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Saturday, May 27, 2006

The Great Beatles Songs: A Hard Day's Night

On to #3 on the great songs list. For those of you who want to continue to question the greatness of Lennon/McCartney as a songwriting force, this song will put an end to your doubts.

The third greatest Beatles song is A Hard Day's Night. The Fabs had finished filming their first of three motion pictures. They had never really settled on a name while they were working on it. It was tentatively titled The Beatles Movie until something more suitable would reveal itself as a title. The title would come from Ringo's abuse of the English language. Ringo's interesting phrase turns would play a large part in naming many songs (Tomorrow Never Knows from REVOLVER and Eight Days a Week to name two).

This malapropism, or a "Ringoism," first appeared in Lennon's book In His Own Write: "He'd had a hard day's night that day." When John, George and Paul were recounting to producers of the movie stories about Ringo, they told the origin in that phrase, "a hard day's night." It came from a grueling late-night gig. But the producers settled on A Hard Day's Night as their title. That phrase captured the hectic pace that the Beatles kept to a tee. But they knew they had to have a song. The producer Walt Shenson didn't want to ask any more from Paul and John as they had been going ninety to nothing night and day for months. He didn't want to burden them with more but he had to have a fast-paced title song to open the movie, he needed them to write A Hard Day's Night and he needed it to be a hit. Finally he approached John during a looping session for the movie. John, highly annoyed with the request, brooded and chain-smoked the rest of the evening before they left for home.

The next morning on the set, Shenson was paged to Lennon's dressing room. When Shenson arrived, Paul and John were standing there with their guitars. John fiddled with a match book cover which had the lyrics scrawled on it. They sang it and played it to perfection, ten hours after being requested to write it. A massive #1 hit on demand. It would be recorded the next day. John would carry the vocals with Paul singing the middle eight because it was too high for John's range.

From the sound of the extraordinary opening chord (a G7 with an added ninth and a suspended fourth, so unique it is considered neither major nor minor) which grabs your attention, to the double guitar and piano solo (contributed by George Martin) to the breakneck pace that finally gives way to Paul's almost relaxed middle eight in comparison, this musically daring song is still so full of energy over forty years later. And as soon as you hear George Harrison's unique opening chord, you know exactly what song it is. See? Proof of greatness. Not too many number one hits were written on demand in ten hours. But Lennon and McCartney did it. And Ringo even adds some nice cowbell.

1 Comments:

Blogger david b mclaughlin said...

I recently returned from vacation to read this drivel? Sure, HDN is a great song, but #3?

I liked this song better the first time I heard it, when it was called, "Be True To Your School."

And I've got me a fever for some more cowbell!

1:01 PM

 

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