A Hard Day's Night (album)

• 1. Introduction

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  A Hard Day's Night, the third studio album by the Beatles, was released on the 10th of July 1964. It was the first time the band had made a record with no borrowed songs. Every track came from Lennon and McCartney. That meant no covers of American rock and roll, no soul standards drawn from across the Atlantic. The album also served as a soundtrack to their first major film. The title of both the film and the record came from an accidental phrase that Ringo Starr never meant as a joke. Music journalist Robert Christgau would later write that Lennon and McCartney's songs here were "more sophisticated musically" than anything they had produced before. How they got there is a story of a film, a French studio, and an offhand remark that refused to be forgotten.

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• 2. A Session in Paris

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  On the 29th of January 1964, the Beatles walked into EMI Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. It was their first recording session held anywhere outside London. Producer George Martin had arranged for German-language versions of two recent singles. His reasoning was commercial and direct: the band could not sell large quantities of records in Germany unless the songs were sung in German. The resulting tracks were titled "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" and "Sie liebt dich."

  Also recorded that day, in English, was Paul McCartney's "Can't Buy Me Love." The song was completed in just four takes. Eleven days later, on the 9th of February 1964, the band gave their first live performance in the United States on The Ed Sullivan Show. They completed further American dates before returning to the United Kingdom on the 22nd of February.

  With the Ed Sullivan appearances behind them, the band faced a packed schedule. Filming on their first major feature was set to begin on the 2nd of March. According to historian Mark Lewisohn, the plan was to record the film songs first and then complete the rest of the LP. On the 25th of February, which was lead guitarist George Harrison's twenty-first birthday, the band returned to EMI Studios in London. They recorded Lennon's "You Can't Do That," planned as the B-side of "Can't Buy Me Love." They also worked on "And I Love Her" and "I Should Have Known Better" across that day and the next. "And I Love Her" was finalized on the 27th of February, along with "Tell Me Why" and "If I Fell."

  On the 1st of March 1964, the Beatles recorded three songs in three hours. The first was "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You," with Harrison on lead vocal. The second was a cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." The third was Lennon's "I Call Your Name," originally written for Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas the previous year.

  With the title track still unrecorded, the band paused for filming. They returned to EMI on the 1st of June 1964, adding Lennon's "I'll Cry Instead" and "I'll Be Back" to the LP. Two songs from that day, covers of Carl Perkins' "Matchbox" and Larry Williams' "Slow Down," were redirected to the Long Tall Sally EP. On the 2nd of June, the band completed "Any Time at All," "When I Get Home," and McCartney's "Things We Said Today."

  Between sessions, the "Can't Buy Me Love" single was released on the 16th of March 1964 and topped charts worldwide.

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• 3. Ringo's Accident

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  John Lennon told the story to Playboy magazine in 1980. Ringo Starr had said the phrase "a hard day's night" during a break from filming. It was not a joke. Lennon recalled being in a car when film director Dick Lester proposed the phrase as the title. Lennon had already used it in his book "In His Own Write," but Ringo's version was, as Lennon put it, "an off-the-cuff remark." "A Ringo-ism," Lennon explained, "where he said it not to be funny... just said it." Lester was decisive: "We are going to use that title."

  Lennon and McCartney wrote the title track around that phrase. It was recorded at EMI Studios on the 16th of April 1964 and mixed four days later. The song opens with a distinctive chord and became a transatlantic number-one single for the band.

  The album's structure reflects the film that generated it. Side one contains the songs from the film. Side two holds compositions written for the film but ultimately not used in it. A 1980s re-release of the film did bring one of those songs back: "I'll Cry Instead" was added to a prologue before the opening credits.

  With the title settled, the creative ledger was clear: nine of the thirteen songs on the album carried Lennon's name as primary author.

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• 4. Lennon's Record

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  McCartney's three solo compositions on the album were "And I Love Her," "Can't Buy Me Love," and "Things We Said Today." He and Lennon jointly wrote one more, "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You," with Harrison singing lead. On the Lennon-authored songs, Lennon also served as lead vocalist. The one exception was the middle-eight of the title track, which McCartney sang.

  A Hard Day's Night is one of three Beatles albums in which Starr sings no lead vocal. The others are Let It Be and Magical Mystery Tour. Starr had recorded "Matchbox" during the sessions, but that performance appeared on the Long Tall Sally EP rather than the album.

