A Hard Day's Night (song): Difference between revisions
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The [[Cirque Du Soleil]] production [[Love (Cirque du Soleil)|Love]] uses the opening chord of A Hard Day's Night to introduce [[Get Back]]. The chord is played forward, and while the drum solo from [[The End]] is playing, the chord is reversed to the beginning. |
The [[Cirque Du Soleil]] production [[Love (Cirque du Soleil)|Love]] uses the opening chord of A Hard Day's Night to introduce [[Get Back]]. The chord is played forward, and while the drum solo from [[The End]] is playing, the chord is reversed to the beginning. |
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== Chart Run == |
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16/07/1964: 3-1-1-1-2-2-5-6-10-15-19-24-28 (UK) |
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21/07/1984: 54-52-81 (UK) |
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==Notes== |
==Notes== |
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Revision as of 16:09, 17 December 2007
| "A Hard Day's Night" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| B-side | "Things We Said Today" (UK) "I Should Have Known Better" (US) |
"A Hard Day's Night" is a 1964 hit song by The Beatles. Written by John Lennon and produced by George Martin, it is credited (as were most of their songs) to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership. It was released on the movie soundtrack of the same name. It was later released as a single, with "I Should Have Known Better" as its B-side.
The song featured prominently on the soundtrack to The Beatles' first feature film, A Hard Day's Night, and was on their album of the same name. The song topped the charts in both the United Kingdom and United States when it was released as a single. Featuring a prominent and unique opening chord, the song's success demonstrated that The Beatles were not a one-hit wonder.
The American and British singles of "A Hard Day's Night" as well as both the American and British albums of the same title all held the top position in their respective charts for a couple of weeks in August 1964, the first time any artist had done this.[citation needed]
Title
The song's title originated from something said by Ringo Starr, the Beatles' drummer. Starr described it this way in an interview with disc jockey Dave Hull in 1964: "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day...' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '...night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'[1]
Starr's statement was the inspiration for the title of the movie, which in turn inspired the composition of the song. According to John Lennon in a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine: "I was going home in the car and Dick Lester [director of the movie] suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in In His Own Write [a book Lennon was writing then], but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny... just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.'"[2]
In a 1994 interview for The Beatles Anthology, however, Paul McCartney disagreed with Lennon's recollections, basically stating that it was the Beatles, and not Lester, who had come up with the idea of using Starr's verbal misstep: "The title was Ringo's. We'd almost finished making the film, and this fun bit arrived that we'd not known about before, which was naming the film. So we were sitting around at Twickenham studios having a little brain-storming session... and we said, 'Well, there was something Ringo said the other day.' Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical... they were sort of magic even though he was just getting it wrong. And he said after a concert, 'Phew, it's been a hard day's night.'"[3]
In 1996, yet another version of events cropped up; in an Associated Press report, the producer of the film A Hard Day's Night, Walter Shenson, stated that Lennon described to Shenson some of Starr's funnier gaffes, including "a hard day's night," whereupon Shenson immediately decided that that was going to be the title of the movie (the originally planned title was Beatlemania [4]). Shenson then told Lennon that he needed a theme song for the film.[5]
Production
Regardless of who decided on the title, Lennon immediately made up his mind that he would compose the movie's title track [6]. He dashed off the song in one night, and brought it in for comments the following morning (the original manuscript lyrics may be seen in the British Library, scribbled in ballpoint on the back of an old birthday card). As he described in his 1980 Playboy interview, "...the next morning I brought in the song... 'cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side — who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine... in the early period I'm dominating the group.... The reason Paul sang on A Hard Day's Night (in the bridge) is because I couldn't reach the notes."[2]
In the Associated Press report, Shenson described his recollection of what happened. At 8:30 in the morning, "There were John and Paul with guitars at the ready and all the lyrics scribbled on matchbook covers. They played it and the next night recorded it." Shenson declared, "It had the right beat and the arrangement was brilliant. These guys were geniuses."[5]
On 16 April, 1964, the Beatles gathered at Studio 2 of the Abbey Road Studios and recorded "A Hard Day's Night". It took them less than three hours to polish the song for its final release, eventually selecting the ninth take as the one to be released.[7]
Release
"A Hard Day's Night" was first released to the United States, coming out on 13 June, 1964 on the album A Hard Day's Night, the soundtrack to the film, and released by United Artists. The album was a hit, selling a million copies in just four days.[citation needed]
"A Hard Day's Night" was the first Beatles single released in the UK not to use a pronoun in its title. On all of their previous British singles ("Love Me Do," "Please Please Me," "From Me to You." "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and "Can't Buy Me Love"), the group had intentionally relied on the use of a pronoun to make a song "very direct and personal," so that, according to McCartney, "people can identify...with it."[citation needed]
The United Kingdom first heard "A Hard Day's Night" when it was released there on 10 July, 1964, both on the album A Hard Day's Night, and as a single, backed with "Things We Said Today" on the B-side. Both the album and single were released by Parlophone Records. The album proceeded to sell 1.5 million copies within a fortnight of its release. The single began charting on 18 July, 1964, a week later ousting the Rolling Stones' "It's All Over Now" from the top spot on the British charts on 25 July, 1964, coincidentally the day when both the American and British albums too hit the peak of their respective charts. The single stayed on top for three weeks, and lasted another nine weeks in the charts afterwards.
