Boyd, the English model whom he married soon after the song's release. The lyrics have nevertheless invited interpretation as being about a groupie or, in the words of music journalist Robert Fontenot, "some other attempt by the singer to juggle two affairs at once". Author Peter Doggett comments on Harrison's inspiration, in the context of the Beatlemania that continually encroached on the band's lifestyle: "'If I Needed Someone' may be the first pop song written from the jaded, though not quite exhausted viewpoint of a man who had women lined up outside his hotel door in every city of the world." Composition Music As recorded by the Beatles, "If I Needed Someone" is in the key of A major, over the verses, and B minor in the middle eights (or bridges). The time signature throughout is 4/4. After its introduction, the composition consists of two verses, a bridge, three verses (the second of which serves as an instrumental break), followed by a repeat of the bridge, a further verse, and an outro. The song is in the folk rock style, but incorporates aspects of Indian music through the suggestion of drone over the main musical phrase and its partly Mixolydian harmony. Harrison uses a capo on the guitar's seventh fret, thereby transposing the D major chord shape to sound as A major. The Mixolydian melody in the verses comprises the notes A, G, B, C and D, partly mirroring the riff, and is delivered in the same syncopated phrasing. On the fifth bar of each verse, a B melody-note sounds over a VII triad – a chord that musicologist Dominic Pedler terms a G/A "slash" polychord, similar to that used at the start of "A Hard Day's Night". The implied drone, or pedal point, in A continues under this new chord, aided by the arpeggiated bass line remaining in A. The verses retain an ascendant melodic quality due to the syncopated delivery, the three-part harmonies in the vocal arrangement, and the constant bass figure. Over the bridges, the new key is set fully in the minor mode, avoiding the Dorian inflections present in previous Harrison songs. These sections begin on an E minor chord, which, in Roman numeral analysis, represents a v minor in the tonic of A and an iv minor in the new key. At the end of each bridge, the return to the home key is effected