FEATURE:
I Should Have Known Better
The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night at Sixty: Their Most Underrated Album?
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WHEN we talk about The Beatles…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1964/PHOTO CREDIT: Walter Shenton Films/Proscenium Films
and their best albums, we often name the go-to titles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Revolver, Abbey Road. Those seem pretty safe. In terms of those that are underrated and are not often seen as classics, I think that A Hard Day’s Night is at the top. It is a hugely important album in the sense that it was released during Beatlemania. This band who, a year previous, had put out their debut, Please Please Me, were now known around the world. It is amazing that this cultural phenomenon exploded so quickly. There are a lot of reasons why the album is important. We mark its sixtieth anniversary on 10th July. This was their first studio album where John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote all of the songs. Quite a leap in terms of their development and confidence. After years of performing covers at gigs and deploying their in their own work, this was a totally original Beatles album. I will argue that A Hard Day’s Night is their most underrated album. It is great that we are going to see its sixtieth anniversary. There have been no plans as of yet to reissue the album. Giles Martin – son of Beatles producer George, who has reissued and remixed other studio albums of theirs – has made no announcement. It would be fascinating to hear demos, early takes and extras recording during the sessions for A Hard Day’s Night. That would be amazing! It was an exciting and strange time for the band. Recorded between January and June 1964, the four-piece released a masterpiece. Remember that the A Hard Day’s Night film turns sixty on 6th July. That was a big moment for them. Releasing a film and album of the same name. I am not sure if that had been done much prior to 1964. Whether you see the album more of a soundtrack or a studio album, it is clear that their stock and fame had risen.
Putting out their first film a few days before their third studio album showed that there was a huge demand. A real need to see Gorge Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon on the big screen. I often think that the album is stronger because one associates it directly to the film. We have visualisation of the songs. Iconic scenes being played out. That title scene with A Hard Day’s Night playing as the guys are chased by fans. One of the most iconic film scenes ever. People don’t really put A Hard Day’s Night up there with Abbey Road. Maybe there isn’t this amazing standout like Here Comes the Sun (Abbey Road), Tomorrow Never Knows (Revolver) or A Day in the Life (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). Number one in the U.K. and U.S., July 1964 saw The Beatles confirmed as worthy of the hype and mania. Not only did people buy the album because of the band and the excitement around them. The quality of the songwriting meant that people bought A Hard Day’s Night to immerse themselves in. Perhaps after seeing the film, they were keen to buy the album to keep those images alive. The first single, Can’t Buy Me Love, came out on 20th March, 1964. They put out the second single, A Hard Day’s Night, the same day as the album (10th July, 1964). Even though the U.S. release was different to the one in the U.K., it was evident people adored the music of The Beatles. They were a sensation! I will come to some reviews/features about the album. First, Beatles Bible provide some useful information and background to A Hard Day’s Night:
“Having conquered hearts in the United Kingdom throughout 1963, The Beatles set their sights on the world in 1964. They started it with concerts in London and Paris, before making history by conquering America in February, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show before an estimated 73 million viewers.
The Beatles followed up their Stateside triumph with a world tour, numerous interviews, television appearances and new recordings, and starred in their debut feature film. And despite their whirlwind schedule of touring and studio sessions, the soundtrack to A Hard Day’s Night turned out to be one of The Beatles’ strongest long-players.
We were different. We were older. We knew each other on all kinds of levels that we didn’t when we were teenagers. The early stuff – the Hard Day’s Night period, I call it – was the sexual equivalent of the beginning hysteria of a relationship. And the Sgt Pepper–Abbey Road period was the mature part of the relationship.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
The album was recorded over nine non-consecutive days, between January and June 1964. In between the sporadic sessions The Beatles fulfilled their touring and filming commitments, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney writing some of their strongest songs to date.
What’s more, The Beatles refused to take the easy option and delve into their Cavern Club-era songbook, selecting some of the numerous cover versions in their repertoire to pad out the original compositions. A Hard Day’s Night became their first album to consist solely of original material, and was The Beatles’ only release to consist solely of songs written by Lennon-McCartney.
The songs
The title A Hard Day’s Night had been coined by Ringo Starr, and first appeared in John Lennon’s short story ‘Sad Michael’ in his first book In His Own Write.
When film director Richard Lester announced it would be the title of The Beatles’ first film, Lennon took up the challenge to write the theme song. At the time he and Paul McCartney were in competition to write the group’s singles, and Lennon was entering a particularly productive songwriting phase.
