The Beatles and America
As with many of their other early singles, the US proved more resistant to the charms of the moptops. However, the UK success of ‘She Loves You’ had enabled Brian Epstein to convince Capitol Records to issue the song.Capitol had intended to issue ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ in early 1964, to coincide with The Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. However, the release date was brought forward due to ecstatic reactions from radio listeners.
Alexander Kendrick, the London bureau chief for CBS News, had put together a news story and interview about The Beatles’ success in Britain, to be shown in the United States. A short version was broadcast on 22 November on the CBS Morning News show, but a longer version due to be broadcast that evening was postponed due to the Kennedy assassination.
The full five-minute item was eventually shown on 10 December. Among those watching was Marsha Albert, a 15-year-old from Silver Spring, Maryland. Albert wrote to Carroll James, a DJ for WWDC-AM, a station based in Washington, DC, begging him to play The Beatles on his show.
It wasn’t so much what I had seen, it’s what I had heard. They had a scene where they played a clip of ‘She Loves You’ and I thought it was a great song… I wrote that I thought The Beatles would be really popular here, and if he [James] could get one of their records, that would really be great.
The Washington Post, 16 January 2004
Carroll arranged for a copy of the new single to be shipped over from Britain, and Albert was invited to introduce the very first play. This she did on 17 December, with the words: “Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are The Beatles singing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.”
The song was a huge hit with listeners, and was picked up by DJs in Chicago and St Louis. Although Capitol at first threatened to seek a court order banning its airplay, they eventually decided to rush-release the already-prepared single two weeks ahead of schedule.
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was released in the US on 26 December 1963, with ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ on the b-side. The response was instant: 750,000 copies were sold in the first three days, and 10,000 copies were sold each hour in New York City. Capitol were overwhelmed by the demand, and enlisted Columbia Records and RCA to press extra copies.
The single began its 15-week chart run on 18 January 1964, and reached the number one spot on 1 February. It remained there for seven weeks, before being replaced by ‘She Loves You’. ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was also included on Meet The Beatles!, the group’s debut album in the US.
One night we arrived back at the hotel from the Olympia when a telegram came through to Brian from Capitol Records of America. He came running in to the room saying, ‘Hey, look. You are number one in America! ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ had gone to number one.Well, I can’t describe our response. We all tried to climb onto Big Mal’s back to go round the hotel suite: ‘Wey-hey!’ And that was it, we didn’t come down for a week.
The Beatles capitalised on their American chart success with a triumphant series of appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, the first of which took place on 9 February 1964.
We were booked to go to America directly after the Paris trip, so it was handy to have a number one. We’d already been hired by Ed Sullivan, so if it had been a number two or number 10 we’d have gone anyway; but it was nice to have a number one.We did have three records out in America before this one. The others were on two different labels. It was only after all the publicity and the Beatlemania in Europe that Capitol Records decided, ‘Oh, we will have them.’ They put out ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ as our first single, but in fact it was our fourth.
The appearance consolidated Beatlemania in America, and a series of singles topped the charts throughout much of 1964. By April The Beatles held the top five positions, and their back catalogue was plundered by labels keen to satisfy public demand.
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ began the British Invasion of America; following The Beatles’ success, groups including The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Hollies and Herman’s Hermits all found chart success during 1964 and beyond.
Among The Beatles’ admirers was Bob Dylan, who said of them: “They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid.” Famously, Dylan thought the middle sections of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ contained the words “I get high” instead of “I can’t hide”.
The misunderstanding came to light when Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to marijuana on 28 August 1964.
Brian and the Beatles looked at each other apprehensively. “We’ve never smoked marijuana before,” Brian finally admitted. Dylan looked disbelievingly from face to face. “But what about your song?” he asked. The one about getting high?”The Beatles were stupefied. “Which song?” John managed to ask.
