No Reply

Let me just start this entry by stating that I absolutely love this song.  I always have, from the first time I put the new album Beatles '65 on my parents' turntable.  The urgency in John's voice immediately grabbed me, and the powerful bridge drove home the raw emotion at the core of the narrative, even to a 10-year-old boy who had yet to experience romantic love, let alone the pain of rejection.  It was all over way too soon, but the following song, I'm a Loser, doubled down on the theme, kicking off what was, for me, the best album yet.

Lennon himself was not so keen about his composition.  He initially offered it to another of manager Brian Epstein's artists, a fellow named Tommy Quickly.  In Dave Rybaczewski's in depth look at the song, he relates that Colin Manley, the guitarist who played on Quickly's version, said that Lennon's demo for them to learn the song ended with the sound of a toilet flushing, something John had also done on his demo of Do You Want to Know a Secret that he had recorded for Billy J. Kramer a little over a year earlier.  Manley also reports that the number lacked a bridge on this version.

If the above story is true, that No Reply demo probably preceded the one recorded on June 3rd, 1964.  This eventful day began with Ringo being hospitalized for tonsillitis.  With the group's first world tour scheduled to begin the next day, replacement drummer Jimmy Nicol was promptly brought into the studio to audition and rehearse several numbers with the other Beatles, then sent home to pack.  After his departure, John, Paul and George took turns leading the others through demos of new songs they had written, instead of recording a fourteenth and final track for the album A Hard Day's Night.

When John's turn came around, No Reply, still intended for Tommy Quickly at this point, was put on tape.  Guitar, bass and drums are heard, though it is not known who played what on this very loose version of the number, with John and Paul goofing around and laughing, especially with the phrase "your face," which they insert throughout the song.  As you can hear on Anthology 1, the composition does have the bridge by this time.  Whether or not Quickly received this demo, he did eventually record his own version, but it was never released.

By September 30th, the Beatles were working on their next album, and the song had managed to grow in Lennon's estimation over time.  Anthology 1 also allows us to hear take two from this day, now featuring all four Beatles on their usual instruments, plus producer George Martin on piano.  There is still a bit of goofing at the first "your face," but the overall tone is closer to the dramatic feel of the master.  After the take breaks down, John comments, "...we just found out what to do, anyway.  It's good."

On take five, they repeated the bridge and a verse, but that made the track over three minutes long - an uncommon length in 1964 - so that idea was scrapped.  The master was take eight, onto which they overdubbed handclaps, with John and Paul double-tracking their vocals, as well.

The song was now regarded to be strong enough that it was under consideration as a possible A-side for the group's next single, along with I'm a Loser and Eight Days a Week.  All three eventually lost out to I Feel Fine.  When assembling the album Beatles for Sale, Martin chose No Reply as the opening track, a move Capitol Records in the US repeated on Beatles '65, as I noted above.  It remained in the same position on the UK EP Beatles for Sale.

(An odd sidebar - My professed love for this song was sorely put to the test several years ago when a director loudly played one of the Anthology versions to distract me during a callback audition.  His ploy worked.  I did not get cast.  True story.)