I Want to Hold Your Hand

The song I Want to Hold Your Hand represents a special moment in the history of the Beatles, and I am not referring to the fact that it was responsible for breaking the band in America.  This was the first release by a rock and roll act to make use of EMI's four-track equipment at Abbey Road Studios, usually reserved for serious classical artists.  After a year of recording on two-track tape, this was considered a high honor for the band that was now making a small fortune for the Parlophone label.

Of course, it was also the song that opened the floodgates in the USA, starting the British Invasion.  Manager Brian Epstein had asked Lennon and McCartney to write a composition with the American audience in mind and, supposedly, they did so.  I've been listening to it for most of my life and I have read much that has been written about it, but I'll be damned if I can hear anything specifically "American" about the song that separates it from their body of work up to that time.  To me, it simply builds on the excitement of the previous single She Loves You and solidifies the sound that was uniquely their own.  In fact, there was nothing else even remotely like it on American radio.  Nothing.

The group had nearly completed the sessions for their second album With the Beatles when they turned their attention to their next single on October 17th, 1963.  They had rehearsed the song in advance, so only a few adjustments were necessary during the seventeen takes that it took to achieve the master.  A very young Geoff Emerick, who was serving as second engineer on this date, reports that John often flubbed the lyrics, thus resulting in so many takes.  All four Beatles overdubbed handclaps onto the number before it was complete.

From its opening moments, I Want to Hold Your Hand is an infectious burst of energy (though less so than its predecessor She Loves You).  Lennon and McCartney kept the lyrics as simple as can be, letting the drive of the performance, particularly their vocal duet, carry the song.  It is John who makes the jump to falsetto each time on the first "hand," then Paul handles the high harmony for the second "your hand."  The quiet bridge is sung in unison the first time through, then in one of their trademark harmonies the second time, each time building to a crescendo on "I can't hide" (or, as Bob Dylan heard it, "I get high").

Pirated copies of the song made their way to radio stations in various US cities, forcing Capitol Records to move the release date from January 13th, 1964 to December 26th, 1963.  The American label also chose the song to open the album Meet the Beatles! which was released on January 20th.  In the UK, it was the group's fifth single and subsequently appeared on the EP The Beatles' Million Sellers in 1965 as well as on the LP A Collection of Beatles Oldies in '66.

The song immediately made its way into their stage act.  Its biggest impact naturally came from  performances over three consecutive weeks on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964.  They continued to play the song throughout that landmark year and then never played it again.

Post-career releases include the Red Album in 1973, 20 Greatest Hits in 1982, Past Masters, Volume One in 1988 and 1 in 2000.  Anthology 1 presents a sonic version from a live television performance for the Morecambe and Wise Show, and On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 features a recording for the radio program From Us to You.  On this occasion, the boys overdubbed handclaps as they had on the original record, then applauded their own performance at the end.

More recently, the video collection 1+ has a black and white clip from the Granada Television program Late Scene Extra shot in Manchester and broadcast only days before the single's release in the UK.  The band mimes to the record, with John and George oddly playing acoustic guitars. 

I Wanna Be Your Man

The liner notes for the album With the Beatles written by Tony Barrow state, "Observing the tremendous audience response that Ringo has been getting whenever he sings Boys, John and Paul put their heads together to pen a special new number for their fierce-voiced drumming man.  The result is a real raver entitled I Wanna Be Your Man."

While McCartney had begun writing the song with Ringo in mind, a chance meeting between John and Paul with Mick Jagger and Keith Richard prompted Lennon to finish the song by adding the simple chorus and giving it to the Rolling Stones.  It was this encounter that spurred Mick and Keith to begin writing their own material.  And, while the Stones did record a bluesy version of the song (featuring a great bottleneck guitar part by Brian Jones) and release it as their second single, the Beatles went ahead with their original plan and recorded it as well, opting for a rousing rock arrangement with Ringo as the lead vocalist.

They wasted no time, in fact.  September 11th, 1963, the day after they offered the song to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles recorded a single take.  They returned to the number the following day, laying down takes two through seven before achieving the master.  On September 30th, producer George Martin overdubbed a Hammond organ part, though it required six more takes for him to get it to his own satisfaction.  On October 3rd, Ringo double-tracked his vocal and added maracas to the track, bringing the recording to take fifteen.

The song sits smack in the middle of side two on the UK album With the Beatles.  In the US, the song appeared on the Capitol album Meet the Beatles!  Among the additional releases of the song, the first was on the collection Rock and Roll Music in 1976.  Live at the BBC gives us a great studio take from February 1964 recorded for the program From Us to You, which has a four-bar introduction.  Anthology 1 presents a version recorded for the April 1964 TV special Around the Beatles.  And I have a bootleg of a live performance from the Olympia Theatre in Paris in June of 1965.

Though I Wanna Be Your Man initially replaced Boys as Ringo's vocal spotlight in concert, the two songs would alternate in the set list from time to time, with Honey Don't and Act Naturally occasionally thrown in for good measure.  But it was I Wanna Be Your Man that had the distinction of being performed at the group's final concert in 1966 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

I Should Have Known Better

By sheer coincidence, the only two songs that Capitol Records ever chose as alternate B-sides for singles by the Beatles occur back to back in an alphabetical list of the group's output.  Having just covered I Saw Her Standing There (which replaced This Boy as the flip side of I Want to Hold Your Hand here in America), we now move on to I Should Have Known Better.  In this instance, Capitol wanted another song from the film soundtrack on the B-side of A Hard Day's Night instead of Things We Said Today as on the UK single.

I Should Have Known Better was among the songs written specifically for the soundtrack during the group's three week engagement in Paris in January of 1964.  Back at Abbey Road Studios in England on February 25th, the boys began a week of recording sessions before principal photography of the film commenced.  They attempted three takes of this song at the end of the evening session, but the arrangement wasn't quite correct.

On the following afternoon, a full three hour session was required to perfect the number.  Take nine, the first take that John sang without playing harmonica, proved to be the master.  It wasn't until take twenty-two that his double-tracked vocal line and his harmonica part were complete.

The song is featured early in the film as the band joins Paul's grandfather in the luggage compartment of the train and they begin playing cards.  The schoolgirls they have met gather round and the boys soon have their instruments and perform the number.  This sequence, which includes the wonderful Wilfrid Brambell as Paul's grandfather and Patti Boyd as one of the schoolgirls, was actually filmed on a set at Twickenham Film Studios on March 11th.  The song is played again at the concert near the end of the film.  This was shot on March 31st at the Scala Theatre.  Though Paul appears to be singing in both sequences, he does not sing on the recording, as this song was 100% Lennon's.

The tune was naturally included on the album in the UK, as well as on the EP Extracts from the Film A Hard Day's Night.  United Artists released it on the official soundtrack album in the US before Capitol's single appeared.  Capitol considered putting it on the album Something New, but decided against it.  In February of 1970, the song resurfaced on the compilation Hey Jude, an album which supposedly gathered up all of the songs that had not yet been released on a Capitol album.  If so, A Hard Day's Night should have been included in this collection, as well, yet it was conspicuously absent.

The group played I Should Have Known Better for the BBC a few times to promote the film, then brought it back in the fall of '64 as part of their stage act for a tour of Britain.