Dylan said, “You know…” and then he sang, “and when I touch you I get high, I get high…”
John flushed with embarrassment. “Those aren’t the words,” he admitted. “The words are, ‘I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide…'”
The 2006 Love version actually has the studio recording playing in one speaker and the live Hollywood Bowl performance in the other, which is a little cooler than just sampling the crowd noise imo
Why did they sometimes say “sh” instead of a clean “s” sound? Was it just more rock and roll or was it just joking around?
Good question. I think they were trying to establish a little motif or gimmick or their own, perhaps similarly to Buddy Holly’s trademark vocal hiccups. They abandoned it pretty quickly though – I don’t think it occurs after 1963.
Saying “sh” instead of “s” avoids excessive sibilance, particularly when using a close microphone. These days, of course. you can just turn on a “de-esser” effect.
‘As I listened to the playbacks of “Misery” that afternoon, I was also struck by the way John and Paul sang the word “send” as “shend”…. Changing an “s” to an [sic] “sh” was an affectation on some American records, so it helped the Beatles sound more like their musical idols, plus it removed any potential “de-essing” problem, where, if there was too much top end (treble), the sound on vinyl would distort. That was a great little vocal trick, and they used it on a lot of their songs from then on, most notably on “I Want to Hold Your Hand”….’
Geoff Emerick & Howard Massey, Here There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (London, 2007), p. 60.
It actually occurred at least once, in I am the Walrus. Listen to the line “See how they snide”. John clearly sings “See how they shnide”.
well they could also have been trying to make them a bit more original, stand out ish from the rest of them. Which I thought was very cool.
They were in a Ray Charles-type period. That is why they were singing with more of a “sh” sound.
I read somewhere that they originally wrote the song for Sean Connery to sing 😉
I doubt it, song was actually made for American audience and John was satisfied.
John satisfaction = Almost everything
So this song was never a throwaway
I get it, Jonathan!! ha
What time does Sean Connery arrive at Wimbledon? Tennish. 🙂
Song was made when Paul was with John’s first son, Julian on the way to visit John and Cynthia
N,
No, This song “I Want To Hold Your Hand” was written at Jane Asher house on Winipole Street, in London in late 1963. Paul McCartney lived there at that time. John Lennon was over there when they co-written “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. Peter Asher was the first one to hear that song at his house.
It was not till later in 1968 that Paul McCartney was driving up to see Cynthia and five years old Julian that he composed “Hey Jude”. Paul was going up to see them because of the divorce of John & Cynthia.
I think John is playing acoustic guitar in this one isn’t he?
No, he played his Rickenbacker 325 Capri, and Harrison played his Gretsch ‘Country Gentleman’.
Interesting because on one of the Anthology videos I’m pretty sure he’s playing an acoustic guitar. I think it’s miming as well. Seems strange to mime with an instrument not even in the song. I guess he used it in the previous songs they were miming to and couldn’t be bothered changing instruments.
In The Beatles as Musicians, Walter Everett claims there’s an overdubbed bass, played by Harrison. I’m not sure if it’s correct or not, but if so it’d be the first overdubbed bass on any Beatles song. According to Everett, it’s the five-note run after “…tell you something” etc in each verse, played fairly high on the fretboard so it’s within a guitar’s range.
If it was an overdubbed bass, it obviously would be Paul, because a) there was no right-handed bass and b) neither George nor John were even interested in playing it, certainly not at that point in time, so Walter Everett must’ve made an error.
George most certainly did overdub a short but sweet bass riff right after “you’ve got that something… bass riff D-C#-D-D#-E… I think you’ll understand.” This repeats throughout the song in that/those spots. This much is correct as George has mentioned it in interviews.
It is a simple but effective walk up type of phrase that would have been easy enough for George pull off playing Paul’s lefty bass right handed or possibly there was a right handed bass hanging round in the studio. We can only speculate as to what bass George actually used.
According to this page – http://www.beatlesebooks.com/hold-your-hand – Paul was the one playing bass. For all I know, George may have been playing the lower strings on his electric guitar with the tone knobs turned up during the section that you just mentioned to mimic Paul’s bassline.
