The Beatles, album ""
Lyrics of the album -
Listen the albumConcert videos - Studio EMI Studios - 2014 stereo: 25.06.2014
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PAUL 1964: 'Let's see, we were told we had to get down to it. So we found this house when we were walking along one day. We knew we had to really get this song going, so we got down in the basement of this disused house and there was an old piano. It wasn't really disused, it was rooms to let. We found this old piano and started banging away. There was a little old organ too. So we were having this informal jam and we started banging away. Suddenly a little bit came to us, the catch line. So we started working on it from there. We got our pens and paper out and just wrote down the lyrics. Eventually, we had some sort of a song, so we played it for our recording manager and he seemed to like it. We recorded it the next day.' JOHN 1980: 'We wrote alot 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, 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.' PAUL circa-1994: ''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.' -
JOHN 1963: 'We wrote that two days before we recorded it, actually.' PAUL 1963: 'John and I wrote it together. We were in a van up in Newcastle somewhere, and we'd just gone over to our hotel. I originally got an idea of doing one of those answering songs, where a couple of us sing about 'she loves you' …and the other one sort of says the 'yes, yes' bit. You know, 'yeah yeah' answering whoever is saying it. But we decided that was a crummy idea anyway. But we had the idea to write a song called 'She Loves You' then. And we just sat up in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it, you know.' JOHN 1963: ''Yeah.' That's sort of the main catch phrase from 'She Loves You.' We'd written the song, and then suddenly realized we needed more… so we added 'yeah, yeah, yeah' and it caught on.' JOHN 1980: 'It was written together (with Paul) and I don't remember how. I remember it was Paul's idea – instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party. The 'Woooo' was taken from the Isley Brothers 'Twist And Shout,' which we stuck into everything.' PAUL 1982: 'Occasionally, we'd overrule George Martin, like on 'She Loves You,' we end on a sixth chord, a very jazzy sort of thing. And he said, 'Oh, you can't do that! A sixth chord? It's too jazzy.' We just said, 'No, it's a great hook, we've got to do it.'' PAUL 1988: 'We rehearsed the end bit of 'She Loves You' and took it to George. And he just laughed and said, 'Well, you can't do the end of course… that sixth… it's too like the Andrew Sisters.' We just said, 'Alright, we'll try it without,' and we tried it and it wasn't as good. Then he conceded, 'You're right, I guess.' But we were both very flexible. We would listen to George's ideas too, because he was a producer and a musician, and he obviously knew what he was talking about. There was good to-and-fro. We loved that bit, and we rehearsed it alot. John and I wrote that in a hotel room, on twin beds during an afternoon off – I mean, God bless their little cotton socks, those boys WORKED! Here I am talking about an afternoon off, and we're sitting there writing! We just loved it so much. It wasn't work.' -
PAUL 1964: ''From Me To You.' It could be done as an old Ragtime tune… especially the middle-eight. And so, we're not writing the tunes in any particular idiom. In five years time, we may arrange the tunes differently. (jokingly) But we'll probably write the same old rubbish!!' JOHN 1980: 'We were writing it in a car, I think… and I think the first line was mine. I mean, I know it was mine. (humms melody) And then after that we just took it from there. We were just writing the next single. It was far bluesier than that when we wrote it. The notes, today… you could rearrange it pretty funky.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The thing I liked about 'From Me To You' was it had a very complete middle. It went to a surprising place. The opening chord of the middle section of that song heralded a new batch for me. That was a pivotal song. Our songwriting lifted a little with that song. It was very much co-written.' -
JOHN 1963: 'I always hate singing the song, 'Twist And Shout' when there's a colored artist on the bill with us. It doesn't seem right, you know. I feel sort of embarrassed… It makes me curl up. I always feel they could do the song much better than me.' JOHN 1971: 'The more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple. They sort of said shake-your-arse, or your prick, which was an innovation really. The blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain, and also about sex, which is why I like it.' JOHN 1976: 'The last song nearly killed me. My voice wasn't the same for a long time after – everytime I swallowed it was like sandpaper. I was always bitterly ashamed of it because I could sing it better than that, but now it doesn't bother me. You can hear I'm just a frantic guy doing his best.' PAUL 1988: 'There's a power in John's voice there that certainly hasn't been equaled since. And I know exactly why – It's because he worked his bollocks off that day. We left 'Twist And Shout' until the very last thing because we knew there was one take.' RINGO 1994: 'We started (recording the album) about noon and finished it at midnight, with John being really hoarse by 'Twist And Shout.'' -
