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.
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.
Anthology
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, 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.
Related articles:
- US LP release: A Hard Day's Night
- Mixing: A Hard Day's Night, Things We Said Today
- Mixing: A Hard Day's Night
- Mixing: I Should Have Known Better, If I Fell, Tell Me Why, And I Love Her, I'm Happy Just To Dance With You, I Call Your Name
- UK single and LP release: A Hard Day's Night
This was the first of the remasters that I purchased as I had yet to hear most of the songs in stereo.
The remaster did not disappoint. This is clearly the best of their pre-Rubber Soul albums. And not just because it's all originals and no covers, but in spite of that fact. The Beatles weren't exactly going through the motions when they did covers but most of the material on this album was as good or better than any cover version they had recorded to date...
Quite a thrill finally hearing that opening chord in stereo for the first time!
haha john keeps on hogging the writing, being credited for all songs except two
Interesting that their only (pre-Pepper) album without a Ringo spotlight is also their only LP with 13 songs instead of 14. Maybe they eventually decided against including Ringo's "Matchbox" cover for the sake of preserving the all-original Lennon-McCartney purity?
They probably dropped matchbox to keep it all original
However the day Ringo got tonsillitis they were going to record a fourteeth track
Wow, I didn't know that! Too bad they hadn't recorded "Matchbox" a year earlier: If so, then they could've used it on WTB in place of "I Wanna Be Your Man"; and reserved THAT one for AHDN. Result = 14 MacLen originals, including one each for George & Ringo. Or, hmmm, maybe they could've taken "I Call Your Name" from the 4-song "Long Tall Sally" EP and added the two German songs in its place, thereby turning a 4-song EP and 13-song album into a 5-song EP and 14-song album - albeit one without a Ringo vocal...
UNLESS...John relinquished "I'll Cry Instead" for Ringo to sing, which I'm sure he would've done quite nicely! It's got that C&W/rockabilly feel, and of course that was Ringo's specialty.
Yeah, I'd say you're right.
John really wanted this to be totally original.
This album proved that they didn't need the covers that filled in the first two efforts. Also, it shows the competitive nature of Lennon & McCartney with each other to top the other's effort, with "A Hard Day's Night" being put out to no doubt match what Paul had did just before it with "Cant Buy Me Love".
However, the album as a whole is John at his best across an entire Beatle album. "If I Fell" is one of his strongest efforts & "You Can't Do That" could have easily been another #1 if released as a single. Add in "Ill Be Back" and you have John's voice & songwriting flow at it's very best in his pure rock singer phase of the early Beatle work.
This is John's album. Sgt pepper is Paul's
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on that one, Liam. On AHDN, Lennon sang lead vocals on 9 of the 13 tracks. On Pepper, Lennon sings lead or has a major vocal contribution to 7 of the 13 songs, Paul 8. The two best songs on the album (arguably, of course) are Lennon's: "Lucy..." and "A Day in the life." Hence, Lennon is all over Pepper, even on Paul's songs: superb vocals on "Sgt. Pepper," co-writer of "With a Little Help," middle-eight of Getting Better, co-writer and beautiful vocals on "She's leaving home." Given that, it might be somewhat accurate to call AHDN
John's but Pepper is definitely not `Paul's.' AHDH is a great album.