The Beatles, The #1 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Two

 

(Continued from Part One)

 

The group recorded this song on January 29, 1964 in Paris, France.  But when the Beatles returned to London, Harrison decided to overdub another lead guitar part.  The original solo is still audible in the background.  "Can't Buy Me Love" was another Gold single and #1 song of five weeks and another of The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era*.

 

The band recorded this in nine takes on Harrison's 21st birthday.  The performance was filmed for the upcoming movie A Hard Day's Night but did not make the cut.  It was, however included on the movie soundtrack and released as the B-side of "Can't Buy Me Love".  Here is "You Can't Do That".

Making up for lost time, and the deficiencies in the American radio industry, the floodgates were opened.  The Beatles re-released a slew of singles that American radio stations had mistakenly avoided.  One of them, sung by Harrison, was released a year earlier in the U.K. and included on the album Please Please Me.  George and John each played acoustic guitars in different channels.  On the stereo mix, Harrison's part was panned to the right channel while Lennon's was sent to the left. 

   "Do You Want To Know A Secret" peaked at #2 and went Gold.

"Love Me Do", a big hit in Europe in 1962, was released as a single in April of 1964.  It was a #1 hit that has sold two million copies in the U.S. alone.

Compilation albums were released in March to clue Americans in on the worldwide sensation that had already originated that they, thanks to the ignorance of the powers that be at their radio stations, were oblivious to.  The Beatles Story went Gold and The Early Beatles has gone Platinum.

Interest in the Beatles' music soared, leading to a crescendo on April 4, when the group occupied an unprecedented 12 spots on the Hot 100 chart and all the spots in the Top 5, a record which still stands to this day.  Unlike today, when a few artists place multiple entries on the chart in the same week against very limited competition and then those songs drop off the chart like a lead balloon, 9 of those 12 songs were big hits still being played often on the radio in 2021.  In Canada, the Beatles occupied 9 of the spots in the Top 10 during April.  

You will note on the above chart the high level of competition that week, already present when the Beatles debuted, but which got stronger each year because of them.  Owning every spot in the Top 5 is an incredible achievement never equaled, but what is especially significant in relation to today's charts and others at different points in the Rock Era is that the band did it against a high level of competition.  

Glancing at the chart, you see the Beatles did it against classics like the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun", "People" by Barbra Streisand, "My Guy" from Mary Wells and "Dawn" by the 4 Seasons, all out at the same time and competing for airplay.  Other high quality songs that still receive airplay today such as "Hello, Dolly!" by Louis Armstrong, "Glad All Over" and "Bits And Pieces" by the Dave Clark Five, "Dead Man's Curve" by Jan & Dean, Terry Stafford's "Suspicion", "Needles And Pins" by the Searchers and "The Way You Do The Things You Do" by the Temptations are also on that list. That's 12 other songs from that week's snapshot of popular music that still receive significant airplay 57 years later.  

As you have read, the competition that a song faces is critical in determining its relevance and position in history and is a key factor in determining both The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era* as well as this special, The Top 100 Artists of the Rock Era*.  Numbers are just numbers unless they are measured against competition at the time before being compared to other numbers from different eras, and the Beatles had plenty of competition throughout their reign.

On April 10, the band released the album The Beatles' Second Album, consisting mostly of leftovers from their U.K. album With the Beatles.  It replaced Meet the Beatles at #1 on the Album chart in the United States and Canada and has gone Double Platinum.

  

 

"I Call Your Name" was an unsung track on the album at the time, but has since garnered significant attention.  Lennon wrote it before the Beatles, perhaps as early as 1957:

             That was my song, when there was no

             Beatles and no group.  I just had it 

             around.  It was my effort as a kind of 

             Blues originally, and then I wrote the 

             middle eight just to stick it in the album

             when it came out years later.  The first

             part had been written before Hamburg

             even.  It was one of my first attempts at

             a song.

