the um the since about the late 1990s, um, the BFI and the British Film Institute had launched a strand where each book they commissioned was like a monograph, it's like a celebration of a film and makes the case of whites a classic. And I remember when the series first started and Salmon Rushdie wrote one of the first on The Wizard of Oz, and there's been you know dozens and dozens since, there's you know, several published a year, and I was both thrilled and um wary to think that why hadn't there been one on Hard Day's Night? So I pitched it to um Bloomsbury and they liked my pitch. And I it's partly because I had been thinking a lot about the Beatles, broadcasting about them, you know, the interview done with Paul McCartney, all the preparation for it, and things I'd done with um Chris Shaw's egg pod, made me feel that no one had actually pulled together an analysis of the film, which looks at the Beatles not just as a musical band um or as comedy performers with personalities, but what was the impact of the film? How did the film come to be made? Why is the film such a landmark? And it is an absolute landmark of cinema. And Richard Lester, the director, who's an American, you know, influenced by the Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave movement, created something that no one had done before and changed, you know, the way that pop bands could be portrayed in film. And he also changed the Beatles, I mean, it changed the way they saw themselves, and they all go on to have quite interesting relationships with the film. So the book is partly like it starts with the chapter on as a kind of DVD commentary of me going through the film scene by scene, but there's a whole chapter on the making of the film, how it came to be made. Um, there's a chapter on the art of television, because the film is the plot is nominally them coming down to London to go on a TV show. And Richard Lester's whole career until he began making films had been in television. So he brought a lot of TV craft to it. And also what's going on in Britain at the time, you know, high and low culture, TV's at its peak. That's why some up Wilfred Bramble is in the film, this kind of huge star of a sitcom. Um, and then I also wanted to look at things like the women in the book, which we were talking about earlier, the women in the film, because you know, we always think about the screaming girls, but actually, this film has some really interesting adult women in it. And it's it's a bit of a I'm I'm a great believer in the social history that's captured in um pop culture. And I think this film reveals a lot about changing roles of women and the changing face of society. I mean, there's actually quite a lot of racial diversity if you look carefully in the audience and around them and the class issues, you know, the Beatles are kind of defying all the rules about deference. And I place it against the context of what's going on in cinema as well as other films at the time, and I also look ahead to the reception of the film, and crucially, how the film's impact is still felt to this day. All those films by the likes of Charlie XX or Kneecap or The Spice Girls, which in their own ways have tried to capture something of that magic. And you know, very, very few films have done anything comparable. And I also look at things like the monkeys and and the pop video, which of course is created in this film. Um, and and it was just a joy to write. There's a lot of there's a lot of oral history out there which has been documented, and people have given interviews over the years. And one of the interesting things going through all the research and reading everything was there's a lot of stuff that's ended up in books and is assumed to be true because it's been repeated, but it's not true. And and so I did, I mean, Mark Lewison, you know, the kind of eminent and foremost Beatles historian in the world, very kindly agreed to be a consultant on this book. And you know, he pointed out things that I realised I had repeated that were errors because they'd been elsewhere. There were things that people had said in interviews that just weren't true, you know, about who had been at the premiere, who was in the film. The the the people that seem to be in the film are not in the film. You know, Mal Evans is not in the film. He's not the person walking through carrying a a double base, he just looks like him. So some of it is just correcting all of that. But also, there's also my own analysis of the film, and it's it's such a joy. It was such a I can't tell you how much fun I had reading and writing research.

SPEAKER_01

Reading it that you did, and um I found it joyous as well, living through and seeing it from those different perspectives. I have to say, um reading this book, it it reminded me what a miracle it happened, really, because it is so bold of them to go in the direction they did. You mentioned the Nouvelle Vague and um you know very different distinct elements that were against the kind of commercial impetus of what people wanted from a Beatles film in the business.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, one of the things I did, and I I I I should say there's loads of fantastic photographs. I got to choose 60 photographs, some of which are production still, so you can see how they did some of the effects, and you see them sort of like jumping off ladders for that Can't Buy Me Love montage sequence. Um but I also do a whole comparison of the films of Cliff Richard and what other kinds of films were being made around pop music at the time in the early 60s. And I think it's useful just to remind yourself that you know there was a formula, and if you broke the formula, people were very unlikely to fund you. So Richard Lester was given a huge amount of creative freedom, but also he was really um what's the word for it, he really knew how to maximize what he had, and he'd making a lot of adverts. And I actually what there's uh uh one of the adverts I watched, the BFI, either online or if you go into the BFI Media Tech if you if you're in London or I think it's another one in Newcastle, you can watch a lot of their stuff that's just available for free on their server there. And there are these adverts that Richard Lester made where you know there's women running downstairs and leaping into their boyfriend's arms, it's all done in one take and it's for nimble bread. And that's actually Nouvelle Vague style shooting. So, you know, people in advertising, I mean it's true of people at Ridley Scott, Tony Scott as well. If you've shot adverts with a big budget, you learn how to experiment with all kinds of effects and looks and feels. And and he described it as hitting backhands against a wall, making adverts. It was great practice for a tournament. And the tournament was when you get a film like A Hard Day's Night, where you throw all your ideas at it on a tight budget, and you have creative people around you, like his cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, and the Beatles who were really up for it. That's so crucial. The Beatles were really creative people, and you know, they knew they wanted it to be arty, they weren't afraid of that. Um, and it's a perfect combination. But everyone, people say it's luck, it's not just luck, it's like the Beatles waited till they had a director that they trusted. They'd been offered lots of films. And and the writer that they and they knew his work because they watched television, they appreciated drama. They had written an Alan Owen style few pages of a radio drama themselves, John and Paul. So they you know they really did admire his work. And Richard Lester's um Oscar-nominated short film, the Running Jumping Standing Still film, that he made with them is it's Spike Milligan and um uh uh Peter Sallas. Obviously, he'd worked a lot with these goons. You know, the Beatles used to go and see it, it was running non-stop in this little news cinema in Liverpool. And um you know there's at least one occasion which documented where before they go joined, they all went to see it after a gig at the cavern. But they, you know, they knew they knew the work of these people. They went to the cinema, they you know consumed culture. So once they all found each other, you know, it's it's it's it's not just luck, it's actually intent.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's a it's a glorious telling of it. You took me to lots of things, not just the movie itself, but the yeah, as you say, the context. So I I looked up on YouTube a few of the films you mentioned and uh saw some clips, and it is extraordinary to see that context.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, it's the terrible, terrible films that were made trying to cash in on it. But then you have an amazing film like Peter Watkins's Privilege, which is a science fiction dystopia of pop star controlled by the establishment. And it's got the same fan hysteria. It's shot only, you know, three years later, '67 it comes out. And it is like a a sort of what's that thing in Stranger Things? The underworld they go to. The upside down. It's like the upside down of a hard day's night is privilege.

