Saturday, November 30, 2013

A Hard Day's Night Outtakes

On April 16 1964, The Beatles entered Studio two at EMI in order to record the title song for thier upcoming first film as the title was settled on "A Hard Day's Night". This tune written mainly by John with Paul singing the middle eight was recorded in nine takes (with the basic tracks being the lead and overdubs added later). This included drums, 12-string electric (George), guitar (John), bass (Paul) and the two vocals. Most of the session consisted of perfecting the middle eight section of the song with some stray bass notes and slightly different lyrics for the early takes.
The guitar solo by George was also extinguished in the early takes and it was decided to overdub the solo instead. This turned out to be the 12-string and piano solo heard on the final mix. Some of the takes for the song simply feature the opening chord played over and over. Takes 1, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are complete while the other takes are fragments and are incomplete due to mistakes.
These takes are available on various CD bootlegs including "Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. 2" which features takes 6 and 7 and "Ultra Rare Trax, Volume Two" which features take 4
; "The Ultimate Collection, Volume Three" contains the session with the other takes present. It must also be said that take one from this session is commercially available on the Apple 3-LP/2-CD "Anthology 1" project.

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