I Me Mine is a track on the Let It Be album that was originally rehearsed as part of the Let It Be/Get Back sessions, and later completed after Abbey Road as the last Beatles recording (in the absence of John Lennon, who had already effectively left the band).
The Beatles BibleThe last song to be recorded by The Beatles, ‘I Me Mine’ was written by George Harrison about revelations regarding the ego discovered through LSD use.
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WikipediaThe song was written by George Harrison at a very fraught moment in the Beatles story, just before he (temporarily as it turned out) left the band, and the grim atmosphere was neatly captured in both the original it Let It Be film, and more fully in Peter Jacksons Get Back 3 part documentary.
As by this stage the Beatles were as close or closer than brothers, their differences had developed into a typically British, passive-aggressive standoff in which the three songwriters of the band were winding each other up without (to put it mildly) always fully articulating their frustrations. Instead the different parties were using the tried and tested strategy of negotiating via one-way telepathy, facial expressions and little digs.
Harrison in particular was becoming very frustrated with the short-shrift given to his own song ideas by Lennon and McCartney, and by the way McCartney was increasingly directing Harrison’s guitar playing. All of the other Beatles were frustrated with Lennon’s behaviour (he had begun taking heroin) and Harrison was particularly upset by the constant presence of Yoko Ono. Both heroin and Ono’s presence in the studio being symptoms not so much of Lennon’s lack of commitment to the Beatles but of his complete (and competing) commitment to her. For her part, it seems clear to me, from the film that Yoko was happy to stoke these tensions.
It was a clash of egos, and in this setting George went home and wrote a song about egotism* and selfishness. He later described the song as concerned with a kind of Hindu analysis of ego which I’ve found most clearly explained in the current wikipedia article, rather than individual quotes (see the article for citations):
When discussing “I Me Mine”, Harrison said he was addressing the “eternal problem” of egoism and that his perspective was informed by his past experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. 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”.
*
“egoism” and “egotism” are distinct words with different meanings, and I think I Me Mine can be interpreted as relating to both
Harrison himself expressed frustration with his own ego:
“… everything I could see was relative to my ego, like ‘that’s my piece of paper’ and ‘that’s my flannel’ or ‘give it to me’ or ‘I am’. It drove me crackers, I hated everything about my ego, it was a flash of everything false and impermanent, which I disliked. But later, I learned from it, to realise that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth.”
Other commentators have noted that the song could also be interpreted as relating to the conflict of egos within the Beatles that was coming to a crescendo at exactly the time the song was written. Ironically, the presentation of the song during the Get Back sessions at Twickenham was an distilled example of the phenomena that it described. Harrison brought I Me Mine in saying: “I don’t care if you don’t want it.”, “It’s a heavy waltz” (The song’s 3/4 time had been inspired by a TV show about Austrian classical music that he had watched the previous evening). Lennon appeared to mock the song, waltzing around the room with Yoko rather than participating, and later reportedly saying: that “the Beatles only play rock and roll and there’s no place in the group’s playlist for a Spanish waltz”. Lennon of course had written many songs that deviated from standard rock’n’roll. Dig A Pony, on the very same album, is in 3/4 time albeit a kind of lurching shuffle. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds had a prominent and unambiguous waltz in the verses.
Overall, the I Me Mine is certainly concerned with the negative side of ego, whether Harrisons own, the other Beatles’ or the more abstract “little i” or a combination of these. In common with many (not all) of Harrison’s songs during the Beatle years it takes a negative slant, pointing out the problem, but not offering any solution.
My main response to the song is highly idiosyncratic, and I think it somehow relates to experiences I had before I can remember them clearly. I have always found the melody extremely grating and unpleasant – almost like the proverbial “nails on a blackboard”. I associate the tune with an obscure nursery rhyme about a cat miaowing which also contains the line “all through the night” and which I think I also found upsetting as a toddler, which would have been about the time I Me Mine was released. However, I don’t think my parents had the album, so I am not sure how I would have heard it at that time.
So for me the song evokes that feeling of a cat locked outside all through the night. Maybe it’s not a complete coincidence. I suppose Harrison did have a similar idea about the ego: each of us crying and wailing because we are alone and outside.