The chart success in 1964 was unprecedented and highly impressive, but chart numbers alone do not tell the full story.  The Beatles not only changed the sound of music forever and the Rock Era; they changed pop culture and even the way music was promoted--in short, they changed the entire industry, nearly overnight. 

 

This was slated to be the Beatles' third single until they recorded "From Me To You".   "'Thank You Girl' was one of our efforts at writing a single that didn't work.  So it became a B-side or an album track," Lennon said to David Sheff for the 1980 book All We Are Saying.

The Beatles showed what proper merchandising could do--Beatles badges, dolls, and chewing gum flew off the shelves of retail stores.  By rejecting material from other songwriters in favor of their own, the group broke the Tin Pan Alley monopoly on songwriting, and began revolutionary trends that would turn the music publishing industry on its head.

Of course, that is just the beginning of what they accomplished.  

 

This song by Lennon features three-part harmony by John, George and Paul.  Included on the Meet the Beatles! album, the Beatles performed "This Boy" on their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 16.

Beatlemania was noticed far and wide, and United Artists Records urged their film division to offer a motion picture contract, which they believed would help sell soundtrack albums as well.  Epstein and the Beatles signed a deal for three films and began filming A Hard Day's Night in March and April.  The movie premiered in London and New York City in July and August, respectively, and was a hit throughout the world.

The movie, which presented the Beatles as four distinct personalities, changed the way the group was marketed.  Previously, they had been presented as a unified group, but it became clear that fans loved seeing their differences and began to identify them as individuals.

A Hard Day's Night was nominated for two Oscar awards (Best Score by Martin and Best Screenplay) and was loved by audiences as well as critics.  At the time, there were many movies which starred musicians, but most were not very good (think Elvis Presley movies).  A Hard Day's Night was an exception; it had cinematic value and even sold well upon its DVD release many years later.  Phil Collins was one of the extras brought in for a scene in the movie in which the Beatles performed.

In June, Queen Elizabeth II appointed all four members Order of the British Empire.  

The Beatles released both a full soundtrack album as well as their third album, A Hard Day's Night, (a #1 album in the United States, the U.K., Australia, Canada and Germany that has sold over four million units), which contained songs from the movie on side one and new recordings on side two.  Increasingly, the group was including more of their own songs on their album releases, taking their audience and the public at large into uncharted territory.

Lennon & McCartney wrote all of the songs on the album, including the title song, which used an expression Ringo used to say.  "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night," Starr explained in a 1964 interview with DJ Dave Hull.  "I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day...' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, 'Night!'  So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night'". 

The song was the last to be composed for the soundtrack and had to be written quickly as Ringo's statement caused the movie producer, Walter Shenson, to change the movie title from Beatlemania to A Hard Day's Night.  Shenson told PBS that he said to John, "You need to write a song that will incorporate the movie's title," and he was shocked but pleasantly surprised when John came in the very next day with the song!

"A Hard Day's Night" was written and recorded in a little more than 24 hours.    

The title song became the group's fifth #1 song and sold over one million copies. 

Everyone can agree that the Beatles' music has always been incredible, and now their lyrics took on a new dimension.  The shift can be attributed to being exposed to the music of Bob Dylan.  While they were in Paris in January, the group obtained a copy of Dylan's Freewheelin' album, which they played constantly.  "I'd started thinking about my own emotions," Lennon said regarding Dylan's impact on his own songwriting.  "Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I'd done in my books," John said.  "I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work."  

A good example of Lennon's growth as a lyricist is this next song. We hear an outpouring of emotions not heard before from the group, such as anger, self-pity, embarrassment and retaliation.  Cynthia Lennon, John's wife at the time, described the song as a "cry for help" from John (a subject we will hear more about later).  "It reflects the frustration he felt at the time," Cynthia explained.  "He was the idol of millions, but the freedom and fun of the early days had gone."

 

Originally intended for a scene in the movie where the group "escaped" down an iron staircase and ran around in Thornbury Playing Fields in London, director Richard Lester replaced the song with "Can't Buy Me Love" but it was later restored for an opening collage sequence in the film's 1986 reissue on VHS.  

