It Won't Be Long

Shortly after recording the single She Loves You - before it was even released, in fact - Lennon felt that he had come up with the perfect chorus for the group's next hit record.  He met with McCartney and they wrote some verses and a bridge to flesh out his composition.  By this time, the Beatles had begun a series of sessions which would be spread out sporadically over the next few months to record their second album.  July 30th, 1963 was only the second day earmarked for these recordings, and work commenced bright and early at 10 am.

It Won't Be Long was the first original composition tackled at these sessions, the other songs completed at this point all being covers of the boys' Motown favorites.  Ten takes of this high-energy track were taped in the morning session, but they left knowing it wasn't quite up to their expectations.

The afternoon was spent at the BBC Playhouse Theatre, where the group did an interview for the radio program Non Stop Pop, then recorded six songs and some typically silly banter with the host of the program Saturday Club before returning to EMI Studios for an evening session.  Believe it or not, such a day was not unusual under their relentlessly hectic schedule in 1963.

Two others songs were completed in the evening session before they turned their attention back to It Won't Be Long.  Seven more takes were necessary until the master was achieved.  Takes eighteen through twenty-three concentrated on George's strummed guitar part at the end of the song.  Finally, takes seventeen and twenty-one were combined, and the song was deemed complete.

Two months later, a week after the album was in the can, the group recorded I Want to Hold Your Hand as their next single, leaving It Won't Be Long as an album track.  While all agreed that it wasn't quite good enough to be a single, producer George Martin knew a rousing number when he heard one, so he chose it as the opening track of With the Beatles.

When the group hit it big in America a few months later, Capitol Records chose the hit I Want to Hold Your Hand and its US and UK B-sides as the first three tracks of Meet the Beatles!  Still, It Won't Be Long manages to jump out as the fourth track on that album after the mellow fadeout of This Boy.  To this day, With the Beatles and Meet the Beatles! remain the only places where you can hear the song, as it was never included on any subsequent compilations.

The group did not choose to add the tune to their stage act, not did they ever perform it on the BBC.  They did, however, revisit the song one last time for the Rediffusion TV show Ready, Steady, Go! on March 20th, 1964.  This was a full eight months after they had recorded the number, and it shows, as they mime to the record with fans dancing all around them.  John, who always had difficulty remembering lyrics, is mouthing incorrect words much of the time, even coming in with the word "yeah" at the wrong place during the call-and-response refrains.  By the way, 1964 was no less hectic than 1963.  They were not even halfway through the shooting schedule of A Hard Day's Night, and had actually been filming a few scenes earlier on this day!