JOHN 1963: 'It came to the charts in two days. And everybody thought it was a 'fiddle' because our manager's stores send in these… what is it… record returns. And everybody down south thought, 'Aha! He's just fiddling the charts.' But he wasn't.' JOHN 1972: 'Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was sixteen, or even earlier. I think I had something to do with the middle.' RINGO 1976: 'The first record, 'Love Me Do,' for me that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can't believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record!' JOHN 1980: ''Love Me Do' is Paul's song. He had the song around in Hamburg even, way, way before we were songwriters.' PAUL 1982: 'In Hamburg we clicked… At the Cavern we clicked… but if you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with 'Love Me Do.' That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go.' PAUL 1984: ''Love Me Do' …the first song we recorded, like, for real. First serious audition. I was very nervous, I remember. John was supposed to sing the lead, but they changed their minds and asked me to sing lead at the last minute, because they wanted John to play harmonica. Until then, we hadn't rehearsed with a harmonica; George Martin started arranging it on the spot. It was very nerve-wracking.' PAUL 1988: ''Love Me Do' was us trying to do the blues. It came out whiter because it always does. We're white, and we were just young Liverpool musicians. We didn't have the finesse to be able to actually sound black. But 'Love Me Do' was probably the first bluesy thing we tried to do.' PAUL circa-1994: 'George Martin said, 'Can anyone play a harmonica? It would be rather nice. Couldn't think of some sort of bluesy thing, could you John?' John played a chromatic harmonica… I actually had one too but he'd been clever – he learned to play it. John expected to be in jail one day and he'd be the guy who played the harmonica. The lyric crossed over the harmonica solo, so I suddenly got thrown the big open line, 'Love me do,' where everything stopped. Until that session John had always done it. I didn't even know how to sing it… I can still hear the nervousness in my voice.' -
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GEORGE 1980: 'The first song that I wrote… as an exercise to see if I could write a song. I wrote it in a hotel in Bounemouth, England, where we were playing a summer season in 1963. I was sick in bed… maybe that's why it turned out to be 'Don't Bother Me.' I don't think it's a particularly good song… It mightn't even be a song at all, but at least it showed me that all I needed to do was keep on writing, and then maybe eventually I would write something good.' PAUL 1988: 'I think John and I were really concentrating on – 'We'll do the 'real' records,' but because the other guys had alot of fans we wrote for them too. George eventually came out with his own, 'Don't Bother Me,' but until then he hadn't written one.' -
02:00 Please Please Me (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1962JOHN 1963: 'Our recording manager (George Martin) thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler. We were getting tired though, and just couldn't seem to get it right. In the following weeks we went over it again and again. We changed the tempo a little, we altered the words slightly, and we went over the idea of featuring the harmonica just as we'd done on 'Love Me Do.' By the time the session came around we were so happy with the result, we couldn't get it recorded fast enough.' JOHN 1980: ''Please Please Me' is my song completely. It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it? I wrote it in the bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue, which was my auntie's place. I heard Roy Orbison doing 'Only The Lonely' or something. That's where that came from. And also I was always intrigued by the words of 'Please Lend Your Ears To My Pleas,' a Bing Crosby song. I was always intrigued by the double use of the word 'please.' So it was a combination of Bing Crosby and Roy Orbison.' PAUL 1988: 'It's very Roy Orbison when you slow it down. George Martin up-tempo'd it. He thought it was too much of a dirge, and probably too like Orbison. So he cleverly speeded us up… and we put in the little scaled riff at the beginning, which was very catchy.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul doing his usual job of producing what George Martin used to call a 'potboiler.' I helped with a couple of the lyrics.' PAUL 1988: 'I wrote it with John. We sagged off school and wrote it on guitars. I remember I had the lyrics, 'Just seventeen/Never been a beauty queen,' which John… it was one of the first times he ever went, 'What? Must change that!' And it became, 'you know what I mean.'' PAUL circa-1994: 'Sometimes we would just start a song from scratch, but one of us would nearly always have a germ of an idea, a title, or a rough little thing they were thinking about and we'd do it. 'I Saw Her Standing There' was my original. I'd started it and I had the first verse, which therefore gave me the tune, the tempo, and the key. It gave you the subject matter, alot of information, and then you had to fill in. So it was co-written… and we finished it that day. -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul's song. He was trying to write a 'Soldier Boy' like the Shirelles. He wrote that in Germany, or when we were going to and from Hamburg. I might have contributed something. I can't remember anything in particular. It was mainly his song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'A theme song based on a letter… It was pretty much mine. I don't think John had much of a hand in it. There are certain themes that are easier than others to hang a song on, and a letter is one of them… It's not based in reality, nor did I write it to my girlfriend from Hamburg, which some people think.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it. This was a knock-off between Paul and me.' JOHN 1980: ''Little Child' was another effort of Paul and I to write a song for somebody else. It was probably Ringo.' PAUL circa-1994: 'Certain songs were inspirational and you just followed that. 'Little Child' was a work job.' -
