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The Beatles 40 best songs: At 21 A Hard Day’s Night

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A Hard Days Night

“The title came from a throwaway crack from Starr. “We were working all day and then into the night,” he recalled, “[and] I came out thinking it was still day and said, ‘It’s been a hard day,’ and noticing it was dark, ‘ . . . ‘s night!’” When Lennon passed the remark on to director Richard Lester, it instantly became the film’s title. All they had to do was write a song to go with it. “John and I were always looking for titles,” said McCartney. “Once you’ve got a good title, you are halfway there. With ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ you’ve almost captured them.”” 
– Rolling Stone

“A Hard Day’s Night” is a song written by John Lennon (on the night of 13 April 1964), and credited to Lennon–McCartney, it was released on the movie soundtrack of the same name in 1964. It was later released as a single, with “Things We Said Today” as its B-side.

 “…the next morning I brought in the song… ‘cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side — who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine… in the early period I’m dominating the group…. The reason Paul sang on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (in the bridge) is because I couldn’t reach the notes. ‘When I’m home, everything seems to be right. When I’m home…’ – which is what we’d do sometimes. One of us couldn’t reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he’d get the other to do the harmony.”
– John Lennon  (1980, Playboy interview)

aharddaysnight_it

The song featured prominently on the soundtrack to the Beatles’ first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night, and was on their album of the same name. The song topped the charts in both the United Kingdom and United States when it was released as a single. The American and British singles of “A Hard Day’s Night” as well as both the American and British albums of the same title all held the top position in their respective charts for a couple of weeks in August 1964, the first time any artist had accomplished this feat.

Some will say this is a sentimental selection. That’s okay. It is, I love the song, the album and especially the movie. That strange but brilliant opening chord, a chord that is the theme for many discussions and that started the song, the album, a movie of the same name, and really a pop era, we saw the film over and over at our local cinema in the 70s. The cementation of our love for The Beatles started with this chord/song/record/film.

“We knew it would open both the film and the soundtrack LP, so we wanted a particularly strong and effective beginning. The strident guitar chord was the perfect launch.”
– George Martin to Mark Lewisohn (The Complete Beatles recording sessions)

 

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The Beatles 40 best songs: at 22 “Dear Prudence”

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dear-prudence

“Dear Prudence” is a song written by John Lennon, and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was released by the Beatles as the second track on their 1968 double-disc album entitled The Beatles, commonly known as The White Album. The subject of the song is Prudence Farrow, actress Mia Farrow’s sister, who was present when the Beatles went to India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

John Lennon was asked to “contact her and make sure she came out more often to socialize”. As a result, Lennon wrote the song “Dear Prudence”. In the song Lennon asks Farrow to “open up your eyes” and “see the sunny skies” reminding her that she is “part of everything”. The song was said to be “a simple plea to a friend to ‘snap out of it'”. Lennon said later that “She’d been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anyone else”.

Dear Prudence is me. Written in India. A song about Mia Farrow’s sister, who seemed to go slightly barmy, meditating too long, and couldn’t come out of the little hut that we were livin’ in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she’d been in the West, they would have put her away.
– John Lennon

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The Beatles 40 best songs: at 23 “Love Me Do”

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Tollie9008Sleeve1

“Love Me Do” is the Beatles‘ first single, backed by “P.S. I Love You“. When the single was originally released in the United Kingdom on 5 October 1962, it peaked at No. 17; in 1982 it was re-promoted (not re-issued, retaining the same catalogue number) and reached No. 4. In the United States the single was a No. 1 hit in 1964. In 2012, the song entered the public domain in Europe. This was my first encounter with The Beatles, I got the single from an aunt (still have it!). Love Me Do was the best song in the world for me for many years and I still love it!

It was written as early as 1958:

“Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was 16, or even earlier. I think I had something to do with the middle.”

“Love Me Do is Paul’s song. He wrote it when he was a teenager. Let me think. I might have helped on the middle eight, but I couldn’t swear to it. I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way, way before we were songwriters.”
– John Lennon

But Paul remembers it a bit different:

“Love Me Do’ was completely co-written. It might have been my original idea but some of them really were 50-50s, and I think that one was. It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea. We loved doing it, it was a very interesting thing to try and learn to do, to become songwriters. I think why we eventually got so strong was we wrote so much through our formative period.

Love Me Do was our first hit, which ironically is one of the two songs that we control, because when we first signed to EMI they had a publishing company called Ardmore and Beechwood which took the two songs, ‘Love Me Do’ and P.S. I Love You, and in doing a deal somewhere along the way we were able to get them back”
– Paul McCartney

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The Beatles 40 best songs: at 24 “Help!”

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help single

“The whole Beatles thing was just beyond comprehension. I was subconsciously crying out for help”.
– John Lennon (1980)

Help! is a song by the Beatles that served as the title song for both the 1965 film and its soundtrack album. It was also released as a single, and was number one for three weeks in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Help! was mainly written by John Lennon, but credited to Lennon–McCartney.

“I seem to remember Dick Lester, Brian Epstein, Walter Shenson and ourselves sitting around, maybe Victor Spinetti was there, and thinking, What are we going to call this one? Somehow Help! came out. I didn’t suggest it; John might have suggested it or Dick Lester. It was one of them. John went home and thought about it and got the basis of it, then we had a writing session on it. We sat at his house and wrote it, so he obviously didn’t have that much of it. I would have to credit it to John for original inspiration 70-30. My main contribution is the countermelody to John.”
– Paul McCartney (Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now)

The Beatles – Help! (live):

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The Beatles 40 best songs: at 25 “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”

norwegian_wood_ep
Australian EP

“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (also known as simply “Norwegian Wood“)  by The Beatles, mainly written by John Lennon, with the middle eight co-written with Paul McCartney, released on the 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was the first example of a rock band including a sitar in one of their songs, played by lead guitarist George Harrison.

 “George had just got the sitar and I said, ‘Could you play this piece?’ We went through many different sort of versions of the song, it was never right and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn’t coming out like I said. They said, ‘Just do it how you want to do it,’ and I said, ‘I just want to do it like this.’ They let me go and I did the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time, and then George had the sitar and I asked him could he play the piece that I’d written, dee diddley dee diddley dee, that bit – and he was not sure whether he could play it yet because he hadn’t done much on the sitar but he was willing to have a go, as is his wont, and he learnt the bit and dubbed it on after. I think we did it in sections.”
– John Lennon (1970)

“… anyway, we were at the point where we’d recorded the Norwegian Wood backing track and it needed something. We would usually start looking through the cupboard to see if we could come up with something, a new sound, and I picked the sitar up – it was just lying around; I hadn’t really figured out what to do with it. It was quite spontaneous: I found the notes that played the lick. It fitted and it worked.”
– George Harrison (Anthology)

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