A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night is the third studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 10 July 1964 by Parlophone, with side one containing songs from the soundtrack to their film of the same name. A Hard Day's Night is the band's first album to contain all-original material, penned by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The American version of the album was released two weeks earlier, on 26 June 1964 by United Artists Records, with a different track listing including some from George Martin's film score. [Wikipedia]

By early 1964 the band had three UK number ones, an American number one, and a film deal with United Artists. A Hard Day's Night was the soundtrack to their first feature, written and recorded in pieces between February and June 1964 across studio time stolen from a punishing tour schedule. It was their first LP entirely composed by Lennon and McCartney — no covers — and the first to fully showcase Harrison's new Rickenbacker 360-12 string guitar, which would shortly inspire The Byrds' folk-rock.

A Hard Day's Night is a Beatles EP issued in the United Kingdom on 10 July 1964 by Parlophone under catalogue number PMC 1230. It sits in the band's Beatlemania (1962–1964) period. It was issued the same day as the parent LP A Hard Day's Night.

Sessions were produced by George Martin with Norman Smith engineering, working at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. The signal chain ran through the Twin-track BTR-2 (1962); Studer J37 four-track from late-1963 • REDD.37 / REDD.51 valve consoles, with vocals captured on Neumann U47, U48. This combination of room, tape format and outboard chain is the same one heard across the band's other releases from the era — meaning the release shares its sonic identity with its parent LP rather than departing from it.

The release features A Hard Day's Night, I Should Have Known Better, If I Fell, I'm Happy Just to Dance with You, And I Love Her, Tell Me Why, Can't Buy Me Love.

Documented alternate masters and remaster passes can be found via the linked entries above; the editorial position throughout Beatles Answers is that the original UK mono master is the canonical point of reference for any EP from this era, with the 2009 and 50th-anniversary stereo remasters treated as documented variations rather than replacements. Catalogue numbers, label copy and matrix data are taken from EMI/Parlophone primary documentation and cross-checked against Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (1988).

By now installed on the four-track Studer J37, the band could overdub vocals and percussion separately from backing tracks. The opening title-track chord — a 12-string-and-piano Fadd9 (still the subject of musicology theses) — was a deliberate attention-grab Martin commissioned to get the film moving. Side one was the soundtrack to the Richard Lester film, Side two contemporaneous studio cuts. The most significant new sound: Harrison's chiming Rickenbacker, which would soon ring through American AM radio.

And I Love Her was the first of Paul's nylon-string ballads, a template he would refine through Yesterday and Here There and Everywhere. Can't Buy Me Love became the first single ever to top the UK and US charts simultaneously, with two million advance US orders. If I Fell paired Lennon and McCartney in the most exposed unison harmony of their career to date — a duet where any imperfection would have been audible.

UK release on 10 July 1964, simultaneous with film and single. Twelve weeks at UK number one. The film grossed $11 million on a $560,000 budget — Roger Ebert later called it 'one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies.' For the band, it was confirmation that they could construct an LP entirely from their own material.

A Hard Day's Night is the all-original turning point and the album where Lennon's writing dominates (he wrote eleven of its thirteen). The Rickenbacker jangle, the major-7th harmonic vocabulary, the cinematic ambition — every one of these elements would be sampled, copied or quoted by indie bands for the next sixty years.

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