America first saw the single of "A Hard Day's Night" on 13 July, 1964, featuring "I Should Have Known Better" on the B-side, and released by Capitol Records. Capitol had been in a quandary about cashing in on the success of the movie A Hard Day's Night, as United Artists held the publishing rights for the soundtrack (thus owning the rights to release the album of the same title). However, there was nothing preventing Capitol from releasing the songs in other forms, leading to six out of the seven songs from the movie's soundtrack coming out on singles.[citation needed]
The American single began its 13-week chart run on five days after release, and on August 1 started a two-week long run at the top, setting a new record—nobody before had ever held the number one position on both the album and singles charts in the United Kingdom and the United States at the same time. The Beatles were the first to do so, and continued to be the only ones who had done this until 1970 when Simon and Garfunkel achieved the same feat with their album Bridge Over Troubled Water and its title track. "A Hard Day's Night" went on to sell one million copies in America within just over five weeks.[citation needed]
After the Beatles had performed on The Ed Sullivan Show when they first came to America in early 1964, some American critics had dismissed them as one-hit wonders. "A Hard Day's Night" proved them wrong, as it only strengthened The Beatles' dominance of the world music scene in 1964. They would continue to feature prominently for the next six years until their disbanding in 1970.[citation needed]
In 1965, "A Hard Day's Night" won the Beatles the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group. In 2004, this song was ranked number 153 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[8]
Opening chord
"A Hard Day's Night" is immediately identifiable before the vocals even begin, thanks to George Harrison's unmistakable Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string guitar's "mighty opening chord" [9]. According to George Martin, "We knew it would open both the film and the soundtrack LP, so we wanted a particularly strong and effective beginning. The strident guitar chord was the perfect launch"[7] having what Ian MacDonald calls "'a significance in Beatles lore matched only by the concluding E major of "A Day in the Life", the two opening and closing the group's middle period of peak creativity'"[10]. "That sound you just associate with those early 1960s Beatles records" [11].
Analysis of the chord varies, with it being described as G7add9sus4 [10], G7sus4 [12], or G11sus4 [9] and others below.
The exact chord is an Fadd9 confirmed by Harrison during an online chat [citation needed] on 15 February 2001:
- Q: Mr Harrison, what is the opening chord you used for "A Hard Day's Night"?
- A: It is F with a G on top, but you'll have to ask Paul about the bass note to get the proper story.
According to Walter Everett, the opening chord has an introductory dominant function because McCartney plays D in the bass; Harrison and Martin play F A C G in twelve-string guitar and piano, over the bass D, giving the chord a mixture-coloured neighbor, F; two diatonic neighbors, A and C; plus an anticipation of the tonic, G — the major subtonic as played on guitar being a borrowed chord commonly used by the Beatles, first in "P.S. I Love You" (see mode mixture), and later in "Every Little Thing", "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Got to Get You into My Life" (in the latter two against a tonic pedal).[13]
Film of the Beatles performing "A Hard Day's Night", shows both John and George gripping a Gm11 in 3rd position NOT an Fadd9. The Fadd9 is used during the chorus and is the chord form used for the outro fade out. [citation needed]
In contrast, Alan W. Pollack interprets the chord as a surrogate dominant (surrogate V, the dominant preparing or leading to the tonic chord), in G major the dominant being D, with the G being an anticipation that resolves in the G major chord that opens the verse. He also suggests it is a mixture of d minor, F major, and G major (missing the B).[14] Tony Bacon calls it a Dm7sus4 (D F G A C), which is the dominant seventh (plus the fourth, G).[15] (For more information regarding chord functions see diatonic function.)