SPEAKER_01

Lovely.

SPEAKER_00

Such a scary film.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, it's it's uh fantastic. I highly recommend it. So, how can people find out more about this book and about what you're doing? Uh, is there anywhere online they can go?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, thank you. Well, first of all, um the book um which is published by Bloomsbury is available in most bookshops, and you can also, I think, get a discount if you order it direct from the Bloomsbury website online. Um, but it's called Um A Hard Day's Nights by me, Samira Ahmed. There is another Samira Ahmid out there who I know who is a wonderful American writer. She's an young adult fiction writer, so we're not the same person, just to be aware of that. But but she hasn't she hasn't written a book about a hard day's night as far as I'm aware, which is which is good. But the other thing is I've got a website, uh, SamiraAhmid.blog, and there's a page on it um called Upcoming, and it's got all my dates. I'm doing a lot of literary festivals all around the UK, and I'm also doing some film screenings where I'm introducing the film. So, for example, if you're in London, and I don't know when this one is going up, but on the April the 8th, which is uh sort of my book launch, we're doing a big screening at the BFI NFT1, um and I'm doing another one in Newcastle on I think May the 16th at the Tyne Side Cinema, where I'm doing an introduction, the screening the film, and then I'll do a book signing afterwards. We may be doing one in Belfast as well, and I'm doing quite a lot of literary festivals like Hay, um Lake District, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon.

SPEAKER_01

That's wonderful. Thank you. Well, I'll put all those links in the show notes. Are there any social media channels you'd like shared?

SPEAKER_00

Or yeah, well, it's a couple of things. I do a podcast called Through the Square Window, um, which looks at vintage television, and we take a year and a month every year, and we have had a few specials where we looked at like the career of Graeme Garden or the Career of the Woman Who's Created Play School, or I did an interview with Barry Cryer about working with Kenny Everett. We're going to be doing an episode a bit later this year, which is going to look at uh some of the TV shows that the Beatles did, like around the Beatles and the music of Lennon and McCartney. And I think we're going to look at um magical mystery tool because it was made for television. And actually, if you look at their TV work, that'd be quite fun. So I think you might enjoy that. We've the furthest back in time we've gone so far is 1969. And um, but the idea is you know, you look at you take a month and a year and you look at a sample of shows and reveal, and a bit like I did in the book, you look at what do they reveal about social change, what are our preoccupations, you know. Do you see the start of something great like the pilot episode of Faulty Towers in September 1975, which is still holds up, whereas other things just look really dated? So that's the idea of it. It's uh it's at the moment it's mostly a monthly podcast, but we're occasionally doing bonus episodes. Um, but what with the book and with the full-time job, I haven't been able to do more of it. Um, but I also um I'm on I'm on um Blue Sky at Samira Armored UK and X. And I I have to say I'm not on Instagram. Although I've just written a book about film, I don't think of myself as a visual person, I'm a words person. So um I haven't I'm not on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01

Listen, thank you so much for giving me time today to talk about the Beatles and specifically You Won't See Me. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00

Tim, it's been such a pleasure. And you've opened my eyes to I didn't know about that lovely performance of Paul McCartney doing it live. Yeah, it's excellent. Thank you.

unknown

One, two, three, four.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for listening to my favourite Beatles song. If you like the podcast, please consider giving it a rating or review on your favourite podcast platform. This helps me to reach new listeners. You can follow the podcast on x.com, Instagram, and Facebook. Look for the links in the show notes. Thanks to Joe Kane for the fantastic music and Mark Cunningham for the logo design. I'll see you next time.