“They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid.”
– Bob Dylan“We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u/ got that something…’ And Paul hits this chord [E minor] and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that — both playing into each other’s noses.”
– John Lennon (Playboy)“‘Eyeball to eyeball’ is a very good description of it. That’s exactly how it was. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was very co-written. It was our big number one; the one that would eventually break us in America.”
– Paul McCartney (Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles)
This is the song that made America pay attention, and kick-started the “British Invasion”. It is the essential Beatles -63 pop song (ok, along with She Loves You). When released in USA, 750,000 copies were sold in the first 3 days, 10,000 copies were sold each hour in New York!
Wikipedia:
| Single by The Beatles | |
|---|---|
| B-side | “This Boy” (UK), “I Saw Her Standing There” (US) |
| Released | 29 November 1963 (UK), 26 December 1963 (US) |
| Format | 7″ |
| Recorded | 17 October 1963, EMI Studios, London |
| Genre | Rock, pop |
| Length | 2:24 |
| Label | Parlophone (UK), Capitol (US) |
| Writer(s) | Lennon–McCartney |
| Producer | George Martin |
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles. Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and recorded in October 1963, it was the first Beatles record to be made using four-track equipment.
Continue reading The Beatles 40 best songs: at 37 “I Want To Hold Your Hand”