I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ from something Ringo’d said. I had used it in In His Own Write, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringoism, where he said it not to be funny, just said it. So Dick Lester said we are going to use that title, and the next morning I brought in the song. ’Cause there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A side, who got the hit singles.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
The genesis of the song was later recalled by Evening Standard journalist Maureen Cleave, who was a friend of The Beatles.
One day I picked John up in a taxi and took him to Abbey Road for a recording session. The tune to the song ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was in his head, the words scrawled on a birthday card from a fan to his little son Julian: “When I get home to you,” it said, “I find my tiredness is through…” Rather a feeble line about tiredness, I said. “OK,” he said cheerfully and, borrowing my pen, instantly changed it to the slightly suggestive: “When I get home to you/I find the things that you do/Will make me feel all right.” The other Beatles were there in the studio and, of course, the wonderful George Martin. John sort of hummed the tune to the others – they had no copies of the words or anything else. Three hours later I was none the wiser about how they’d done it but the record was made – and you can see the birthday card in the British Library.
Maureen Cleave
Lennon was the sole composer of the title track, along with ‘I Should Have Known Better’, ‘Tell Me Why’, ‘Any Time At All’, ‘I’ll Cry Instead’, ‘When I Get Home’, and ‘You Can’t Do That’. He also wrote the majority of ‘If I Fell’ and ‘I’ll Be Back’, and collaborated with McCartney on ‘I’m Happy Just To Dance With You’.
It comes and goes. I can’t believe it goes away for ever… but you can never be twenty-four again. You can’t be that hungry twice. That can never, never be.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
McCartney’s contributions to the album were hardly slight either: his highlights were the classic ballads ‘And I Love Her’ and ‘Things We Said Today’, as well as the single ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’.
When we knew we were writing for something like an album [John] would write a few in his spare moments, like this batch here. He’d bring them in, we’d check ’em. I’d write a couple and we’d throw ’em at each other, and then there would be a couple that were more co-written. But you just had a certain amount of time. You knew when the recording date was and so a week or two before then we’d get into it.
It didn’t seem like pressure. It was – I suppose you’d have to think it was but I don’t remember it being a pressure. It was fun, it was great. I always liken songwriting to a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Now you see it, now you don’t. If I now pick up a guitar and start to conjure something out of the air, there’s a great magic about it. Where there was nothing, now there is something. Where there was a white sheet of paper, there’s a page we can read. Where there was no tune and no lyrics, there’s now a song we can sing! That aspect of it made it a lot of fun. We’d be amazed to see what kind of rabbit we’d pulled out that day.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
In the studio
The Beatles met Francis Hall, the president of guitar company Rickenbacker, during their first visit to America in February 1964. Hall set up a meeting in New York City to demonstrate new instruments and amplifiers, and George Harrison was given one of the new 12-string 360 electric guitars. John Lennon also requested a custom-made 12-string 325 model, which was delivered at a later date.
How do I like it? Marvellous. It’s gear. It sounds a bit like an electric piano, I always think, but you get a nice fat sound out of it.
George Harrison, 1964
Melody Maker
The sound of the Rickenbacker became a key part of A Hard Day’s Night. The 12-string was perhaps most notable in the iconic opening chord of the title track, and in ‘I Should Have Known Better’ and ‘You Can’t Do That’. The instrument also influenced many of recordings that followed by bands such as The Byrds and The Searchers.
A further development in the studio was the advance to four-track recording, replacing the two-track facilities that had been used on Please Please Me and much of With The Beatles.
The very first records we made were mono, though I did have stereo facilities. To make mixing easier I would keep the voices separate from the backing, so I used a stereo machine as a twin-track. Not with the idea of stereo – merely to give myself a little bit more flexibility in remixing into a mono. So the first year’s recordings were made on just two tracks and were live; like doing broadcasts. With the great advance of four-track we were able to overdub and put on secondary voices and guitar solos afterwards. By the time we did A Hard Day’s Night we would certainly put the basic track down and do the vocals afterwards. Invariably, I was putting all the rhythm instruments onto either one or two tracks (generally one track) so you would have bass lumped with guitar. It wasn’t until later still that we began putting bass on afterwards as well, giving Paul the opportunity of using his voice more.
The first song to be recorded for A Hard Day’s Night was Paul McCartney’s ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. It was taped on 29 January 1964 in EMI’s Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris, in a daytime session before one of their residency concerts at the city’s Olympia Theatre.
The session had been booked for The Beatles to record German-language versions of ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. The recordings were completed ahead of schedule, leaving the group free to record a new song.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was taped in just four takes, in probably less than an hour. The song became the follow-up to ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ when released in the UK as a single on 20 March 1964, simultaneously acting as a stopgap between future recordings and a teaser for The Beatles’ forthcoming LP.