02:04 All My Loving (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 30.07.1963JOHN 1972: 'This was one of his first biggies.' JOHN 1980: ''All My Loving' is Paul, I regret to say. Because it's a damn fine piece of work. But I play a pretty mean guitar in back.' PAUL 1984: 'Yeah, I wrote that one. It was the first song I ever wrote where I had the words before the music. I wrote the words on a bus on tour, then we got the tune when I arrived there. The first time I've ever worked upside down.' PAUL 1988: 'I think that was the first song where I wrote the words without the tune. I wrote the words on the tour bus during our tour with Roy Orbison. We did alot of writing then.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was a good show song. It worked well live.' -
02:30 Hold Me Tight (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 12.09.1963JOHN 1980: 'That was Paul's. Maybe I stuck some bits in there… I really don't remember. It was a pretty poor song and I was never really interested in it either way.' PAUL 1988: 'I can't remember much about that one. Certain songs were just 'work' songs… you haven't got much of a memory of them. That's one of them. You just knew you had a song that would work, a good melody. 'Hold Me Tight' never really had that much of an effect on me. It was a bit Shirelles.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Hold Me Tight' was a failed attempt at a single which then became acceptable album filler.' -
PAUL 1984: 'Influenced by the Marvelettes, who did the original version.
We got it from our fans, who would write 'Please Mr. Postman' on the back of the envelopes.
'Posty, posty, don't be slow, be like the Beatles and go, man, go!' That sort of stuff.' -
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JOHN 1972: 'John and Paul, but mainly Paul.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song.' PAUL 1984: 'We recorded it in France, as I recall. Went over to the Odeon in Paris. Recorded it over there. Felt proud because Ella Fitzgerald recorded it, too, though we didn't realize what it meant that she was doing it.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Can't Buy Me Love' is my attempt to write a bluesy mode. The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won't buy me what I really want.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Well, I can't say I wrote it 'for' George. My mother was always… she was a good comedienne and a singer. Not professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that. She had a good voice. She could do Kay Starr. She used to do this little tune when I was one or two years old… she was still living with me then. The tune was from a Disney movie: (sings) 'Do you want to know a secret? Promise not to tell? You are standing by a wishing well.' So, I had this sort of thing in my head, and I wrote it and just gave it to George to sing. I thought it would be a good for him, because it had only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world. He has improved a lot since then; but in those days, his ability was very poor.' PAUL 1984: 'A song we really wrote for George to sing. Before he wrote his own stuff, John and I wrote things for him and Ringo to do.' GEORGE 1994: ''Do You Want To Know A Secret' was my song on the album. I didn't like the vocal on it. I didn't know how to sing.' -
JOHN 1980: ''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.' PAUL 1988: 'We knew that if we wrote a song called, 'Thank You Girl' that alot of the girls who wrote us fan letters would take it as a genuine thank you. So alot of our songs were directly addressed to the fans.' -
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JOHN 1980: ''It Wont Be Long' is mine. It was my attempt at writing another single. It never quite made it. That was the one where the guy in the 'London Times' wrote about the 'Aeolian cadences of the chords' which started the whole intellectual bit about the Beatles.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We'd spot the double meaning… In 'It won't BE LONG till I BELONG to you' it was that same trip.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it, but mainly Paul. I helped him finish it.' JOHN 1980: ''I Wanna Be Your Man' was a kind of lick Paul had – 'I wanna be your lover, baby. I wanna be your man.' I think we finished it off for the Stones. We were taken down to meet them at the club where they were playing in Richmond by Brian and some other guy. They wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Mick and Keith heard we had an unfinished song – Paul just had this bit and we needed another verse or something. We sort of played it roughly to them and they said, 'Yeah, OK, that's our style.' But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all still sitting there talking. We came back, and that's how Mick and Keith got inspired to write… because, 'Jesus, look at that. They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!' You know, right in front of their eyes we did it. So we gave it to them. It was a throw-away. The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren't going to give them anything great, right? I believe it was the Stones' first record.' PAUL 1984: 'I wrote it for Ringo to do on one of the early albums. But we ended up giving it to the Stones. We met Mick and Keith in a taxi one day in Charing Cross Road and Mick said, 'Have you got any songs?' So we said, 'Well, we just happen to have one with us!' I think George had been instrumental in getting them their first record contract. We suggested them to Decca, 'cuz Decca had blown it by refusing us, so they had tried to save face by asking George, 'Know any other groups?' He said, 'Well, there is this group called the Stones.' So that's how they got their first contract. Anyway, John and I gave them maybe not their first record, but I think the first they got on the charts with. They don't tell anybody about it these days; they prefer to be more ethnic. But you and I know the real truth.' -
JOHN 1980: ''There's a Place' was my attempt at a sort of Motown, black thing.
