#37 The Beatles- A Hard Day’s Night

Lights! Cameras! Folk music?! Lennon-McCartney start to spread their wings on classic soundtrack…

(Parlophone)

Released: 10^th July 1964

Producer: George Martin

Topped the chart:

19^th July 1964 (for 21 weeks)

Twenty-one weeks total

If With the Beatles was the sound of the band becoming the biggest act in Britian, by the release of A Hard Day’s Night just eight months later, world domination had been achieved.

The confidence you could feel in that previous record is stratospheric on its follow up, despite the immense amount of pressure The Beatles were under. While their longer-term prospects seemed more assured at home, in the rest of the world they were still something of a flash in the pan, not to mention the fact that they were required to produce seven new songs to feature in their first film. A Hard Day’s Night, the movie, was an enormous Olympic long-jump away from the cash-in cheapies we’ve come across starring Cliff Richard or Tommy Steele. Director Richard Lester was quietly creating a cinema verité classic, and so the songs had to match his ambition.

The Beatles could have been forgiven for creating the seven songs for the film, then filling the second side of the accompanying soundtrack with instrumental versions (as United Artists did for the American release) or more quick covers. Rather, Lennon-McCartney, for the first and only time, were the sole songwriters on a Beatles record which highlights their productivity at the time, especially from John Lennon.

Paul McCartney was the one to kick things off though, recording first single Can’t Buy Me Love, the majority of which was finished in a few takes while the band were in Paris to record German-language versions of She Loves You and I Want to Hold Your Hand. It’s a remarkably simple song, a 12-bar-blues in structure that doesn’t even feature backing vocals. But like The Beatles’ best singles of the era, it captures an energy in a bottle, a fizzing hyperglycaemic gallop that tingles in the fingers. Can’t Buy Me Love, and the other most well-known songs on the first side become impossible to separate from the film’s visuals once seen, particularly strong here for the sequence where the band make a joyous, slapstick escape from their television studio prison. It was their first true from-the-ground-up worldwide smash hit.

Meanwhile the title track, not to mention that rip-roaring opening chord, cannot be separated from the band being chased to their train through the streets of Liverpool which has become the iconic image of Beatlemania. The song was literally “written to order” by Lennon once the title of the film (a Ringo Starr malapropism) had been decided upon. While most of the songs here continue the teenybopper romance themes, A Hard Day’s Night (the song) is the first suggestion at their songwriting reaching for more, exploring a more mature and domesticised form of love. No longer is this a teenager spotting their partner standing on the dance floor and promising to “love, love them do,” here the main character has a job and long-term partner to come home to.

You never got that from an Elvis soundtrack.

And I Love Her and I Should Have Known Better are equally as well matched with their visuals—a deeply black and white set with George on a classical guitar for the former, playing cards in a train carriage with the future Mrs Harrison, Pattie Boyd, looking on. Both are slick and beautifully produced, even if you have to look past the harmonica fluff on the intro for Better.

Side A is packed with songs to look and sound good on screen, which allows side B to explore a little more. Packed with songs often neglected in Beatles “best of” conversations, this is where we really start to see the Lennon-McCartney songwriting starting to flourish—a Pharoh’s tomb of B-sides and deep cuts which, despite some coming off as a little slight, some of the sounds and textures feel new to the band at this point.

Any Time at All is perhaps the biggest songcraft leap on the record, save for the title track—a start-of-side momentum powerhouse in the mould of Standing There or It Won’t Be Long from the previous years’ records, it’s descending bassline is classic McCartney, but the minor chords and slight weariness in John’s voice suggests a little more depth. This is mirrored in closer I’ll Be Back, one of two songs to lean heavily on country sounds—this being the subtler, better of the pair (I’ll Cry Instead is more upbeat, despite the title) and where John sounded a bit tired of it all on Any Time At All, here he sounds completely resigned to the end of a relationship. He says he’ll be back, but his performance allows for plenty of doubt to creep in, something to be developed on their next album.

McCartney’s own wistfulness is on the Dylan-ish folk strum of Things We Said Today, invoking a deep melancholy aged just 22. It’s the most atmospheric piece that the band has recorded up to this point, building on the soundscape of 1963 B-side This Boy, with George Harrison’s strummed guitar stings cutting through the mists of memory. The Beatles were starting to outgrow their signature double-tracked vocals—McCartney sounds liberated on the rare occasions on this plus And I Love Her when he is allowed to sing clear.

Despite the creativity stemming from the songwriters in this period, the real star of this album is George Harrison who, between records, has become a lead guitarist to be reckoned with. The band’s increased confidence allows George room to try new things, both in terms of his guitar moods (his blanketed, more muted sound on I’ll Be Back and Things We Said Today support their vocalists beautifully) and the instruments themselves (the 12-sting electric he would become known for in 1965 appears on the title track for the first time; his classical lead on And I Love Her is pure bliss).

However, on George’s sole lead vocal credit, I’m Happy Just to Dance With You, it’s Ringo who really stands out. From the teensy fills that expands the introduction through to the timpani-like bass drum thud on the verses. One of the more forgettable Lennon-McCartney numbers of the era, it still manages to deliver joyous bubble-gum for the two minutes it lasts.

Releasing soon after the Cliff Richard vehicle Wonderful Life, the Hard Day’s Night film lit up the box office, much to Cliff’s own surprise and chagrin, further proof that the world was moving on and new generations were now in charge. Through the first half of 1964, The Beatles were on top of the world—but that kind of success exerts a toll, and The Beatles we meet at the end of that year on their next album, would be very different people.

Score: 9/10

Track listing:

SIDE A

1.      A Hard Day’s Night

2.      I Should Have Known Better

3.      If I Fell

4.      I’m Happy Just to Dance With You

5.      And I Love Her

6.      Tell Me Why

7.      Can’t Buy Me Love

SIDE B

8.      Any Time At All

9.      I’ll Cry Instead

10.  Things We Said Today

11.  When I Get Home

12.  You Can’t Do That

13.  I’ll Be Back