The small matter of conquering America meant The Beatles didn’t return to the studio until 25 February, when they recorded ‘You Can’t Do That’, and early versions of ‘And I Love Her’ and ‘I Should Have Known Better’; both were remade in subsequent days.
For the rest of February and early March the group recorded songs for the film soundtrack. They also taped several songs which were eventually issued on the standalone Long Tall Sally EP.
As was typical in the early 1960s, The Beatles didn’t attend mixing or editing sessions for the album. George Martin worked on the recordings in the group’s absence, on one occasion adding a piano part to ‘You Can’t Do That’ while The Beatles were on holiday.
Filming for A Hard Day’s Night was over by the end of April, but touring duties continued. The Beatles recorded the non-soundtrack songs for the LP in just three consecutive days from 1 June 1964, before beginning their world tour of Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand on 4 June.
In their absence the album was edited and mixed for mono and stereo by George Martin and the EMI studio engineers. It was completed on 22 June and released in the United Kingdom on 10 July”.
Chart success
A Hard Day’s Night had advance orders of over 250,000 in the United Kingdom. By the end of 1964 it had sold 600,000 copies. It spent 21 consecutive weeks at number one in the UK from 25 July 1964, and remained in the charts for 38 weeks.
More than a million advance orders were placed in the United States before its release. Within three months it had sold another million copies, making it one of the fastest-selling albums of all time. It topped the US Billboard album chart for 14 weeks, the longest run for any album that year”.
The fact that I cannot see that many articles about A Hard Day’s Night and its legacy goes to show it is underrated. There are some podcast episodes, though not as many as you would like. I do hope that there is something happening on 10th July to mark sixty years of a landmark album. One where The Beatles truly became The Beatles. Maybe something around the anniversary of the film. I want to drop in a BBC review for A Hard Day’s Night at this point:
“There may be more inventive Beatles records – Sgt. Pepper’s, for example – and there may be lusher ones – Abbey Road, for one. But no one Beatles album better encapsulated the essence of the band than this one.
A Hard Day’s Night not only captures The Beatles at the peak of Beatlemania – the most exciting time in pop music up to that moment, and arguably ever since; when continents fell and music was changed forever – but also sees them perfecting the art of pop. You may have Beatles songs that you prefer, or songs that mean more to you, but nowhere were the group more consistently brilliant than on this soundtrack
Where the film emphasised just how popular and bizarre their fame was, the accompanying album showed us just why this had happened. The title-track – with surely the most surreal name ever for a number one song – dazzles in a way The Byrds, The Monkees, The La’s and a hundred other janglers never could, while And I Love Her proved that the band could write melodies better than anyone else. Even the song they let George sing, I’m Happy Just to Dance With You, is fizzier than actual bubbles, while Lennon’s vocal (and rhythm solo) on You Can’t Do That saw him trounce The Rolling Stones for sheer snottiness.
This was the first and only Beatles album to be entirely composed of Lennon/McCartney songs, and that unheard-of-in-1964 cockiness shines through. Even the wistful songs – Things We Said Today and I’ll Be Back – were more confident than sad. This is, next to the White Album (a very different kettle of fabs), my favourite Beatles album, and has been ever since I heard it. The exuberance of the 1960s, the genius of The Beatles, and the total unstoppable confidence of the best band in the world realising that they were the best band in the world, are all contained here. Essential”.
I am going to talk about how very few rank A Hard Day’s Night among The Beatles’ best. One cannot deny it is one of their most important albums. Prior to getting to that, this is what Pitchfork wrote in their 2009 review:
“Pop in 1964 was part of showbiz: Once the Beatles hit a certain level of box office, there would never have been any question over making a film. Pop music meant teenagers, which meant fads, which meant the clock was running on the band's fame. The jazzman George Melly, who was writing about pop in the UK press at this time, remembered being convinced several times that the Beatles had hit a peak and their fans would soon desert them. I doubt this was an unorthodox opinion.
A film career might extend the fame a little, and smooth the band's inevitable transition to light entertainment. If the film was an enjoyable romp, so much the better-- John Lennon asked for A Hard Day's Night director Richard Lester on the basis of a comedy short he'd made (later referenced in the film's famous "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence), but Lester had also helmed 1962's It's Trad, Dad!, a snapshot of the British pop world just pre-Beatles (Tagline: "The newest, most frantic fad!"). He knew how to mix music and feelgood filmmaking to commercial effect.
