All My Loving

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	Paul
Lead Vocal	Paul
Recorded	Jul 1963
Length	2:08
Key	E
Noted Takes	14
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Norman Smith

Originally released on

With the Beatles

All My Loving EP

Parlophone — PMC 1206 / PCS 3045

Find on Amazon

Page status: In review

Story Section status: Outdated

“All My Loving” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their second UK album With the Beatles (1963). It was written by Paul, and produced by George Martin. Though not officially released as a single in the United Kingdom or the United States, the song drew considerable radio airplay, prompting EMI to issue it as the title track of an EP.

All My Loving is a song by The Beatles, written and sung by Paul. Words written first — rare for Paul; opened the Ed Sullivan debut. Within the catalogue, its letter thread connects it to P.S. I Love You, Please Mister Postman. Paul’s composition, recorded for With the Beatles on 30 July 1963, ‘All My Loving’ features Paul’s lead vocal and bass line contributing melodic interest within the tight rhythm arrangement. The song’s straightforward pop-love message and Paul’s assertive vocal delivery established the track as an early concert favourite.

The session work falls within the band’s Beatlemania (1962–1964) period, recorded 30 July 1963 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. George Martin produced; Norman Smith engineered. The recording was completed efficiently, with the rhythm section providing a tight anchor for the harmonic backing vocals. George Martin’s arrangement kept the production spare, relying on the melody and vocal performance rather than orchestral sweetening.

What’s distinctive

The words came before the tune, which Paul had never done before: they were written on a tour bus with Roy Orbison on the bill, and set to music on a piano found at the other end of the journey.¹ What reached the album is two-track work — the band on one track, the voices on the other — and the released master is not a performance but a copy of one with more singing added to it. Take count: 13, numbered 1–14 with no take five; 12–14 were overdubs alone, and the master is take 14 laid onto take 11.¹

Recording

All My Loving belongs to the second session of a long day. On Tuesday 30 July 1963 the Beatles worked in Studio Two at EMI Studios from 10.00am to 1.30pm on Please Mister Postman (takes 1–9) and It Won’t Be Long (takes 1–10), went out to the BBC at the Playhouse Theatre in the middle of the day, and came back to Studio Two from 5.00 to 11.00pm. That evening they moved through Money (That’s What I Want), a remake of Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, more of It Won’t Be Long, and this song. George Martin produced, Norman Smith engineered and Richard Langham was second engineer; the whole of With the Beatles was built at that pace, and knowing it is the first step to hearing why the record sounds decided rather than laboured.¹
The song arrives as Paul’s “by far his best, most complex piece of” writing to that point, and it went down fast. It was “recorded in just 13 takes” — numbered 1 to 14 because “there was no take five” — with 12 to 14 “purely overdubs”, and the master an overdub of “take 14 onto take 11”. Three of the fourteen numbers on the session sheet therefore contain no new backing performance at all. They are vocal work stacked onto a rhythm track the band had already settled eleven numbers earlier, which is why the take count on this song is a poor guide to how much of the evening it consumed.¹
The composition came the other way round from Paul’s usual method. “I think it was the first song where I wrote the words without the tune,” he said: “I wrote the words on the tour bus” “during our tour with Roy Orbison. We did a lot of writing then. Then, when we got to the gig, I found a piano and worked out the music.” The route shows in the shape of the record. The vocal runs in long unbroken sentences over a walking bass and a triplet rhythm guitar rather than settling into the repeated hooks a tune-first song tends to produce, and the melody has to keep moving to keep up with the words.¹
Everything here is two-track: instruments held on one track, voices on the other, which is how virtually every Beatles recording of 1963 was made and how the whole of With the Beatles was made. The Telefunken T9U and M10 four-track machines took over at Abbey Road only after 17 October 1963, by which time this album was long finished, and just two Beatles recordings from the entire year went onto them — I Want To Hold Your Hand and This Boy. All My Loving therefore sits in the closing weeks of the two-track catalogue, which is why every decision about balance on it had to be made before the tape stopped rolling.²
“An overdub, take 14 onto take 11” describes a specific mechanical operation rather than a punch-in. “Twin-Track overdubbing” was “superimposition” “in EMI parlance”, and it worked tape to tape: one machine played the finished take while a second recorded that output together with a live performance over it, so the new reel carried both. The gain is a doubled voice no single pass could produce. The cost is that the issued master is one remove from the take the band actually played, and on a walking-bass song the softening of the transient edge on the drums is the place to listen for it.^1,2

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios (Studio Two), Abbey Road¹
Tape machine	Twin-track: quarter-inch EMI BTR3 (the tracking machine until 17 October 1963)²
Mixdown machines	Mono: quarter-inch EMI BTR2 · stereo: quarter-inch EMI BTR3²
Console	REDD.37 (Studio Two)²
Microphones available (1963)	Vocals: Neumann U48 · drum overhead: STC4038 · bass drum: STC 4033-A²
Outboard available (1963)	RS124 compressor, EMI RS114, RS127 Presence Box²
Techniques available (1963)	Echo chamber, double-tracking, half-speed recording²
Drums	Ludwig drumset, Oyster Black Pearl (20″/12″/14″/14″ snare) with Zildjian cymbals — the first of the Ludwig kits, in use from 1 July 1963²
Bass amplification (1963)	Vox T.60 head (March through July) with T.60 speaker cabinet; the Vox A.C.30 Super Twin head with added Top Boost follows from August²
Guitars available (1963)	Rickenbacker 325 Capri, Rickenbacker 425, Gretsch 6122 Country Gentleman, Gretsch 6128 Duojet, Gibson J-160E (two); bass: 1963 Höfner 500/1²

