The Night Before

Of the four songs that McCartney proposed as contenders for the soundtrack of the group's second feature film, this was the strongest.  The only other one to even make the cut was Another Girl.  Tell Me What You See wound up on the non-soundtrack side of the eventual album, and That Means a Lot remained unissued until the Anthology series many years later.

The recording was made on February 17th, 1965, during that day's afternoon session.  A good deal of rehearsal probably preceded the only two takes of the backing track that the group put on tape.  John Lennon chose to forego his usual rhythm guitar and sat down at a Hohner electric piano.  Considering that it is one of his earliest efforts on a keyboard, it is surprisingly good, and proves to be the driving force among the instruments used on the recording.

With take two as the master, Paul overdubbed his lead vocal, John and George sang their backing parts, and Ringo added maracas to the Latin beat he plays on his drumkit during the bridge.  Once Paul double-tracked his lead vocal, all that was left was to overdub a solo.  Paul had worked out a simple, but highly-structured guitar line which he and George played simultaneously, an octave apart.  They also played a brief, similar phrase for the very end of the song.  

The song is used late in the film Help! on Salisbury Plain, immediately after George Harrison's composition I Need You.  Unlike the other songs that appear on the soundtrack, The Night Before is broken up, as the action cuts back and forth just before a huge action sequence, so we hear some sections of the song more than once while other sections are omitted.

The band played the number only one more time, as part of their final BBC Radio appearance on the awkwardly-titled program The Beatles Invite You to Take a Ticket to Ride.  This was recorded in late May and broadcast in early June, months before the album and the film were released, so the song would have been brand-new to listeners.

The Night Before is the second track on both the US and UK versions of the album Help!  It made its sole post-career appearance on the 1976 compilation album Rock and Roll Music.  This has always struck me as an odd choice for that collection.  I have never thought of it as a rocker, but rather more of a pleasant mid-tempo pop song.