It says the usual Lennon things: 'In my mind there's no sorrow…' It's all in your mind.' -
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JOHN 1980: 'It was kind of a John song, more than a Paul song… but it was written together.' PAUL 1988: 'John and I were a songwriting team, and what songwriting teams did in those days was wrote for everyone. 'Misery' was for Helen Shapiro, and she turned it down. It may not have been that successful for her because it's rather a downbeat song… 'the world is treating me bad, misery.' It was quite pessimistic. And in the end Kenny Lynch did it. Kenny used to come out on tour with us, and he used to sing it. That was one of his minor hits.' -
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JOHN 1980: 'That's me trying to do something. I don't remember.' (laughs) PAUL 1984: 'Influenced by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.' -
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RINGO 1964: 'We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. 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.'' JOHN 1980: 'I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in 'In His Own Write,' but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny… just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.' And the next morning I brought in the song… 'cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side – who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine… in the early period I'm dominating the group. The only reason he sang on 'A Hard Day's Night' was because I couldn't reach the notes. (sings) 'When I'm home/ everything seems to be right/ when I'm home…' – which is what we'd do sometimes. One of us couldn't reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he'd get the other to do the harmony.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The title was Ringo's. We'd almost finished making the film, and this fun bit arrived that we'd not known about before, which was naming the film. So we were sitting around at Twickenham studios having a little brain-storming session… and we said, 'Well, there was something Ringo said the other day.' Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical… they were sort of magic even though he was just getting it wrong. And he said after a concert, 'Phew, it's been a hard day's night.'' -
RINGO 1964: 'We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. 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.'' JOHN 1980: 'I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in 'In His Own Write,' but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny… just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.' And the next morning I brought in the song… 'cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side – who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine… in the early period I'm dominating the group. The only reason he sang on 'A Hard Day's Night' was because I couldn't reach the notes. (sings) 'When I'm home/ everything seems to be right/ when I'm home…' – which is what we'd do sometimes. One of us couldn't reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he'd get the other to do the harmony.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The title was Ringo's. We'd almost finished making the film, and this fun bit arrived that we'd not known about before, which was naming the film. So we were sitting around at Twickenham studios having a little brain-storming session… and we said, 'Well, there was something Ringo said the other day.' Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical… they were sort of magic even though he was just getting it wrong. And he said after a concert, 'Phew, it's been a hard day's night.'' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's me.