At the time of the session, Paul had only recently obtained his second left-handed Höfner bass (the one that he still plays today) and thus he relegated his 1961 original model to backup duty, so he clearly wanted to make good use of it at the session. It has to be noted that he didn’t have his left-handed Rickenbacker bass yet.
does anybody know how to achieve the rhythm guitar effect John used on this song? 🙂 thank you.
Lennon used a Rickenbacker 325 with very heavy compression applied. The result knocked out most of the guitar’s dynamic range, making it sound almost like an organ.
Does anyone know how many of the 17 takes were the basic rhythm track + vocals and how many were overdubs?
i have always heard it was george martin playing a organ along with johns
rythym playing
The first overdubbed bass line in Beatles discography was “From me to you” (Listen to the solo: harmonica, guitar and bass playing the riff at the same time). In any case it must be Paul who overdubbed the bass in this song.
When I first heard this song on Love I kept saying I do not remember the drums sounding this great. I think that is because they were not featured as prominently in the mix. I am not a musician but I love Ringo’s drumming on this song.
I believe it was Ian MacDonald (and perhaps others) who reported that Dylan mis-heard the line “I can’t hide” as “I get high,” believing it o be about drugs.
You people can NEVER get it right. Lennon’s guitar accomplished that incredible, unique sound because an RT-3 Hammond organ was fused on top of it, later added by George Martin using extreme compression and some distortion, paralleling Lennon’s 5th intervals with Chuck Berry style 6th tone where appropriate just as Martin integrated his piano with George’s 12 string on a Hard Days Night and many other tunes. I wrote Martin and he finally answered that “keyboards were probably used” on that recording although he admitted his memory was a bit spotty.
There is not ONE singular example of John’s guitar, during live performances of the tune, sounding remotely close to the layered, textured sound waves emitted during the actual recording.
At 8 seconds into the song, if one listens to an isolated backing track of just John’s guitar, bass and drums, you can hear the stealth organ come with low register keys to cleverly disguise itself as a guitar blending in perfectly with John’s Rickenbacker. The fact that most people either refuse to “hear” it or can’t hear it is pathetic because of the iconic image of the Fabs playing that song on Sullivan , etc., which optimized the image of their stage presentation, i.e., two guitars, bass and drums. Martin had just used the Hammond RT-3 just days before the recording of IWTHYH to superimpose it on another guitar for I Wanna Be Your Man except it was more overt with the glissando runs.
For IWTHYH, he cleverly decided to mesh the organ more covertly with Lennon’s guitar to make it far more powerful considering they now had a 4 track Telefunken recorder and this was to be THE song that would break the US market, so he pulled every trick. He often “disguised” his keyboards when blending them with a guitar so here again, he worked his magic which is why it sounds so great and WHY Lennon NEVER duplicated that sound live on his guitar.
Without those low key organ notes blending with Lennon’s guitar, it just would have sounded like a typical guitar as you hear on tunes like Roll Over Beethoven, Long Tall Sally (where he also does the first guitar solo and George does the second) or I Saw Her Standing There, Don’t Bother Me etc..where John hit a lot of low register root and 5th notes during chords, except for I Saw Her Standing There where he also strummed through the whole chords on E7, A7 etc..
In fact, the only released outtake of IWTHYH, which is only a partial segment, you can hear Lennon warming up his C to D opening chords and even though it has the same somewhat compressed, bassy tone, it sounds nothing like it does on the final recording and as I said, on the final, it is just John’s guitar playing the opening C to D chords but just as they start “Oh yeah I’ll”, you hear the tonality and power radically change and become far more powerful, deep and almost out of phase which is characteristic to TWO instruments. The biggest giveaways are on the B7 chords where the organ is pounding out the root and 7th tones adding a larger dimension to the just one guitar, the middle eight where John is actually playing soft open chords, Dm, G, C, Am while the organ and Pauls double stops are hitting on the 5th intervals then at the end, after John and George’s guitars stop on the G chord, its the ORGAN that slowly decays with a prominent D note ringing though on that final G chord.