  Harrison's position was equally distinctive. He contributed no songs to the record. A Hard Day's Night is one of three Beatles albums without a Harrison writing credit, alongside Please Please Me and Beatles for Sale.

  What Harrison brought was not a writing credit but a sound. The Rickenbacker twelve-string electric guitar he played on several tracks would shape the music that followed.

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• 5. The Twelve-String Sound

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  Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, called Harrison's twelve-string leads "hugely influential." According to Unterberger, the film A Hard Day's Night helped persuade the Byrds, then folksingers, to commit fully to rock and roll. The folk rock explosion of 1965 grew directly from what Harrison had demonstrated on the record.

  The Beatles' commercial success had also begun to open the American market to other British groups. The Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Kinks all gained new footholds in the United States partly through what the Beatles had achieved. American groups, including the Beau Brummels and the Lovin' Spoonful, responded in kind. They were writing original material that owed a clear debt to the Lennon-McCartney example.

  Harrison's guitar also fed the emergence of jangle pop, a sound that extended the twelve-string's influence well past the folk rock moment.

  The American version of this album contained a different configuration of these songs, with four orchestral instrumentals that the UK pressing never included.

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• 6. The American Release

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  United Artists Records released A Hard Day's Night in the United States on the 26th of June 1964, two weeks before the UK edition appeared. The album went to number one on the Billboard album chart and spent fourteen weeks there, the longest run of any album that year. United Artists had rushed it into stores more than a month before the film's US premiere. When the film opened on the 11th of August 1964, the Beatles held both the number-one album and the number-one single in the country.

  The American track listing differed from the UK version. It included all seven film songs, along with "I'll Cry Instead," written for the film but cut at the last minute. The remaining UK side-two tracks were spread across several other Capitol Records LPs, including The Beatles' Second Album, Beatles '65, and Something New.

  George Martin arranged four orchestral instrumental versions of Lennon-McCartney songs for the American release, conducting an orchestra of studio musicians. The four tracks were "I Should Have Known Better," "And I Love Her," "A Hard Day's Night," and "Ringo's Theme." Vic Flick played lead guitar on "Ringo's Theme."

  After EMI acquired United Artists Records, the American album was reissued on the Capitol label in August 1980, carrying the catalogue number SW-11921. A 2014 CD reissue marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' first US visit. It presented all songs in both true stereo and mono mixes. In 2024, it was reissued on vinyl as part of The Beatles: 1964 U.S. Albums in Mono, using the original master tapes.

  Q magazine, writing in 2000, would place the UK album at number five on its list of the greatest British albums ever made.

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• 7. The Critical Record

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  Rolling Stone ranked A Hard Day's Night at number 307 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2012. By the 2020 revision, it had risen to number 263. The NME had placed it at number 33 in a best albums list as early as 1974. Musicologists Charlie Gillett and Simon Frith included it in ZigZag magazine's "100 Essential Rock Albums" in 1975. Greil Marcus chose it as one of his "Treasure Island albums" in his 1979 book Stranded.

  Colin Larkin placed it at number 22 in his 2000 book All Time Top 1000 Albums. The NME revisited its ranking twice more: number 73 in 1985, and number 195 in 2013. Mojo magazine ranked it 81st in 1995. Uncut placed it at 149th in 2016.

  The Grammy Hall of Fame inducted A Hard Day's Night in 2000, honoring the UK album. The 1964 North American release was inducted in the same year.

  Bob Stanley, in his book Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, identifies A Hard Day's Night as the album that best captures the Beatles' early-career appeal. "If you had to explain the Beatles' impact to a stranger," Stanley wrote, "you'd play them the soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night." The songs, Stanley added, were "full of bite and speed," conceived in weeks stolen between touring and filming.

  The album's formal CD release came on the 26th of February 1987, in mono, alongside Please Please Me, With the Beatles, and Beatles for Sale. The thirteen-track UK version was also issued in the United States on LP and cassette on the 21st of July 1987. A fully remastered stereo version appeared on the 9th of September 2009, the first time the complete album had been presented in stereo on CD.

  Robert Dimery included A Hard Day's Night in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The list's title made the same case Stanley had: this was not optional listening.

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