Just a song – It doesn't mean a damn thing.' -
02:22 If I Fell (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 27.02.1964JOHN 1980: 'That was my first attempt at a ballad proper. That was the precursor to 'In My Life.' It has the same chord sequences as 'In My Life' – D and B minor and E minor, those kinds of things. And it's semi-autobiographical, but not consciously. It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads – silly love songs – way back when.' PAUL 1984: 'This was our close-harmony period. We did a few songs… 'This Boy,' 'If I Fell,' 'Yes It Is' …in the same vein, which were kind of like the Fourmost – an English vocal group, only not really.' -
JOHN 1980: ''I'm Happy Just To Dance With You,' that was written for George to give him a piece of the action. I couldn'ta sung it.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We wrote 'I'm Happy Just To Dance With You' for George in the film. It was a bit of a formula song. We knew that in (the key of) E if you went to an A-flat-minor, you could always make a song with those chords… that change pretty much always excited you.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it. The first half was Paul's and the middle-eight is mine.' JOHN 1980: ''And I Love Her' is Paul again. I consider it his first 'Yesterday.' You know, the big ballad in 'A Hard Day's Night.' PAUL 1984: 'It's just a love song. It wasn't for anyone. Having the title start in midsentence, I thought that was clever. Well, Perry Como did 'And I Love You So' many years later. Tried to nick the idea. I like that… it was a nice tune, that one. I still like it.' -
02:04 Tell Me Why (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 27.02.1964JOHN 1980: ''Tell Me Why…' they needed another upbeat song and I just knocked it off. It was like a black, New York girl-group song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I think alot of these songs like 'Tell Me Why' were based in real life experiences… but it never occured to us until later to put that slant on it all.' -
JOHN 1972: 'John and Paul, but mainly Paul.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song.' PAUL 1984: 'We recorded it in France, as I recall. Went over to the Odeon in Paris. Recorded it over there. Felt proud because Ella Fitzgerald recorded it, too, though we didn't realize what it meant that she was doing it.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Can't Buy Me Love' is my attempt to write a bluesy mode. The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won't buy me what I really want.' -
JOHN 1980: 'An effort at writing 'It Won't Be Long' – same ilk.
C to A minor, C to A minor with me shouting.' -
01:48 I'll Cry Instead (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.06.1964JOHN 1980: 'I wrote that for 'A Hard Day's Night,' but Dick Lester didn't even want it.
He resurrected 'Can't Buy Me Love' for that sequence instead.
I like the middle-eight to that song, though that's about all I can say about it.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Paul's. Good song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I wrote 'Things We Said Today' on acoustic (guitar). It was a slightly nostalgic thing already, a future nostalgia: we'll remember the things we said today, sometime in the future, so the song projects itself into the future and then is nostalgic about the moment we're living now, which is quite a good trick.' -
02:18 When I Get Home (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 02.06.1964JOHN 1980: 'That's me again… another Wilson Pickett, Motown sound… a four-in-the-bar cowbell song.' -
JOHN 1964: 'I'd find it a drag to play rhythm all the time, so I always work myself out something interesting to play. The best example I can think of is like I did on 'You Can't Do That.' There really isn't a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist on that, because I feel the rhythm guitarist role sounds too thin for records. Anyway it drove me potty to play chunk-chunk rhythm all the time. I never play anything as lead guitarist that George couldn't do better. But I like playing lead sometimes, so I do it.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me doing Wilson Pickett. You know, a cowbell going four-in-the bar, and the chord going 'chatoong!'' -
02:21 I'll Be Back (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.06.1964JOHN 1972: 'A nice tune, though the middle is a bit tatty.' JOHN 1980: ''I'll Be Back' is me completely. My variation of the chords in a Del Shannon song.' PAUL circa-1994: ''I'll Be Back' was co-written, but it was largely John's idea.' -
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RINGO 1964: 'I'm featured on it.
Actually it was written by Carl Perkins about six years ago.
Carl came to the session.
I felt very embarrassed.
I did it just two days before I went in the hospital (with tonsilitis) so please forgive my throat.' -
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03:03 She's a Woman (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1964JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul with some contribution from me on lines, probably. We put in the words 'turns me on.' We were so excited to say 'turn me on' – you know, about marijuana and all that… using it as an expression.' PAUL circa-1994: 'This was my attempt at a bluesy thing… instead of doing a Little Richard song, whom I admire greatly, I would use the (vocal) style I would have used for that but put it in one of my own songs.' -
02:28 Ask Me Why (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1962 -
02:25 I Feel Fine (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 17.11.1964JOHN 1964: 'George and I play the same bit on the guitar together – that's the bit that'll set your feet a-tapping, as the reviews say. The middle-eight is the most tuneful part, to me, because it's a typical Beatles bit.' JOHN 1972: 'This was the first time feedback was used on a record. It's right at the beginning.' JOHN 1974: 'I wrote this at a recording session. It was tied together around the guitar riff that opens it.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me completely. Including the guitar lick with the first feedback anywhere. I defy anybody to find a record… unless it is some old blues record from 1922… that uses feedback that way. So I claim it for the Beatles. Before Hendrix, before the Who, before anybody. The first feedback on record.' PAUL circa-1994: 'John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pick-up on it so it could be amplified… We were just about to walk away to listen to a take when John leaned his guitar against the amp. I can still see him doing it… and it went, 'Nnnnnnwahhhhh!' And we went, 'What's that? Voodoo!' 'No, it's feedback.' Wow, it's a great sound!' George Martin was there so we said, 'Can we have that on the record?' 'Well, I suppose we could, we could edit it on the front.' It was a found object – an accident caused by leaning the guitar against the amp. The song itself was more John's than mine. We sat down and co-wrote it with John's original idea. John sang it, I'm on harmonies.' -