An isolated mix I was privy to, features John’s guitar, bass, drums and the stealth organ on track 1, meaning that after Martin added the organ on track three (or 4), he mixed it down with track one to make one fused track. Track two featured Georges lead guitar; track three featured and an additional guitar and bass overdub for the chromatic passage, an extra Lennon vocal for the middle eight, a clever dub of John & Paul singing an additional “Hand” during the crescendo of “Hand” on the refrain, and hand claps. Track four featured the final dual lead vocals of John and Paul.
If IWTHYH had simply featured John’s guitar alone as the primary backing/rhythm instrument, the final recording would have been far weaker and it would have sounded exactly as it does when you hear any of the live versions. Take a listen to a few of the BBC studio recordings of IWTHYH and you’ll hear what Lennon’s guitar really would have sounded like without George Martin’s clever little organ inclusion. Case closed:-)
This the first Beatle song I ever heard. I was 7 years old when my older brother bought the 45 new in ’64. Even as a little kid, I knew something was very different about them. I played the crap out of the 45. – and I still have it. By the way – I think that the 45 of “I want to hold your hand” and flip side ” I saw her standing there” are the best combo of songs ever released on a 45 record.
The version I like to hear is the first stereo mix from ’63 that is on the Singapore Greatest Hits album. That has singing out of one speaker & music from the other. Crazy? yes, but I just like hearing that for a change!
Clever comment man. Probably you’re right.
“Cased closed” because you say so? Nah!
No evidence / documentation for your claim. Cased closed.
Martin Mocha has it right. I have some outtakes of this and John’s guitar is plainly heard without the organ layer. He’s playing the Capri’s bridge pickup with the tone control turned way down giving it that woolly muffled sound. Also read somewhere George Martin’s own account of how he overdubbed the organ after the others had gone home. For many years I had been burdened with not knowing how they got that sound – couldn’t sleep, bad stomach, bad mood swings – then I found Martin’s account and my life was right again.
No, you didn’t get it right with your rambling, long-winded, conspiratorial assertion. There ISN’T AN ORGAN on this track. It’s John playing his Rick probably with the pickup in the bridge position, VOX amp likely with the tone knobs set to a position cutting most of the Treble, and a high ratio of compression inserted within the console. The reason it was not replicated live is because they weren’t compressing the hell out of his guitar channel in a live situation. There you go genius.
Not saying you’re wrong on the organ bit, because a friend of mine heard a radio interview with Martin once and when asked about “Hand” he said…”Oh yeah, the one with the organ in it” he says.
You can’t expect them to sound the same on Sullivan, there were volume limits on the broadcast and Lennon’s 325 was cranked into the AC30 in the studio. Also, the out take sound can’t be judged as you are not hearing the direct mics in that excerpt, just a room mic. Sounded like a vocal mic was opened for a moment, not the one in front of John’s amp.
The BBC recording is not even close because John didn’t take the time to remotely get the sound on the record. John was very strange live, he often did things totally differently live. There is no concert footage of Lennon ever playing “Ticket to Ride” the way he did on the record, which everyone gets wrong as well.
No organ… it’s John playing aggressive rhythm guitar with studio compression.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJzEUcAG99o
Skip to 1:11 of the video for the instrumental only track of I Want To Hold Your Hand… no organ to be heard/had.
The more I listen to this song, it sounds like a single tracked John singing in unison with a double tracked John in the verses and the first middle eight.
Then on the refrain, the double tracked John reaches for the high notes while the single tracked John sticks to the low harmony ( Paul could not sing low vocals well, case in point “Love Me Do”) The only time I hear Paul clearly is on the second “I wanna hold your haAaAaAand” of each refrain, the second repeat of the middle eight and the final “I wanna hold your hand” in the last refrain
John of course, couldn’t sing both parts live, so to give the same effect, they had Paul sing with John instead. This gave people the impression that the recording must have been John and Paul as well.
on the live versions though, Paul is almost singing a slight harmony on the verses, showing that he was unfamiliar with how to sing it. So unless he completely forgot how to sing in unison for every live performance, I’m convinced that Paul only does harmony on I want to hold your hand
George Martin made one of the biggest mistakes of his career by not including I Want To Hold Your Hand / This Boy and She Loves You / I’ll Get You on this album. It would be hailed as one of their greatest to this day
Beatles never put their singles on the early albums. They felt it wasn’t giving good value.