Everett points out that the chord relates to the Beatles' interest in pandiatonic harmony.[16]
Dominic Pedler has also provided an interpretation of the famous chord, with the Beatles and George Martin playing the following:
- George Harrison: Fadd9 in 1st position on 12-string electric guitar
- John Lennon: Fadd9 in 1st position on a 6-string acoustic guitar
- Paul McCartney: high D played on the D-string, 12th fret on electric bass
- George Martin: D2-G2-D3 played on a Steinway Grand Piano
- Ringo Starr: Subtle snare drum and ride cymbal
This gives the notes: G-B-D-F-A-C (the B is a harmonic). One of the interesting things about this chord (as described by Pedler) is how McCartney's high bass note reverberates inside the soundbox of Lennon's acoustic guitar and begins to be picked up on Lennon's microphone or pick-up during the sounding of the chord. This gives the chord its special "wavy" and unstable quality. Pedler describes the effect as a "virtual pull-off".[17]
Jason Brown, Professor for the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, whose research interests include graph theory, combinatorics, and combinatorial algorithms, announced in October 2004 that after six months of research he succeeded in analysing the opening chord by "de-composing the sound into original frequencies, using a combination of computer software and old-fashioned chalkboard." According to Brown, the Rickenbacker guitar wasn't the only instrument used. "It wasn't just George Harrison playing it and it wasn't just the Beatles playing on it... There was a piano in the mix." Specifically, he claims that Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar.[18]
A repeated arpeggio outlining the notes of the opening chord ends the song in a circular fashion, fading out with the sound of helicopter blades. This provides "a sonic confirmation that the thirty-sex hours we have just seen [in the movie] will go on and on and on" [10]. The song contains 12 other chords [9].
This famous chord was used on the version of "Get Back", featured on the 2006 release Love. It was used at the beginning of the remix to disguise a part of "The End", whose drum solo is used in the remix's intro.[citation needed]
Music and lyrics
The song is composed in the key of G major [13][14] and in a 4/4 time signature, though Richard Middleton (1990) describes G as the dominant in the key of C major. The verse features the ♭VII or major subtonic chord that was a part of the opening chord as an ornament or embellishment below the tonic. The modal frame of the song though pentatonic features a ladder of thirds axially centered on G with a ceiling note of Bb and floor note of Eb (the low C being a passing tone) (Middleton 1990, p.203):[19]
According to Middleton the song has "a deep kinship with typical blues melodic structures: it is centered on three of the notes of the minor-pentatonic mode (Eb-G-Bb), with the contradictory major seventh (B♮) set against that. Morever, the shape assumed by these notes - the modal frame - as well as the abstract scale they represent, is revealed, too; and this - an initial, repeated circling round the dominant (G), with an excursion to its minor third (Bb), 'answered' by a fall to the 'symmetrical' minor third of the tonic (Eb) - is a common pattern in blues."[20]
Lennon opens the twelve measure-long verse and carries it along, suddenly joined at the end by McCartney, who then sings the bridge. This represented a division of work which would feature prominently in future Beatles songs, with Lennon and McCartney each singing the parts they composed individually. This also made it easier to identify the individual styles of each composer, as McCartney was often the one with more upbeat lyrics, while Lennon's would be in a more cynical tone.
However, in his interview with Playboy, Lennon denied that McCartney's authorship of the bridge was the reason that he sang it: "The only reason he sang on 'A Hard Day's Night' was because I couldn't reach the notes. ...which is what we'd do sometimes. One of us couldn't reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he'd get the other to do the harmony."[21]
The instrumental break, is often credited to George Harrison on a 12-string guitar. This is not entirely accurate. The break was played by George Harrison on 12-string guitar with George Martin doubling the solo on a piano.
According to the book 'Recording the Beatles', Martin plays a piano not harpsichord at half speed, speeded back up (see note at bottom).
The song closes with Lennon playing the arpeggio during the fade-out, the first time the Beatles had used such a technique — most, if not all, of their earlier work had closed with a final chord (and cadence), such as "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand".
The lyrics speak about the singer's undying devotion to his lover, and how he toils so she can purchase the items she fancies. The singer sings about his tiredness when he comes home from work, but how the things that his lover does perk him up.