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JOHN 1980: 'That's me trying to do Smokey Robinson again.' -
02:09 I Call Your Name (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.03.1964JOHN 1980: '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.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We worked on it together, but it was John's idea. When I look back at some of these lyrics, I think, 'Wait a minute. What did he mean? 'I call your name but you're not there.' Is it his mother? His father? I must admit I didn't really see that as we wrote it because we were just a couple of young guys writing. You didn't look behind it at the time, it was only later you started analyzing things.' -
02:11 This Boy (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.12.1963JOHN 1980: 'Just my attempt at writing one of those three-part harmony Smokey Robinson songs. Nothing in the lyrics… just a sound and a harmony. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies… that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n roll. But of course, when I think of some of my own songs – 'In My Life,' or some of the early stuff – 'This Boy,' I was writing melody with the best of them.' PAUL 1988: 'Fabulous. And we just loved singing that three-part too. We'd learned that from: (sings) 'To know know know her is to love love love her…' We learned that in my dad's house in Liverpool.' -
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JOHN 1965: 'We think it's one of the best we've written.' JOHN 1980: 'The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He – I – is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive… yes, yes… but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.' PAUL 1984: 'John wrote that… well, John and I wrote it at his house in Weybridge for the film. I think the title was out of desperation.' -
JOHN 1965: ''The Night Before' that Paul does is good.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I would say that's mainly mine. I don't think John had alot to do with that.' -
JOHN 1965: 'One I do which I like is, 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away.' But it's not commercial.' JOHN 1971: 'It's one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand/Head in hand.' I started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like 'I'm A Loser' or 'Hide Your Love Away,' or those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation I would just try to express what I felt about myself which I had done in me books. I think it was Dylan helped me realize that – I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing Pop songs, but to express myself I would write 'Spaniard In The Works' or 'In His Own Write' – the personal stories which were expressive of my personal emotions. I'd have a separate 'songwriting' John Lennon who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn't consider them, the lyrics or anything, to have any depth at all. Then I started being me about the songs… not writing them objectively, but subjectively.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me in my Dylan period again. I am like a chameleon… influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.' PAUL 1984: 'That was John doing a Dylan… heavily influenced by Bob. If you listen, he's singing it like Bob.' -
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02:08 Another Girl (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.02.1965JOHN 1980: ''Another Girl' is Paul.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It's a bit much to call them fillers because I think they were a bit more than that, and each one of them made it past the Beatles test. We all had to like it.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's me.' -
GEORGE 1965: 'We are always worried with each record. With 'Ticket To Ride' we were even more worried. There's bound to be a time when we come in at 19 (on the charts). But this 'number one' business doesn't seem to stop – great while it lasts – but now we'll have to start all over again and people will start predicting funny things for the next one.' JOHN 1970: 'It's a heavy record, and the drums are heavy too. That's why I like it.' JOHN 1980: 'That was one of the earliest heavy-metal records made. Paul's contribution was the way Ringo played the drums.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I think the interesting thing is the crazy ending – instead of ending like the previous verse, we changed the tempo. We picked up one of the lines, 'My baby don't care,' but completely altered the melody. We almost invented the idea of a new bit of a song on the fade-out with this song… It was quite radical at the time.' -
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01:53 It's Only Love (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 15.06.1965JOHN 1972: 'That's the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric.' JOHN 1980: ''It's Only Love' is mine. I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics are abysmal. I always hated that song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'Sometimes we didn't fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like 'It's Only Love.' If a lyric was really bad we'd edit it. But we weren't that fussy about it, because it's only a rock 'n roll song. I mean, this is not literature.' -
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PAUL circa-1994: ''I seem to remember it as mine… Not awfully memorable.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I think of this as totally by me. It was slightly country and western from my point of view. It was faster, though. It was a strange uptempo thing. I was quite pleased with it. The lyric works. It keeps dragging you forward… it keeps pulling you to the next line. There's an insistent quality about it.' -
02:03 Yesterday (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 14.06.1965 -
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