The way Capitol butchered their albums until they couldn’t with Sgt. Pepper made quite a mess, putting out other albums to pick up the loose songs cut off the British versions.
Of course they did…like…”Please Please Me” lol
I agree with you about Capitol’s misguided views and handling of their pre-Sgt. Pepper albums in the USA, such as unnecessarily changing running orders – it was absolutely disgraceful. I’m not surprised that The Beatles themselves disapproved and never acknowledged them as part of their discography and it’s perhaps rather telling that when their catalogue was remastered on CD in 1987 and 2009, the surviving members insisted on using the British albums, just as they had intended, so the American-only albums got deleted from their catalogue and have never been reissued on 180g vinyl and most likely never will.
TBH, in hindsight, I don’t see how the pre-Sgt. Pepper American releases having identical running orders, titles and artwork to the UK versions would’ve been a problem, let alone harmed its success – they still would’ve sold, nonetheless, and this was evidenced when “Sgt. Pepper” not only had identical running orders on both sides of the Atlantic, but it still went to #1 in the USA and won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
Actually, the singles Love Me Do and Please Please Me were included in their first album Please Please Me. After that they generally excluded singles on their albums.
Actually, that’s only partially true, because the title tracks to “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!” were included on those albums as well as released as singles, “Can’t Buy Me Love” was included on the album “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Ticket to Ride” was released on the album “Help!”, “Yellow Submarine” and “Eleanor Rigby” was a double A-side or something and released on “Revolver” and “Something” and “Come Together”, also a double A-side, were both included on “Abbey Road”.
Actually only With The Beatles,
Beatles For Sale and
Rubber Soul
have no singles on them.
Please Please Me has Love Me Do and the title track with their B – sides
A Hard Days Night has the title song and Can’t Buy Me Love with their B- sides.
Help! has its title track and Ticket To Ride.
Revolver has Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby.
Sgt. Pepper and the White Album also had no singles. Let it Be had both the title track and “Get Back” which had been released as singles, but in different versions.
I’ll Get You is so amazing…when i saw play that in 2005 (did not know it was coming) it blew me away.. Of course on the current tour he’s playing Love Me Do and You Won’t See Me, which were equally mind blowing when seeing them live without being forewarned.
Yeah , an absolutely massive mistake. Apart from breaking America and launching the band into the stratosphere what the hell was Martin thinking?
Lennon and McCartney said they did the song “together”. But my feeling have always been that it´s more of Lennon´s kind of music than McCartney´s. In the beginning where the notes are falling to “…you´ll understand…” the interval is similar to the beginning of From Me To You (Lennon composed the A-bit) and the beginning of Tomorrow Never Knows (Lennon composition). And when they come to “…I wanna hold your hand…” they are singing on the same note, and that is typical for Lennon. After that it comes to an octave running! the climax and the most important bit in the song! very typical Lennon, similar to the running in his Please Please Me: “…it´s so hard to listen to YOU…”.
The melody in the middle part “…and when I touch you…” is almost the same as the B-bit in Lennon´s Don´t Let Me Down, and the middle part in Starting Over. Perhaps Lennon wanted to exaggerate McCartney´s contribution, because Lennon was so dominant at that time.