"I'll Cry Instead" peaked at #25.

The mono version of the album Something New contained a longer version of "I'll Cry Instead" with a third verse containing identical lyrics to the first, which extended the time from 1:48 to 2:09.

Paul wrote most of this song in the basement at Jane Asher's parents home.  Paul had just moved in with the Ashers and wrote it in February of 1964, either during their two days in between their Paris and America trips (February 5-7) or after their return from the United States (February 22-25).  Paul expressed his feelings of the song to Barry Miles in the book Many Years From Now:

             It was the first ballad I impressed myself

             with.  It's got nice chords in it, "Bright are

             the stars that shine, dark is the sky..." I

             like the imagery of the stars and the sky.  It

             was a love song really.  The "And" in the

             title was an important thing.  "And I Love 

             Her", it came right out of left field, you were

             right up to speed the minute you heard it.

             The title comes in the second verse and it

             doesn't repeat.  You would often go to town

             on the title, but this was almost an aside.

             "Oh...and I love you."  It still holds up and

             George played really good guitar on it.  It

             worked very well.

 While the group was recording the track, both music publisher Dick James and producer George Martin felt it needed a better middle section to break up the repetitive nature of the lyrics.  "I think it was John who shouted, 'OK, let's have a tea break," James said, "and John and Paul went to the piano and, while Mal Evans was getting tea and some sandwiches, the boys worked at the piano.  Within half an hour they wrote, there before our very eyes, a very constructive middle to a very commercial song."

 

"And I Love Her" stalled at #12, but its timeless relevance confirms that it is another of The Top Unknown/Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*.

"And I Love Her" also ranked as The #68 Love Song of the Rock Era*. 

Lennon wrote most of this song as a showcase for Harrison, which gave George good exposure in the movie.   "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" is the flip side to "I'll Cry Instead".

 

The Beatles performed "I Should Have Known Better" during a memorable carriage scene in the movie in which the members mimed the song while they played cards.  Actors, including Harrison's future wife Patty Boyd, looked on.  It was released as the B-side to "A Hard Day's Night".

 

The group also mimed to this song in the film while the crew are setting up equipment prior to a "studio performance".  The flip side of "And I Love Her", "If I Fell", which topped the Norwegian chart on its own, is regarded as one of the Beatles' best love songs.

On April 8, 1988, Lennon's lyrics for "If I Fell", written on the back of a Valentine's Day card, were sold at a Sotheby's auction in London for £7,800.

The Beatles' schedule was so full in 1964, with concerts all over the world, movies to film, radio and television shows and interviews that often, they needed to finish songs in the studio.  This next song is one such occasion.  

Knowing the album needed a couple more songs, Lennon (pictured above) wrote these next two with his acoustic guitar while on vacation in Tahiti.  The group recorded seven takes of this but believed it was lacking, so they recorded other songs first, then came back after a 90-minute break with the instrumental section led by Paul's piano playing.  

In this case, the overdubbing of John's vocal was not something they thought of later.  Because of the quick transition from the sixth to the seventh measure of each verse, Lennon couldn't end one phrase and begin the next without it sounding odd.  So John omitted the first few words of the second phrase, knowing those would be filled by overdubbing.  For example, on the second verse, John sang "there is nothing I won't do...shoulder to cry on."  Then on the overdubbing, he sang "when you need a".  Here is "Anytime At All".

 

The Beatles recorded this song for the movie but it was not used.  Lennon originally wrote it as a waltz and the demo was recorded that way.  John has explained that it is a "variation of chords" from Del Shannon's classic "Runaway", and it is believed this was to pay Del back for doing a favor for the Beatles in their early days when they were struggling to get airplay.  Shannon recorded a cover of "From Me To You" to help the Beatles attract attention.  Here is "I'll Be Back".

We are through two full segments and are still only halfway through the year 1964, the year of their debut on the world scene.  As remarkable as that is, there is much more to come.  Stay tuned for Part Three!