I want to hold your hand

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I want to hold your hand
The Beatles
publication November 29, 1963
length 2 min 24 s
Genre (s) Rock 'n' roll , pop-rock , beat
Author (s) Lennon / McCartney
album A Collection of Beatles Oldies

I Want to Hold Your Hand ( English I want your hand holding ) is a song by British rock band The Beatles ; Lennon / McCartney are named as authors . The piece was released in Great Britain on November 29, 1963 as the band's fifth single and became one of the top-selling million dollar sellers in record history.

History of origin

In September 1963 the Beatles received from their manager Brian Epstein , who was concerned about the lack of success of the Beatles in the USA , the suggestion to write a song especially for the American market. For this purpose, Paul McCartney and John Lennon used the apartment of Richard and Margaret Asher, whose daughter McCartney was friends with at the time, during their vacation . The place of residence became the new place where the Beatles wrote for a short time. The friend's mother taught oboe in a music room in the basement. The song was composed on the piano in this room. In September 1980, John Lennon told Playboy :

“We wrote a lot of things together, face to face in personal conversations. Just like in I Want to Hold Your Hand . I remember how we made the first chord for the song. We were down in the basement of Jane Asher's house playing the piano at the same time. And we had 'Oh you-uu / got that something ...' and Paul struck the chord in E minor and I turned to him and said, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do it again'. At those times we were really used to writing like that, both played it up the other's nose. "

- Playboy Magazine , David Sheff : Playboy Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono , published January 1981

The version described by Lennon was confirmed by Paul McCartney. He said:

“Eye to eye is a really good description. It was exactly like that. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was a collaboration. It was our big number one; the one that finally made us hit America. "

The Abbey Road Studio 2 was posted on October 17, 1963 at 14:30 for the Beatles. A total of 17 takes of the song were made (takes 16 and 17 were just overdubbing ) from 7 p.m. In addition to the Beatles, their producer George Martin and the two sound engineers Norman Smith and Geoff Emerick were also present . The recordings showed that the song was perfected before the recording session because the first take hardly sounds any different than the last. On that day, the four-track technology was used for the first time , which had previously only been used for classical music in the Abbey Road studios. The last two takes were used to record the clapping of hands and overdubbing of John Lennon's lead voice, performed on October 21, 1963 in the control room of Studio 1 along with the final mix for mono and stereo master tapes , where only George Martin and Norman Smith were present. The entire session shows Paul McCartney in the musical leadership role. Today's CDs feature a stereo mix that was created on November 7, 1966 for the LP A Collection of Beatles Oldies , which was released on December 10, 1966. George Martin, Geoff Emerick and Mike Stone were responsible for this.

publication

Beatles - I Want to Hold Your Hand

After the release in Great Britain on November 29, 1963 (Parlophone # 5084) with the B-side This Boy , advance orders of 950,000 copies had already been received by Parlophone Records by November 1963 . By the end of January 1964, a total of 1.509 million units had been sold there. Beatles manager Brian Epstein flew to the United States on November 5, 1963 with a single in his luggage to present it to Capitol Records director Brown Meggs. Capitol had already turned down four Beatles singles, but could envision a release of this song. The release date of January 13, 1964, originally planned with an initial pressure of 200,000 copies, had to be brought forward after radio stations had already played the title incessantly.

In the USA it was published on December 26, 1963 (Capitol # 5112) with the B-side I Saw Her Standing There . The title sold one million copies by January 10, 1964, 3.4 million by March 28, and ultimately 4.9 million records. On February 10, 1964, they were presented with the gold record . At the end of 1964, almost five million pieces had been sold in the United States. This triggered the British invasion of the United States. With over eleven million copies sold worldwide, the title is still the second best-selling single from Great Britain. On February 9 and 16, 1964, the Beatles appeared on the nationally broadcast Ed Sullivan Show during their first US tour .

In Great Britain, the title reached the top of the charts on December 12, 1963 and stayed there for five weeks. In the United States, first place was taken on February 1, 1964 and held for seven weeks. In Germany , the song occupied number one in the charts on March 21, 1964 and stayed there for five weeks.

In 2004, I Want to Hold Your Hand was voted # 16 of the 500 best songs of all time by the music magazine Rolling Stone .

A version of the album On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 was released in 2013, which the band had recorded for the BBC radio station .

music

The instrumentation of the piece in G major consists of John Lennon's rhythm guitar, played on his Rickenbacker 325 electric guitar (1958), Paul McCartney's electric bass Höfner 500/1 (1963), George Harrison's lead guitar on his Gretsch 6122 (“Country Gentleman”) and Ringo Starr's Ludwig drums. A Times music critic characterized the song as follows:

"The transitions from tonic to submediants , from C major to A minor , and - to a lesser extent - the jump in the median (as in I Want to Hold Your Hand ) are a characteristic of the songs by Lennon / McCartney ."

- Quote from The Beatles Songbook, German edition , DTV Munich 1971, ISBN 3-423-00745-1 , p. 124

German version

Come give me your hand

The subsidiary label Odeon of EMI / Parlophone subsidiary Electrola was responsible for the distribution of Beatles records in Germany . Production manager Günter Ilgner from Electrola Germany was convinced that the Beatles would only be successful in Germany if there was also a German-language version. After great resistance from the Beatles and George Martin, German texts were hastily written by Heinz Hellmer and Camillo Felgen (under the pseudonym Jean Nicolas, under which he also wrote German texts for Connie Francis and Caterina Valente ), hastily rehearsed with Otto Demler and on January 29, 1964 in the Paris recording studio Pathé Marconi placed over the original music tracks. Already on February 4, 1964, the recordings appeared as Come, give me your hand / She loves you (Odeon # 22671) and reached fifth and seventh place on the German charts. Ultimately, the English-language original version was more successful.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , 1988, p. 36 f.
  2. ^ Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , 1988, p. 39.
  3. ^ Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , 1988, p. 37.
  4. ↑ technically superior to the A-side.
  5. ^ Bill Harry: The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia , 1993, p. 333.
  6. ↑ Billboard Magazine, May 4, 1974, p. 54 .
  7. ^ Walter Everett, The Beatles As Musicians - The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul , 2001, p. 210.
  8. ↑ George Martin, All You Need Is Ears (1979), p. 12.
  9. ^ Hit balance sheet , German chart singles 1956–1998 on CD ; Norderstedt: Taurus Press Verlag popular music-literature GmbH, 1999.