George Martin had more understanding for McCartney´s music, a music more like the popular music in the 1930s. than for Lennon´s. George Martin often misunderstood Lennon. 1964 there was released an album Off The Beatle Track with instrumental versions of Beatles songs by George Martin. In I Want to Hold Your Hand, George Martin missed the octave running — the most important bit in the song! — instead it continued on the same note. There was no octave running just a continuing on the same note!!
i just listened to IWTHYH on Off the Beatle Track and could not detect the omission you speak of, probably because i’m not sure which part you refer to as the “octave running” Would love to understand better your excellent comment!! Thanks in advance.
Thank you Christopher. That is the upper harmony in “…I wanna hold your HAAAND!…”
Johan cavalli and John Lennon fan,
This Song was written by both John Lennon and Paul McCartney on the piano in Jane Asher house. When the Song was finished, Paul call down Peter Asher from upstairs. Peter came down and listening to this Song for the first time. John & Paul asked him what do you think about this Song “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and Peter says could you play this Song again! Peter Asher bring telling this story for along time. So, this Song “I Want To Hold Your Hand” was
co-written….
Johan is a devout John lover /Paul hater. He never cites sources or direct quotes, but somehow always seems to know what happened better than the people who were there.
For instance, John and Paul both said this and From Me To You were co-composed / written…together…up each others noses (to use John’s phrase). But Johan knows better!
Frankly, nothing he posts is worth investing much time in….except for the entertainment factor.
Johan, Listen to John Lennon said, “We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in ‘I Want T 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… that something…’ And Paul hits this chord 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 NOSE.” John Lennon, 1980 All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Johan, Listen to what John Lennon said, “We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in ‘I Want T 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… that something…’ And Paul hits this chord 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 NOSE.” John Lennon, 1980 All We Are Saying, David Sheff
I just heard the backing track and i’m pretty sure that there is a bass overdub after for example the “I’ll tell you something”.
There is one thing that no one ever notices about this song. Do you know what a beat note is? It is usually heard when tuning a guitar. Two almost identical notes are struck at the same time and they beat against each other until they are in tune. Then the beating stops. Let’s say you are playing an A 440 and you also play a slightly flat A 437. You will hear three beats per second. As you tune the flat note up to A 438 it will give you two beats per second and at A 439 you get one beat per second. Once they are in tune the beating stops. Now listen to Paul and John singing “I can’t hide” at 1:08 to 1:10 and you can hear their voices beating like crazy. It happens at 1:49 also. This is the only time I have ever heard singing beating. It helps to listen in headphones.
What on earth is an A440 or A437 ?
Hi Jack. A-440 is the A above middle C. If you strike a standard A tuning fork, it is an A-440 or 440 vibrations per second. An octave higher is A-880. A above middle C is used when an orchestra tunes up since all the string instruments have an open A string.
The phenomena of beats occurs when almost the same note is played simultaneously by two sources. As you say, the notes need to differ only very slightly by a few Hz in frequency. In other words they have to be very close in pitch. Since John and Paul are singing different notes entirely, notes that differ by a much larger difference in frequencies ( they are harmonizing after all) and at completely different pitches, then what you are hearing is not the phenomena of beats. I think you are hearing Ringo’s bass drum doubling up at these points. Either that or you are smoking some strong stuff.
John and Paul sang the song together as they did live. The myth keeps growing about Lennon being more dominant in the beginning. He wasn’t. Paul played guitar and piano. John learned, although never could play keyboard well. I’m a fan of both but listen to the outtakes of I want to hold your hand. You can hear who the boss was. Listen to the Quarryman talking about Paul. They would know. John say more than once Mccartney had quite a few songs before the Beatles.
To me it sounds like it is Paul who is singing the opening line of this song, yet somehow it morphs into John’s voice.
Iconic hit that was their first US number one. Great guitar opening and Lennon-McCartney duet. I also love it’s flip side “This Boy”.
