I Me Mine

“I Me Mine”
“I Me Mine”
	Cover of the original Hansen Publishing sheet music
Song by the Beatles
from the album Let It Be
Released	8 May 1970
Recorded	3 January and 1 April 1970
Studio	EMI, London
Genre	Rock
Length	2:25
Label	Apple
Songwriter(s)	George Harrison
Producer(s)	Phil Spector

“I Me Mine” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1970 album Let It Be. Written by George Harrison, it was the last new track recorded by the band before their break-up in April 1970. The song originated from their January 1969 rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios when they were considering making a return to live performance. Written at a time of acrimony within the group, the lyrics lament humankind’s propensity for self-centredness and serve as a comment on the discord that led to Harrison temporarily leaving the Beatles. The musical arrangement alternates between waltz-time verses and choruses played in the hard rockstyle.

The song reflects Harrison’s absorption in Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and their denouncement of ego in favour of universal consciousness. When Harrison presented “I Me Mine” at Twickenham, John Lennon showed little interest and instead waltzed with Yoko Ono while the other Beatles rehearsed the song. Footage of the couple dancing was included in the Let It Bedocumentary film. In January 1970, by which point Lennon had privately left the group, the three remaining members formally recorded the song at EMI Studios in London for the Let It Be album. When preparing the album for release, producer Phil Spector extended the track by repeating the chorus and second verse, in addition to adding orchestration and a female choir.

Among music critics, several writers have identified “I Me Mine” as a powerful final performance by the Beatles and an apt statement from Harrison. The song has been referenced by some religious scholars in their commentary on egoism. Harrison titled his 1980 autobiography I, Me, Mine after the track. The original recording, lasting just 1:34, appeared on the Beatles’ 1996 outtakes compilation Anthology 3, introduced by a mock announcement from Harrison referring to Lennon’s departure.

Background and inspirationEdit

I kept coming across the words I, me and mine in books about yoga and stuff … [about the difference between] the real you and the you that people mistake their identity to be … I, me and mine is all ego orientation. But it is something which is used all the time … “No one’s frightened of saying it, everyone’s playing it, coming on strong all the time. All through your life, I me mine.”^[1]

– George Harrison, 1997

George Harrison wrote “I Me Mine” on 7 January 1969, during the second week of the Beatles‘ filmed rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios in west London.^[2] The film project – which became known as Get Back and eventually Let It Be^[3]^[4] – formed part of the Beatles’ proposed return to live performance for the first time since 1966.^[5]Harrison recalled that after spending two months in the United States in late 1968, he was “quite optimistic” about the new project, but the situation within the group “was just the same as it had been when we were last in the studio … There was a lot of trivia and games being played.”^[6] For Harrison, the power struggle between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the constant presence of Lennon’s girlfriend, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono,^[7] created an atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the creative freedom and camaraderie he had recently enjoyed with Bob Dylan and the Band in upstate New York.^[8]

When writing the song, Harrison drew inspiration from the divisive atmosphere in the band.^[2] The 7 January rehearsal was marked by acrimony, as the Beatles argued over the direction of the project.^[9]Hours were given over to rehearsing McCartney’s “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” with little improvement,^[10] and McCartney confronted Lennon over his lack of new songs, drawing a sarcastic response from Lennon.^[11]^{[nb 1]} Since the start of the project, Harrison had presented several new songs for consideration,^[16]^[17] only to see them given laborious treatment by the band or overlooked entirely.^[18] That day, he confronted his bandmates about their attitude to his songs;^[19] he later complained that due to their greater experience as songwriters, Lennon and McCartney viewed their own material as the priority and “I’d have to wait through ten of their songs before they’d even listen to one of mine.”^[20] In their study of the tapes from the Get Back project, authors Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt write that Lennon and McCartney regularly overlooked Harrison’s compositions, even when his songs were “far better than their own”.^[7]

The song’s message was partly inspired by the teachings of Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda.