A Hard Day's Night, in other words, is a crucial inflection point in the Beatles' career. Coinciding with their leaving Liverpool and moving to London, this could easily have been their first step on a road of crowd-pleasing predictability: Instead, both film and this soundtrack album are a testament to how fabulous pop can be when you take care over doing it.
The album is most famous now for being the first all-original record the band put out-- and their only all Lennon-McCartney LP. Formidably prolific at this point, the pair had been creating songs-- and hits-- for other performers which must have given them useful insight into how to make different styles work. There's been a particular jump forward in ballad writing-- on "And I Love Her" in particular, Paul McCartney hits a note of humble, open-hearted sincerity he'd return to again and again. His "Things We Said Today" is even better, wintry and philosophical before the surprising, stirring middle eight.
But the dominant sound of the album is the Beatles in full cry as a pop band-- with no rock'n'roll covers to remind you of their roots you're free to take the group's new sound purely on its own modernist terms: The chord choices whose audacity surprised a listening Bob Dylan, the steamroller power of the harmonies, the gleaming sound of George Harrison's new Rickenbacker alongside the confident Northern blasts of harmonica, and a band and producer grown more than comfortable with each other. There's detail aplenty here-- and the remasters make it easy to hunt for-- but A Hard Day's Night is perhaps the band's most straightforward album: You notice the catchiness first, and you can wonder how they got it later.
The best example of this is the title track-- the clang of that opening chord to put everyone on notice, two burning minutes thick with percussion (including a hammering cowbell!) thanks to the new four-track machines George Martin was using, and then the song spiraling out with a guitar figure as abstractedly lovely as anything the group had recorded. John Lennon's best songs on the record-- "A Hard Day's Night", "Tell Me Why", "When I Get Home", "You Can't Do That"-- are fast, aggressive, frustrated and spiked with these moments of breathtaking prettiness.
The Hard Day's Night film itself was also a triumph in its way-- Lester's camerawork capturing the frenzy of Beatlemania and the way the group's music was feeding off it. It had the happy effect of introducing the group's millions of new global fans to their world-- the fire escapes, boutiques, bombed-out spaces, and well-preserved salons of 60s London. In fact the film's knowing dialogue and pop-art cinematography has a level of surface sophistication that the Beatles' records don't approach for another year or two (though they were already far more emotionally nourishing).
Watching the film you're reminded that what the Beatles had set in motion was pop music's catching up with the rest of British popular culture: In art, in TV satire, in film and fashion and literature, the 60s were already a boom time. Pop had been left behind-- tastemakers looked instead to jazz and folk to soundtrack this creativity. What the Beatles had-- accidentally-- unlocked was pop music's potential to join, then lead, the party-- though it wasn't yet a given that they'd be the band to realize said potential. A Hard Day's Night is an album of an era when pop and showbiz were inseparable-- and if it doesn't transcend that time, it does represent its definitive peak”.
In 2022, The Independent placed A Hard Day’s Night sixth. Gold did the same for their feature. Ultimate Classic Rock did the same. It does seem predictable when it comes to the top-five albums. The same ones will appear in there – Rubber Soul, The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Revolver and Abbey Road – but in a different order. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers placed the album a lowly ninth. NME ranked it eighth-best in 2012. I guess the sixth-best Beatles album is a good position. It means it is far stronger than most other albums ever released! I do feel like there is this unflinching view that there are these five golden albums. A Hard Day’s Night kind of gets close but does not equal them. I can understand the songs might not be as strong as you hear on Revolver, say, but the sheer importance and excitement on the album, for me, puts it high up the list. Few journalists have gone deep with the album. Considering A Hard Day’s Night was the band, at the time, at the peak of their powers, why is A Hard Day’s Night not talked about more?! In America in 1964, the year America grieved John F. Kennedy's assassination; when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act; when poverty, inequality, and war became part of our daily dialogue, The Beatles provided some hope and light for American fans. Here in the U.K., there was tension and unrest. Harold Wilson, in October 1964, entered the Election campaign determined to end thirteen years of wasted Conservative rule. There was a need for change. Oddly, sixty years later, we are in a similar position. A Hard Day’s Night really started what came after. In terms of Lennon and McCartney writing original songs and being this incredible partnership. The sheer size and wave of popularity and attention around The Beatles in 1964 means A Hard Day’s Night has this importance and stature. Maybe it is slightly buried by Beatlemania. Maybe people think it is a product if that, rather than it being a truly great album. I maintain that it is underrated. As it turns sixty on 10th July, I hope people write about the album. Explore the context and background. Go deeper into the songs. Really do it justice. The astonishing A Hard Day’s Night is…
A seismic album in Pop history.