Can anyone comment on the middle eight, where it stars on the V as a minor, which becomes the ii of a ii, V, I progression in C (Dm, G, C)? That move to the V- was repeated often by both John and Paul, for example in “Another Girl”. I can’t help but wonder if they learned how to do that from watching,listening to Roy Orbison. The move is identical to the middle section of “Pretty Woman” using the same Dm, G, C sequence, except that “Pretty Woman” is in the key of A while IWTHYH is in the key of G. As with any modulation to a different key, the trick is getting back to the original key. The two songs manage it in different ways. My question is, who copied who? Does anyone know when Orbison first broke out “Pretty Woman” on tour? Did the Beatles hear it before they wrote Hand or was it the other way around? Maybe Orbison nicked it from them! All’s fair…
The idea of using a v-minor chord as a temporary ii minor in a new key is as old as the hills. I’m sure Paul heard this change many times as he seemed to love the old standards.
They had just done this in “From Me To You”…
>> A version of I Want To Hold Your Hand was included on the 2006 album Love. A shorter edit from the original studio recording was combined with a performance and crowd noise from the Hollywood Bowl, and the famous introduction from The Ed Sullivan Show: “Here they are… The Beatles!” <<
Actually, the voice introducing the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl is that of Bob Eubanks, a DJ in the LA area in the 1960's and later, host of the TV game show, The Newlywed Game.
Thank you! I’ve corrected it now.
Bob Eubanks – also the promoter of the Beatles’ H-Bowl concerts. Reportedly, he took a second mortgage on his house to finance the ’64 show.
I hope he bought a bigger one as a consequence 🙂
Did John recorded this on a Gibson J-160E or Rickenbacker 325? I don’t know why, but although many people believe it’s the Rickenbacker, some people believes that it’s actually the Gibson plugged in to an amp. I’m very confused.
This is the 325. The treble knob is very rolled off so it’s a dark sound, and the amp is very loud.
So strange, I did NOT like this song, couldn’t warm up to it, even mused as why the Beatles were supposed be all that GOOD. Then I heard the flip side, “I Saw her standing there”, and kind of got
smacked up side of the head. By the time “She loves you” and “Please please me” hit, I was a hopeless, molten pool of Beatles love.
Hey folks. Here is a scoop which if JL was still around he would confirm. The joker that he was, very flippant, sings I want to hold your HAM, not hand. Happens three or four times during the song. Ham is english for a female body part. Oooh that Lennon. Always keeping us on our toes. Imagine if he had been asked about this when the song came out or at the Beatles press conference at Kennedy. Ouch!!! Give a listen folks.
As you say it happens three or four times, meaning not every time, can you point out the time stamps of these? I personally couldn’t hear it with head phones. All I hear is a drawn out “haaaand” or at most what sounds like “haaaaan” with the d clipped.
Ham is not English for a female body part. You have just made that up.
But it made for a great sandwi……er, story!
This may or may not have been mentioned but there’s a take of this on Youtube with Paul bossing Ringo around re the ‘attack’ of the drums on the intro…..Paul says ‘hit it loud on the first one and on the second, not so loud’ and John says ‘maybe we can do it slower?’ or something like that, and Paul shouts quickly ‘No!’ And if you look carefully in Hard days night film you can see and hear Paul I suppose harking back to this and/or sending himself up, actually literally saying the exact thing again….I swear this is true, it’s when they’re ‘rehearsing’ for the show that evening. I could find it on the film if I had it.
With John chiming in “On the third bit – more BANG!”
The intro has never made rhythmic sense to me, either on the single or on Sullivan, until tonight when I saw a live concert in the round, Ringo on a turntable, and Paul counts it out–saying to me that the record was misplayed
It’s difficult to feel but not misplayed. If you assign a click track to the song you will hear it come in on the “and” of 3….
Paul never could count off right ….on Ed Sullivan he counts off ALL MY LOVING as ” 1 2 3 4″…;)
Paul doesn’t mis-count on “All My Loving” on the Sullivan show. He always counted it in that way, with a silent “5..6” because he had to start singing “Close your eyes..” almost concurrent with the “6” (it’s a split second after “6” but well before “7”). If you count with him, 5 and 6 are “implied” with the correct pause before Paul starts to sing.
How come no one has yet commented on how great Ringo’s drumming is on this? C’mon people!! That fill he does in the chorus…too cool. Love him.
