This Boy

Over the course of their career, the Beatles became known for pairing quality B-sides with their hit singles.  Many of those great songs never even appeared on albums in the UK, thus forcing the group's British fans to go out and purchase each and every single, just in case that turned out to be the only way to possess those hidden gems.  And such was indeed the case with their first truly great B-side, This Boy.

Only a few weeks after completing work on their second album With the Beatles, the boys were back in the studio on October 17th, 1963, to record both sides of their fifth single.  In the interim, an important upgrade had been made to Abbey Road Studios - four track recording.  The ability to more efficiently add overdubs would become increasingly utilized in the future, but it was used sparingly on this day.  In fact, on this occasion, producer George Martin, engineer Norman Smith and the Beatles pretty much stuck to the routine which they had only recently established.

After recording the sure-fire hit I Want to Hold Your Hand, the group concentrated on This Boy, Lennon's first attempt at writing a three-part harmony number.  John, Paul and George were no strangers to singing in this style.  To Know Her Is to Love Her had been part of their stage act for years.  And they had even recorded the song Chains, much of which is sung in three-part harmony, for their debut album Please Please Me.  On this day, they gathered around one microphone to sing, simultaneously playing their usual instruments.  It required fifteen takes to arrive at the master.  Minimal overdubs were then added - George playing a repeating lead guitar phrase for the end of the song, and John double-tracking his soaring lead vocal in the bridge.

As had been the case earlier in the year, the group now went about promoting both sides of their new single.  They mimed to the record on some television programs, but for the Morecambe and Wise Show, they performed the song live in the studio, as you can hear on Anthology 1.  The delicate harmonies are shaky in places, and John's voice cracks on his first high note in the bridge.  This performance did not deter them from adding the song to their stage act, however.  They played it for the full run of The Beatles' Christmas Show in London and during their three-week stint in Paris in January of 1964.  They performed it on their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 16th, which was broadcast live from Miami.

And, of course, they recorded This Boy for BBC Radio.  The first instance, for a December '63 edition of the program Saturday Club, can be heard on the collection On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2.  The second was for one of their From Us to You specials in early '64.

While the song was only available as a B-side in the UK, Capitol Records had a different approach in the US, replacing it with I Saw Her Standing There on the American single.  Instead, the song only appeared on the album Meet the Beatles!  An import single from Capitol of Canada, however, which featured This Boy as the B-side to All My Loving, did sell enough copies in the US to make the Billboard chart.  Such an impressive showing led Capitol to release both songs on an EP entitled Four by the Beatles in May of '64.

This Boy did not appear again until well after the group's career on the 1977 compilation album Love Songs.  Its next release was on the British version of Rarities.  This was followed by Past Masters in 1988, and a rather obscure release - on a bonus CD issued as part of the Compact Disc EP Collection.

Perhaps my favorite release of the song, however, is on the 1995 EP Free as a Bird, which was part of the Anthology series.  We get to hear the incomplete takes twelve and thirteen from the original session on October 17th, 1963, as the boys crack themselves up, mixing up the lyrics "that boy" and "this boy" a few times, resulting in a quick breakdown on the earlier take, and an oh-so-close take thirteen before they dissolve into laughter.