When discussing “I Me Mine”, Harrison said he was addressing the “eternal problem” of egoism^[21]^[22]and that his perspective was informed by his past experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD.^[1]^[23]He said the concept was in keeping with Swami Vivekananda‘s teaching that an individual’s goal in life was to realise their divine qualities by transcending ego concerns, which Harrison called “the little ‘i'”, and seeing themselves as part of “the big ‘I’; i.e. OM, the complete whole, universal consciousness that is devoid of duality and ego”.^[21]Author Jonathan Gould describes the song as a “commentary on the selfishness” of Lennon and McCartney,^[24] while musicologist Walter Everettsays that after Harrison had written “Not Guilty” in 1968 as a “defense against the tyranny of his songwriting comrades”, “I Me Mine” was his “mocking complaint about their stifling egos”.^[25]Harrison wrote the song at home that night.^[26] The melody was inspired by the incidental music on a BBC television programme he watched, Europa – The Titled and the Untitled,^[19] played by an Austrian brass band.^[25]

CompositionEdit

The verses of “I Me Mine” are in the key of A minorwhile the chorus is in A major.^[27] This technique of parallel minor/major contrast is common in the Beatles’ songwriting and had been employed by Harrison in his 1968 songs “While My Guitar Gently Weeps“^[27] and “Savoy Truffle“.^[28]^{[nb 2]} Everett likens the melody of the verses to the European folk music typified by Mary Hopkin‘s debut single for the Beatles’ Apple record label, “Those Were the Days“.^[25] He views this folk aspect as “well suited” to Harrison’s use of the same “F-against-E7 sound” he first adopted in “I Want to Tell You“.^[25]^{[nb 3]} The composition originally included a flamenco-style instrumental passage^[30] but Harrison subsequently replaced this section with a chorus repeating the line “I me-me mine”.^[31] In its final form, the structure comprises an intro, two combinations of verse and chorus, followed by a verse.^[32] The verse and chorus are also differentiated by their time signature: the former is in 3/4 time while the latter is in 4/4.^[32]Musicologist Alan Pollack describes the song as “an interesting folk/blues stylistic hybrid with more than just a touch of the hard rocking waltz beat”.^[32] The verse begins with two repeated phrases, each consisting of a shift from the i minor (Am) chord to a IV (D7), emphasising the Dorian mode,^[33] followed by ♭VII (G), V7 (E7) and i minor chords.^[32] The verse continues with a minor iv (Dm) chord for two bars^[32]before shifting to V7 (E7), after which a ♭9 (F natural) melody note results in what musicologist Dominic Pedler terms the “dark drama” of an E7♭9 chord and an example of the Beatles’ employment of an “exotic intensifier”.^[34] There then follows a chromatically descending bass line over the i minor chord, leading to VI (F7) and the transition into the 4/4 chorus.^[32] The latter presents as a heavy rock^[35] 12-bar blues but is abbreviated to 10 bars since the V chord functions as a re-transition to the verse.^[32] Pedler also comments on the unusual aspect of the song concluding on an ♭VI (Fmaj7) chord in A minor key.^[36]The set of pronouns that form the song’s title are a conventional way of referring to the ego in Hinduand Buddhist philosophy.^[37] The lyrics reference the Bhagavad Gita 2:71-72,^[38] part of which advocates a life “devoid of any sense of mineness or egotism”.^[39]^{[nb 4]} According to spiritual biographer Gary Tillery, the song targets McCartney and Lennon “for being so fixated on their own interests” but also laments all of humankind’s propensity for egocentricity.^[8] The lyrics state that this self-centredness is constant and in all actions and desires.^[41] Tillery says that the message is both ironic and tragic from a Hindu perspective, which contends that ego is merely an illusion; egocentricity is therefore akin to a single drop of water focusing on its own course at the expense of the ocean surrounding it.^[8]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[nb 1]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]

[27]

[28]

[nb 2]

[nb 3]

[30]

[31]

[32]

[33]

[34]

[35]

[36]

[37]

[38]

[39]

[nb 4]

[41]

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“I Me Mine”
Cover of the original Hansen Publishing sheet music
Song by the Beatles
from the album Let It Be
Released	8 May 1970
Recorded	3 January and 1 April 1970
Studio	EMI, London
Genre	Rock
Length	2:25
Label	Apple
Songwriter(s)	George Harrison
Producer(s)	Phil Spector

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