The shift from G to Dm as the song moves into the middle eight – a magical chord shift!
I’m ecstatic that I’ve found a smart and detail curious Beatle Community .
So for me. I’ve always been curious on how the tune (other than the bridge which I think is John) came together between John and Paul. They both describe it as very co written.
I’ll list what I know and my theory and am really curious what you guys think.
As you it know was written in the basement of a house ( i think jane asher’s) , which had an organ and a piano. When Peter Asher walked in on them playing it once they’d written it, he saw John on organ, and Paul on piano.
Paul remembers melodically them coming up with the “catch phrase melody ” first.
While John describes them starting with “oh yea yooo got that something” saying both were banging on the Piano, and then he said that Paul hit the critical Emin (7th maybe) that “made the song”
So for years, I’ve been increasingly sad, that I’ll probably never really find out the interplay between them that created the tune, which kinda sucks considering it’s a great song.
Because I don’t think I’ll be interviewing Sir Paul, and if I ran into him in public, I’m SURE he wouldn’t be inclined to talk about that particular topic,
But I’ve developed a couple of ideas.
1) there’s a beatle book that I recall reading with the theme of listing every day in the lives of the beatles and what they did. i don’t know HOW the author found this out, but they book had said that John came BACK to the house where it was written , sometime soon after, and tried to come up with another song of his own, based on the basic chords of IWHYH.
To me this is extremely telling, that, plus the fact that Paul was definitely a better pianist earlier, and that John had mentioned Paul coming with the critical Em chord, hints to me that most of the chord structure (other than the bridge) was probably Paul on the piano, even if it was a “jam” technically. Also Paul had joked in a nice way, that in general in the early days John wasn’t as advanced with the chord harmony.
And IWHYH definitely has some interesting harmony.
Also, when John mentioned Paul coming up with that chord, he said “and then we took it from there..”
I think if John had a major hand in the continuation at that point with the chords he would have mentioned it to the interviewer.
However, as far as the topline vocal melody I think the chorus always sounded like a John melody , it actually is very similar to the vocal melody of the verse of Please, Please Me.
“last night i said these” – “i wanna hold yourrr’
Or lastly, maybe the chorus vocal melody was Paul starting to sing (melody initially not words)
“I wanna hold” and then John ‘responded” – “your haaaand” – Like the call and response they used for
“From Me To you”
Sorry in advance for the lengthy post. Very curious to know what everybody thinks.
Roy,
Peter Asher describes that there would only a piano and sofa in the basement, no organ. And Peter when he went down to the basement to hear “I Want To Hold Your Hand” he saw both John & Paul sitting side by side at the piano.
I Want to Hold Your Hand was as I understand it the breakthrough record in the United States, but in the UK, really just one of a large number of Beatles songs getting airplay. It was “She Loves You” that was the huge breakthrough in the UK. Anyway,we got given the single I Want to Hold Your Hand Christmas 1964, when I was six and a half. Of course, at that age, the person you would be asking to hold your hand would be your mummy, and it has left me with a permanent prejudice against the song as signifying the surrender of personal freedom! But I really did like “This Boy” on the UK B-side, what with being a boy myself and the fact that it sounded and sounds absolutely beautiful, I recall even to a six and a half year old.
“ At the behest of Brian Epstein, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was composed with the American market in mind.”
Not buying it. Corroborated source is required. Where does Ian MacDonald get this from? Epstein?
QUESTION: Who performed the handclaps on the two BBC versions of I Want to Hold Your Hand?
Can we please bury this myth that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was composed at the behest of Brian Epstein “for the American market”? It was NOT! None other than George Martin said so in “The Beatles Anthology” TV special. Thank you. (Beatle bow.)
Whilst mixing the new 2023 I Want To Hold Your Hand version, did the AI de-mix software shed any light on the mythical George Martin late night Hammond overdub?
I wonder when the last time they played “I Want To Hold Your Hand” live?