3

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

Album and singles 1964

It was the custom in the early sixties when a pop star or group had any half-decent success to stick them in a film so as to cash in on their name and their following. Elvis of course was the brand leader, while Cliff Richard turned out a couple of box office hits, such as The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1962). Even minor songsters of the time, such as Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Terry Dene, now barely remembered, made it on to the silver screen. Films must have been cheaper to make in those days–or perhaps they were just quick, low-budget, mass market films, watched by millions who had less competition for their attention than today.

The Beatles were lucky in that they secured a good, intelligent, vaguely avant-garde director named Dick Lester, who managed to capture their character despite working at a frenetic pace, and a screenwriter, Alun Owen, who was able to reflect a lot of their humour, although there wasn’t much of a plot. It was during the film that George first met Pattie Boyd, a young model who appeared in one scene as a schoolgirl.

The Beatles wrote seven new songs especially for the film, and came up with a further six for the album. A Hard Day’s Night was their first album to be wholly self-composed. Ten out of the thirteen tracks were John songs–i.e. mainly written by him, and sung by him–an indication that he was still very much the leader, as he had been since the beginning. The songs are all still primarily about love–and why not? In the summer of 1964, John was still only twenty-three, Paul had just turned twenty-two and George was only twenty-one. But with this album the emotions were getting stronger, more revealing, and more care had been taken with the words.

The title song, and the title of the film, was only agreed upon at the last moment. Until then there had been a number of working titles, including ‘Beatlemania’, ‘Let’s Go’ and ‘On the Move’. The agreed explanation for the unusual title, handed down over the decades, is that it was a Ringo malapropism. ‘It just came out,’ he said in 1964 when the film was released. ‘We went to do a job and we worked all day and night and I came out, thinking it was day, and I said “It’s been a hard day…” I saw that it was dark, and so I added “day’s night”.’

However, John had used the same phrase in his book In His Own Write in a story called ‘Sad Michael’: ‘There was no reason for Michael to be sad that morning, (the little wretch); everyone liked him (the scab). He’d had a hard day’s night that day.’ The book was published in March 1964, so presumably the story must have been written some time earlier, whereas the date usually given for Ringo coming out with the phrase was April 1964. So did John use it first? Had he forgotten? Or was it just a phrase that he and Ringo had each used at some time. Or did he pinch it from Ringo?

Anyway, once it was suggested as a title, John went off and wrote the song, knowing it was going to be the title song, kicking off the film and the album, so he wanted to be the lead singer. And boy, did he get both off to a great start.

One of the many joys for Beatles fans, back in the sixties, was that by listening to their albums so many times you got to know a single introductory chord, which became a friend, a familiar figure of sound that you could recognize in a second and know what was coming. Listening to them on the album, in the order in which the Beatles had intended them to proceed rather than a later, mixed-up compilation, you also knew the moment one song faded, even though all you could hear was nothing but a pregnant pause, what the next song was going to be, and the note on which it would start.

A Hard Day’s Night probably has the most recognizable opening chord in the entire Beatles canon, possibly in any piece of popular music: a strident, crashing, magnificent, explosive opening chord. It seems a shame, and somehow dehumanizing, to use the technical definition: G eleventh suspended fourth. We will leave all other such descriptions to the music academics. We are here assembled purely for the lyrics.

A Hard Day’s Night

The words are quite well thought out. After the opening chorus, John wrote two verses, with the chorus repeated in between, then back to the chorus at the end. Another of the standard formats for a pop song.

Reading the words now, and probably trying too hard to work out exactly what he is trying to say, it would seem the message is simple: work hard, bring the money home, and you will get marital bliss. There is a slight hint of a chauvinism when he moans that he is working all day for money so she can buy things.

The lines I am not quite clear about are: ‘And it’s worth it just to hear you say / You’re gonna give me everything.’ Is this her saying ‘Give me all your money?’ Or does he mean that, now he’s handed it over, he knows she’s going give him everything, i.e. hot meal and leg-over?

Maureen Cleave of the London Evening Standard was one of the first journalists to write intelligently and revealingly about the Beatles. She happened to be interviewing John on the day they were to record the song and went with him to Abbey Road in a taxi. During the journey, John showed her the words of the song, written down on an old birthday card given to Julian–he had recently had his first birthday–with an illustration of a little boy on a toy train.

‘I said to him that I thought one line of the song was rather feeble. It originally said, “But when I get home to you, I find my tiredness is through, then I feel all right.” ’ Seizing my pen, John immediately changed the second line of it and came up with the slightly suggestive “I find the things that you do, will make me feel all right”.’

Maureen remembers the recording session consisting of a lot of humming, ‘They would put their heads together, hum for three hours, and then the song seemed to materialize, as if by magic.

‘At the end of the recording session, when almost everyone had left, I saw the card sitting there on a music stand. I asked John if I could have it and he said what did I want it for. I said I wanted it because I’d suggested the alternate line for the song. End of riveting story.’

Maureen inadvertently went on to cause John and the Beatles quite a bit of bother. Two years later, in March 1966, she published an interview with John in which he remarked that the Beatles were now more popular than Jesus. The quote attracted little comment when it first appeared in the Evening Standard, but four months later it was picked up by an American magazine and the ensuing furore led to radio stations banning the Beatles, and their records being burned all over the Bible Belt. The Beatles finished the tour of America they were then on, but never toured again.

The lyrics of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ received a deft backhanded compliment when Peter Sellers produced a record in which he recited all the words in the manner of Laurence Olivier declaiming Shakespeare. It was very convincing.

The manuscript is on show today in the Manuscript Room at the British Library, along with several others on permanent loan from a kind person. The colours of the birthday card train are still remarkably vivid. You can also see where John changed the words at Maureen’s suggestion–though the original words are not totally clear. There is also an amendment towards the end: ‘everything’s right from the start’ was dropped, along with a line that appears to read ‘I hope you realize with my heart’.