On the day the song was written, Lennon is purported to have shown reporter Maureen Cleave of London's Evening Standard the lyrics, and she said that word "tiredness" sounded weak in the line "I find my tiredness is through/And I feel alright." Lennon subsequently replaced the lines in question with "I find the things that you do/They make me feel all right".[22]
The solo and outro features Harrison on his Rickenbacker 12 and George Martin simultaneously playing the same notes at half speed then speeding them backup to include on track 4 based on a detailed description of this recording in the book 'Recording the Beatles' by Brain Kehew and Kevin Ryan.
During the recording of Hard Days Night, John and Paul double track their vocals throughout including the chorus. John sings the main lead vocal and Paul sings the middle eight. During the chorus Paul handles the high harmony and John the low harmony. Take 7 reveals that the lyrics were still not set with John singing "you make me feel all right"and Paul still unsteady with his bass line during the middle eight which ends with John chiding him with the line "I heard a funny chord".
Other recordings
Peter Sellers recorded a comedy version of the song "A Hard Day's Night", in which he recited the lyrics in the style of Laurence Olivier in Olivier's film version of Shakespeare's play Richard III. Sellers' version was a UK Top 20 hit in 1965.
Billy Joel recorded the song and it was released on his Complete Hits album and My Lives, his ultimate collection.
Sugarcult recorded the song for a EP A Hard Day's Night
Beatallica recorded a thrash version of this song called "A Garage Dayz Nite", with some references to Metallica's songs (coz when I see you, it's nice to play you "Trapped Under Ice" or wherever I may roam, the road becomes my bride), and other bands like Scorpions (and it kicks ass just to hear you say, when you don't want Love at First Sting).
Swedish band Mando Diao recorded a version and released it as a B-side to TV & Me.
The Cirque Du Soleil production Love uses the opening chord of A Hard Day's Night to introduce Get Back. The chord is played forward, and while the drum solo from The End is playing, the chord is reversed to the beginning.
Chart Run
16/07/1964: 3-1-1-1-2-2-5-6-10-15-19-24-28 (UK)
21/07/1984: 54-52-81 (UK)
Notes
- ^ Keith Badman The Beatles Off The Record P.93
- ^ a b Sheff, David (2000). All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 174–175. ISBN 0-312-25464-4.
- ^ Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now. New York: Henry Holt & Company. p. 164. ISBN 0-8050-5249-6.
- ^ Bill Harry The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia P.287
- ^ a b Campbell, Mary (1996-07-01). "Restored 'Hard Day's Night,' 'Help!' part of AMC festival"". Associated Press.
- ^ Paul McCartney & Barry Miles Many Years From Now P.165
- ^ a b Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Beatles Recording Sessions. New York: Harmony Books. p. 43. ISBN 0-517-57066-1.
- ^ "The Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Retrieved 2007-03-07.
- ^ a b c Jackson, John Wyse (2005). We All Want to Change the Word: The Life of John Lennon. Haus. p. 112. ISBN 190495037X.
- ^ a b c Glynn, Stephen (2004). A Hard Day's Night: The British Film Guide 10 (Turner Classic Movies British Film Guides). I. B. Tauris. pp. 33, 68. ISBN 1850435871.
- ^ Bacon, Tony (2000). Fuzz & Feedback: Classic Guitar Music of the 60's. Miller Freeman Books. p. 11. ISBN 0879306122.
- ^ Rooksby, Rikky (2004). Chord Master: How to Choose and Play the Right Guitar Chords. Backbeat Books. p. 61. ISBN 0879307668.
- ^ a b Everett, Walter (2001,). The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul. Oxford University Press. pp. 236–37. ISBN 0-19-514104-0.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|year=(help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: year (link) - ^ a b Pollack, Alan W. "Notes on "A Hard Day's Night"".
- ^ Bacon, Tony (2000). Fuzz & Feedback : Classic Guitar Music of the 60's. Backbeat Books. p. 5. ISBN 0-87930-612-2.
- ^ Everett, Walter (2001,). The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul. p. 109.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|year=(help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: year (link) - ^ Pedler, Dominic (2003). The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-8167-1.
- ^ "As It Happens". CBC Radio. 2004-10-15. Jason Brown's research on the opening chord. To hear the story, listen 12'35" into the broadcast
- ^ Middleton, Richard (1990). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. p. 203. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
- ^ Middleton, Richard (1990). Studying Popular Music. p. 201.
- ^ Sheff, David (2000). All We Are Saying. p. 175.
- ^ Marck, John T. "I Am The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night".
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