Thank You Girl

This song, initially known as Thank You Little Girl, was specifically written by Lennon and McCartney to be the A-side of the third single by the Beatles, as a sort of love letter to their young female fans.  Very soon afterwards, however, they co-wrote the similarly-themed From Me to You, which they deemed to be the superior composition, thus relegating this earlier song to the B-side.

Both songs were recorded on March 5th, 1963, before the group's recently-recorded first album Please Please Me was even released.  Manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin wanted as much product as possible ready to go, in order to strike while the young band was still hot.

After completing work on the A-side, the boys turned their attention to Thank You Girl, recording six live-in-the-studio takes before arriving at the keeper.  The ending still was not right, however, so seven edit pieces were attempted before the song was considered complete - for the time being.

Martin decided in the coming days that something more was needed, and he realized that a harmonica part would do the trick.  It's surprising that that had not occurred to any of them on March 5th, since a harmonica overdub had been performed on From Me to You only hours earlier on that day.  It was arranged for John to report alone to Abbey Road Studios on March 13th for this purpose.  This was not a problem, as he had a bad cold and was actually not appearing with the group for a few nights on their current national tour.   

In his book The Beatles: Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn relates a story about John needing to borrow a harmonica for the song From Me to You on March 5th.  Geoff Emerick was not present at that session, but he did serve as second engineer for Thank You Girl on March 13th and has the exact same incident occurring on the latter date, including the part about John returning the harmonica to disc cutter Malcolm Davies and saying that "it tasted like a sack of potatoes."

In any event, fifteen takes of John playing the harmonica were recorded.  Then, Martin and engineers Norman Smith and Emerick created both the mono and stereo mixes of the song.  Only three instances of the harmonica were used in the mono mix, yet three additional harmonica bits were used in the stereo version.

Fans in the UK only heard the mono mix of the song when it was released both as a B-side and on the EP The Beatles' Hits.  In the US, VeeJay Records had the mono mix for the song's use as the B-side of two different singles - From Me to You and Do You Want to Know a Secret.  But, when Capitol wanted to release the song on The Beatles' Second Album, the label was given the previously-unheard stereo mix.  Thus, most American fans only knew Thank You Girl with all of the harmonica bits.  It was a bit of a surprise in 1988 to hear the relatively stark mono mix on the Past Masters collection. 

The group added the song to their stage act for the few months that their third single dominated the British charts.  They also performed it on their first BBC television appearance, as well as on three BBC Radio broadcasts.  The last of these can be heard on the Live at the BBC collection, from the program Easy Beat.  It is a spirited performance, though it is mostly notable for giving us a chance to hear the song with no harmonica, which is how they always played it live.

Thank You Girl was long gone from the band's setlist by the time they first came to America.    

Tell Me Why

I think it's fair to say that Tell Me Why is the least-known song from the film A Hard Day's Night.  Somehow, this powerful little number was the only one of the seven official soundtrack songs to not be issued on a single by Capitol Records, while I'll Cry Instead was released as an A-side and mistakenly credited as being from the movie on the label of that single, as well as on two different American albums!  Yet, Tell Me Why was chosen by director Richard Lester to open the climactic concert sequence in the film, which brilliantly depicts the Beatles at the peak of their performing abilities, driving an adoring audience to an absolute frenzy.

The boys were big fans of girl group numbers, and had already recorded several of them in 1963, including Please Mister Postman, Chains, Boys and Devil in Her Heart, but this was the first time that they purposefully attempted to create a song in that style.  Lennon's comment that "they needed another upbeat song and I just knocked it off" indicates that it was a last-minute addition to the soundtrack.

On February 27th, 1964, in the middle of the week scheduled to record the soundtrack songs for the film, Tell Me Why was the second of three numbers which received attention.  It required eight takes to arrive at the master.  The three-part harmonies of John, Paul and George, as well as John's solo lines, were then all double-tracked to give a fuller vocal sound than ever before.  The dynamic vocals are piled on top of sharp guitar work from John and George, a walking bass line from Paul, and the tumbling drum fills of Ringo.  Producer George Martin also added a piano part to the track before it was considered to be complete. 

When preparing the mono mix of the song, Martin chose to keep John's solo lines single-tracked (which, of course, is the way they are heard in the film), though the double-tracking is faintly audible much of the time.  He opted for the double-tracking of those lines for the stereo mix, which was done at a later date.

American audiences got to hear the song first, on the United Artists official soundtrack album A Hard Day's Night.  One month later, Capitol Records was allowed to release the song on the album Something New.  In the UK, it appeared on the Parlophone album A Hard Day's Night.  And, while Capitol had not released the song on a single in the US, Parlophone did include it on the EP Extracts from the Film A Hard Day's Night.

Aside from miming to the song on the day of filming the concert sequence for the film, the Beatles never performed the song again, which I think is a shame for such a terrific number.