A Hard Day's Night (song)

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A hard day's night
The Beatles
publication July 10, 1964
length 2 min 32 s
Genre (s) Rock , pop rock
Author (s) Lennon / McCartney
album A hard day's night

A Hard Day's Night ( English One night after a hard day [accordingly]) is a song by British band The Beatles in 1964. It is the theme song of the movie of the same name, which in Germany under the name of Yeah Yeah Yeah was shown. The song was mainly written by John Lennon , but published under the Beatles' usual copyright Lennon / McCartney .

background

Filming for the Beatles' first feature film had started in March 1964 without the film having a title. The title goes back to a saying by Ringo Starr who remarked in mid-April 1964 after a busy day of shooting: “It's been a hard day”. At that moment Starr realized that it was already night and completed the sentence with: "... night." The phrase pleased the director Richard Lester , as it sums up the mood of the film. The Beatles now had the task of writing a song with the given title A Hard Day's Night . On the same day, April 13, 1964, Lennon composed the song and noted the text on a greeting card that is now on display in the British Museum in London . The following day, the band played the song to film producer Walter Shenson , who loved it.

production

A Hard Day's Night was recorded on April 16, 1964 at Abbey Road Studios , London. The producer was George Martin , assisted by Norman Smith . In total, the recordings took just under three hours, during which the Beatles recorded nine takes of the song on a four-track tape recorder . Track 1 contains guitars , bass and drums , track 2 the vocals of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Tracks 3 and 4 were filled with bongos (played by Norman Smith), acoustic guitar, cowbell , vocals, solo guitar and piano . John Lennon sang most of the song; McCartney took over the middle section from “When I'm home…” because Lennon couldn't sing that high.

publication

The song was released on July 10, 1964 as a single , at the same time the album of the same name was released , which opened with the song. The film of the same name had already been shown four days earlier in Great Britain (in Germany on July 23, 1964).

The single was a number one hit in Great Britain and the USA , in Germany it reached number 2. In 1965, the Beatles received a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group for the song .

Cover versions

A parody of the song by Peter Sellers was particularly successful . The film and television comedian recited the text of A Hard Day's Night in the style of Laurence Olivier in a Shakespeare drama. It was not accompanied by the original music, but by a classical background. It was Sellers' most successful solo hit in the British charts and reached number 14 in December 1965. The cover version was also produced by George Martin.

Conversely, in the same year the Ramsey Lewis Trio played the melody of A Hard Day's Night instrumental without text live. This version also hit the charts and reached number 29 in the US in early 1966.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Beatles Bible. A hard day's night.
  2. ^ Mark Lewisohn : The Beatles Recording Sessions. Harmony Books, New York NY 1988, ISBN 0-517-57066-1 .
  3. ↑ George Martin - In My Life.
  4. ^ Joel Whitburn: Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-2006. Record Research, Menomonee Falls WI 2007, ISBN 978-0-89820-172-7 .