The Beatles completed the recording sessions for Rubber Soul with an overnight session that began on November 11, 1965. At EMI Studios in London, they still had new songs to record and unfinished tracks to revisit. Their work in Studio Two ran from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m. the following morning, according to The Beatles Bible’s session history.
The band’s Christmas workload extended beyond the LP. With George Martin producing and Norman Smith engineering, the sessions also yielded the band’s first double A-side, “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out.” The arrangements were becoming more adventurous, too. “They were getting more and more interested in unusual sounds,” Martin recalled in comments reproduced on The Beatles’ official album page. George Harrison’s sitar on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” was one expression of that curiosity.
A shortage of songs gave “Wait” another chance. The band had recorded it during the Help! sessions on June 17, then left it off that album. With Rubber Soul needing a fourteenth track, they returned to the existing recording and added guitar played with a volume pedal, extra vocals, tambourine and maracas. The finished track joined a performance from the earlier sessions to new work recorded alongside the November material.
Paul McCartney’s “You Won’t See Me” needed a fresh recording. Its rhythm track took two takes, with McCartney playing piano, before the band built up the finished arrangement through overdubs. McCartney added bass and doubled his lead vocal, while John Lennon and Harrison supplied backing vocals. Beatles assistant Mal Evans contributed a particularly restrained part: one sustained Hammond organ note through the final verse. Even on a night devoted to finishing the album, there was room for a small addition like that.
Lennon’s “Girl” also began with a basic track captured in two takes. Acoustic guitars and Ringo Starr’s brushed drums gave it a different setting from McCartney’s piano-led song. Harrison added a 12-string acoustic guitar part, and Lennon doubled his lead vocal. An additional distorted guitar part was recorded but left out of the final mix. The finished arrangement reflected decisions about what to leave out as well as what to add.
“I’m Looking Through You” had taken a longer route. The band had first recorded it in October and remade it in early November before settling on the backing track recorded the night before the final session. The earlier arrangement lacked the bridge heard on the finished record. Vocals and handclaps completed the album version during the overnight session, bringing weeks of revisions to an end. That first, substantially different recording eventually appeared on Anthology 2 in 1996.
Recording was finished, but mixing continued through November 15. Rubber Soul reached UK shops on December 3. It also became the final Beatles album engineered by Smith, who had worked with the group across their first six albums before moving into record production.
