Lyrics:

The Song:

"It's All in Your Mind" was originally released on its own single for K Records in 1995. Beck had already become well-known, and a short 3-track single of outtakes from his K sessions was released. Why "It's All in Your Mind" was an outtake in the first place is unclear, and somewhat hard to believe! It's a beautiful song. The single is only on 7-inch vinyl though (and the Japanese CD of One Foot in the Grave), so the song remained relatively obscure for awhile.

The K Records single version is of course the rawest version of the song. The guitar sounds slightly less in tune, and Beck's voice sounded so young (naturally). The song is especially dour, Beck sounding as if he's in a daze. After the third verse, a delicate guitar solo is overdubbed.

The Bridge School Concert is a yearly festival in San Francisco for a school for handicapped children. Neil Young runs the concerts, and gets all sorts of great artists to come and perform acoustically. Beck has played there twice. His first time was there was on October 28 1995, and his stunning version of "It's All in Your Mind" from that show made it on to the excellent compilation CD.

Anyway, "It's All in Your Mind" is Beck on the top of his folk musician skills. Perhaps his lyrics or the music are not as interesting or complex as some of his other works, but they fit together so perfectly. Just two chords, repetitive lyrics. I love the way the song just hints at more--sick stolen gifts, devils up sleeves--tiny flourishes which make the song memorable.

And then, wow, eight years later, Beck recorded the song again. I gather that producer Nigel Godrich was really loving the song, but likely was not fully aware that it was an old one, already released. Nonetheless, nice. And it fits so well in the Sea Change scheme. The way Beck sings "I wanted to be your good friend" gets me every time.

The background music is fleshed out nicely, but subtly. A more delicate, picked guitar line has replaced the two-chord strumming. It remains hypnotic though. A touch of cello underlies it, as well as a light band backing. Beck sings "I wanted to be" three times instead of two. The song really does fit on the album, in sound and theme and mood, so that's what's really important.

Live:

Played live 98 times:
Earliest known live version: January 26, 1994
Latest known live version: July 11, 2005

"It's All in Your Mind" has been performed live quite often. It never really was what you could call a regular, but it showed up every so often, mostly in 1994 and 1995. After that, it has for the most part vanished—even with all the acoustic shows and sets Beck has done—and that's a shame. Bring it back, Beck! [He's listened to me! - ed. 08/2002 :-)]

early folk version 1994/1995/1996/1997

While most performances of the song in the early years were just Beck on acoustic, alone, there are a couple of other noteworthy takes.

The earliest known performance of the song was on January 26 1994. Beck was backed by That Dog on the radio up in Olympia, WA. That Dog are a beautiful addition to the song. Petra Haden's droning violin is perfect for the song's aura, much like her playing on "Blackhole."

One of the best versions of the song was on one of Beck's yearly drop-ins on KCRW in Santa Monica, CA. In 1994, he brought Chris Ballew in with him, who in turn brought his two-string "bassitar." Here, the bassitar was a haunting addition to the song. The song feels more like a blues song instead of a folk song. Brilliant.

Another radio performance of the song came on August 22 1994, in Australia. Beck always got such terrific guitar sound for "It's All in Your Mind." It sounds like a bandmate or someone shook sleighbells as percussion (or my mp3 is messed up!). There is also a second guitarist playing some little licks before taking a long solo after the last verse. I can't tell which guitar is Beck's, but my educated guess is he's not the lead guitar.

On October 24 1994, "It's All In Your Mind" is quite unique. Beck started the song with a lovely harmonica intro. After the first verse, he stopped, as the audience is being noisy. He shrugged, "oh well" and tried to begin the second verse, but doesn't get far before he's interrupted again. The crowd is acting up. He gave it another go, this time from the third verse, before spicing up the outro with a long harmonica solo. Then the big surprise—he ends by violently and oddly thrashing his acoustic guitar, while singing an extremely odd version of "Trouble All My Days."

"You all like bittersweet songs of sweet bitterness?" Beck asks before "It's All In Your Mind" on February 10 1997. As he has on most of the times he plays the song, he makes a comment to the crowd that they probably don't know the song. Unfortunately, this night, he gives up on the song immediately. "No I don't want to sing that," he says.

devil up your sleeve version - Pre-Sea Change

After not being played for about five years, Beck brought "It's All In Your Mind" back into the setlist of his gig on February 21 2002. The song was done just on acoustic guitar, with Justin Meldal-Johnsen on stand-up bass. Anyway, the next two nights, it was played again! Then a few weeks later it was recorded for Sea Change! YEA!

sick stolen gift version - Sea Change tours

And thus, this old gem of a song has returned to the setlists once again. Up first is a solo acoustic tour (August 2002), where Beck played the song about half the nights. He plays it alone (though sometimes with Smokey adding some guitar too).

One cool version on this August tour came during the last show, when he used a full band as backing. They were really subtle, but I find this arrangement to be better than the one- or two-man ones from earlier on the tour. There's some cool synth effects from Roger Manning Jr, and light drumming from Joey Waronker.

After that tour, Beck took on the Flaming Lips as his band for a few months, and together they played "It's All In Your Mind" pretty much every night with them (except for a couple of shows). This version does not sound too different from the take on Sea Change, except it's got heavier drumming and some interesting synthesizer sounds on top.

After the Lips left, Beck continued to tour behind Sea Change (one solo tour, one band tour). I think a lot of them were band versions, but some might've been solo.

Gone Again

Since 2003, I'm only aware of one time Beck's hinted at the song. Once in 2005, he did a little medley of old songs during his acoustic set, and "It's All In Your Mind" was one of them included. He may have done that a few other times that didn't get reported, but for the most part, the song has been gone.