Author Jonathan Gould refers to the song Yer Blues as a perfect example of the “cultural realism” which distinguished the Beatles from their musical contemporaries. Yer Blues is a satirical, totally over-the-top faux-lament written by John Lennon. He mockingly acknowledges the British blues boom of the late sixties and the likes of Cream, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Blues Breakers, Led Zeppelin and the Jeff Beck Group. Lennon’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre contributed to the growing debate in the music press about whether white men could sing the blues.

The song’s pile-driving intensity belies the composer’s satirical intent. In the chorus, Lennon sings, “If I ain’t dead already, girl you know the reason why.” Gould interprets this as a “joke, [in] that nobody knows the reason why – or, for that matter, what any of these bluesy poetics are really supposed to mean.” Yer Blues signified The Beatles’ “acceptance of the idea that, except as a subject of self-parody, certain expressive modes of African-American music lay outside the realm of their experience and hence beyond their emotional range as singers.”

Yer Blues was recorded on August 13^th and 14^th, 1968 in EMI Studio Two’s “annex,” Room 2A, which according to Kehew and Ryan in Recording the Beatles was actually a large closet connected to the control room. “The room had fallen into use as a storage area in the intervening years, but it had recently been cleared out and a window installed between it and studio Two’s control room.”

It was George Harrison who gave Lennon the idea for the perfect method to record Yer Blues. The Beatles had run through over a hundred takes of a Harrison song called Not Guilty, which ultimately remained unreleased until the Anthology series was issued in the mid-90s. According to one account, Harrison had asked engineer Ken Scott to clear out the room and use omnidirectional mics to record his vocals utilizing the room’s natural echo, while the band played in the adjacent studio. Lennon realized this unusual technique would suit Yer Blues perfectly.

Like a lot of Beatles’ folklore, there are several conflicting accounts surrounding the actual circumstances of the recording of Yer Blues. In any event, they all wound up playing together in this tiny room.

The session at Abbey Road began at 7pm and ran until 5:30 the next morning. The band played the song live, facing each other in a space the size of a child’s bedroom. John stood to the right of Ringo’s Ludwig drums, playing his re-finished 1965 Epiphone Casino guitar. To his right, on the other side of the room, was Paul – thumping away on a Fender Jazz bass. George stood next to Paul, playing his cherry-red Gibson Les Paul Standard; the same instrument he used in the Revolution video. John used the Epiphone in the Hey Jude and Revolution videos, and he plays the instrument for the rooftop concert sequence in Let it Be.

In interviews for Anthology, Ringo Starr affectionately remembers recording Yer Blues in the sparse conditions, saying it was like the good old days of live performances.

The Beatles recorded the song as a live band for the first time in a very long while, running through 17 takes of Yer Blues – after work on the basic track for Sexy Sadie had already been completed earlier in the session. It was a very productive night, to say the least!

With George Martin producing, the group achieved the powerful, live, raw, and gloriously sloppy sound Lennon was looking for: “(T)he four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation,” recalls Ringo in Anthology. “It was this group that was together, it was like grunge rock of the Sixties, really – grunge blues.”

The reference to feeling “so suicidal, just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones” is a nod to Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man, in which Dylan invokes a fictional “Mr. Jones” to describe conservative, ‘establishment’ types who are frightened by the turbulent social change swirling around them.

Along with Glass Onion and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Yer Blues is one of the rare Beatles songs where Paul McCartney uses a Fender instead of the Hofner or the Rickenbacker: his usual instruments of choice. The bass guitar on most of the ‘White Album’ is quite prominent; Paul’s crunching bass is placed much higher in the mix than on previous discs.

Yer Blues is primarily in the key of E major, but like a lot of traditional blues songs, it features accidentals, such as G-natural, D-natural, and B-flat. The song is in 6/8 time, but the meter and tempo changes several times, notably just before the guitar solos, when Lennon sings: “…even hate my rock and roll…” At that point, the song switches to a straight 4/4 rock & roll shuffle. Contributing to the ‘live’ feel of the song, enthusiastic screaming and yelling between the band members can be heard bleeding through onto the instrumental tracks.

John’s mission was accomplished, although not without some overdubs: Ringo’s “One…two…three…” count-off was tacked on later, as well as his snare drum part during the guitar solos. John plays the first half of the guitar solo on Yer Blues, and then Harrison takes over, wailing away on the high notes in the style of his good friend, Eric Clapton. The transition back to the original beat which occurs at 3:17 is actually an edit of take seven’s first verse spliced onto the end of the song. This is why a trace of John’s guide vocal can be heard in the background as the song fades out.

In December of 1968, Lennon played Yer Blues at The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus with a “super-group” featuring himself, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards on bass and Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums. Lennon’s performance was his first live appearance since the Beatles’ last concert in 1966, and this may have contributed to his renewed enthusiasm for playing live. In July 1969, Lennon played Yer Blues as part of The Plastic Ono Band’s set for the ‘Live Peace in Toronto’ concert with Clapton, session drummer Alan White, and long-time Beatles’ associate Klaus Voorman on bass.