Recording Timeline

30 July 1963 (Tue) — recording, EMI Studios (Studio Two), 5.00–11.00pm — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Richard Langham. Recording: ‘All My Loving’ (takes 1–14; no take five). The rhythm track was settled inside the first eleven numbers; 12, 13 and 14 added voices to it, and what went forward was take 14 laid onto take 11. The same evening also carried Money (That’s What I Want), the Till There Was You remake (takes 4–8), Roll Over Beethoven (takes 1–8) and It Won’t Be Long (takes 11–23) — five songs in six hours, at the end of a day that had already produced a morning session and a BBC recording at the Playhouse Theatre.¹
21 August 1963 (Wed) — editing and mono mixing, EMI Studios (Studio Three, control room only), 10.00am–1.00pm and 2.00–5.30pm — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. Mono mixing: ‘All My Loving’ (from take 14). One working day produced the mono masters for most of the album alongside this one — Devil In Her Heart, Money, You Really Got A Hold On Me, Please Mister Postman, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven and It Won’t Be Long. That is the practical reason the mono of With the Beatles holds together as a record: it was balanced in one sitting, by the same two people, three weeks after the last of it was played.¹
17 October 1963 (Thu) — the four-track changeover at Abbey Road — The quarter-inch EMI BTR3 twin-track was the tracking machine until 17 October; the Telefunken T9U and M10 four-track machines took over after that date. The changeover falls between this song’s recording and its stereo mix and it did not reach backwards: the album was already complete on two tracks, and only two Beatles recordings made anywhere in 1963 used the new machines. Every later argument about where an instrument sits in a Beatles stereo picture begins here, with a format that had no middle in which to put anything.²
29 October 1963 (Tue) — stereo mixing, EMI Studios (Studio Three, control room only) — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick and B.T. Stereo mixing: ‘All My Loving’ (from take 14). The session sheet records no start and finish time for this one, and the omission is worth noting rather than filling. The album’s stereo masters were made in this single control-room pass, three months after the recording and nine weeks after the mono, from the same tape and with none of the band present — the ordering that explains why the 1963 stereo reads as a document of the two-track tape rather than a considered picture of a group playing.¹

I think it was the first song where I wrote the words without the tune. I wrote the words on the tour bus during our tour with Roy Orbison. We did a lot of writing then. Then, when we got to the gig, I found a piano and worked out the music.— Paul¹

Studio Notes

Why the 1963 stereo has a hole in the middle — The two tape tracks came back into the desk on channels that could not be moved. Track one was “panned hard Left by default” and track two “hard Right”, and the desk “had no panning controls for those channels”. A mixer facing a twin-track tape in 1963 had two usable choices — leave the tracks at the walls, or collapse them together — and the stereo masters of this album take the first. Desks were later “fitted with a ‘stereo panning’ control” that allowed something in between, but that came after these mixes existed. The band on the left and the voices on the right is not a stylistic preference of the period; it is the shape of the equipment.²
Superimposition, and what it costs — “Twin-Track overdubbing” was “superimposition” “in EMI parlance”, and it ran tape to tape: a second machine recorded the first machine’s output together with whatever was sung live over it. Nothing is erased and nothing is punched in — a new reel is made. That is the mechanism behind an overdub of take 14 onto take 11, and it is why the numbers on the session sheet climb without the band playing again. It also sets a hard limit. Each pass adds a tape generation, so a song could not be layered indefinitely, and a double-tracked vocal had to be got right in one or two attempts rather than twenty.^1,2
The album that double-tracked itself — “The first set of tricks on the records was double-tracking” on the second album, John said; the group were told it could be done, “and that really set the ball rolling”. “Only four of the” album’s fourteen tracks “were spared an application”. George Martin put the origin earlier and the purpose more plainly: “I started double-tracking voices back in 1962”, because it was a “useful technique for getting different sounds”. On a two-track tape the technique is not a refinement but the main event, since the vocal track is the only surface left to work on once the band has been committed to the other one.²
The reverb was decided in the room, not at the mix — Chamber return was “simultaneously recorded in stereo” across both tracks rather than held back for later, so echo on a 1963 vocal frequently sits on the backing track instead of on the voice. The reasoning was practical: a “secondary application” “of chamber could be” added at the mixing stage without doubling what the tape already carried. It follows that the reverb balance a listener hears on this record was fixed on 30 July, in Studio Two, and that no later decision — in 1963, 1993 or 2023 — can separate the voice’s echo from the band’s.²
What changed in the engineering after the first album — For Please Please Me the room was recorded close to as it stood: no screens except one around Paul’s bass cabinet, and room mics “used” “to pick up more” of Studio Two’s ambience. From the second album the approach tightened to “close-mic’ing more exclusively to tighten the sound up”, although “he continued to use no screens”. Effects stayed “minimal, limited primarily to the use of the” studio’s echo chambers. The result is the sound this song has — close, dry and forward, its separation coming from microphone distance rather than acoustic isolation, with whatever leakage remained baked into the take.²
Assembly was normal practice, not a rescue — “Many of the songs were pieced together from” different takes and edit pieces across 1963, and “double-tracking became extremely common” over the same months. An overdub of one numbered take onto another is therefore not the signature of a difficult session; it is the ordinary working method of the year, and thirteen takes is a modest figure by the standards of the album around it. The point is worth carrying into the listening: a 1963 Beatles master is an assembled object even when it sounds like one continuous performance.²
Ringo’s first Ludwig, four weeks old — The kit on this record is the “Ludwig drumset, Oyster Black Pearl” in 20″/12″/14″/14″ snare sizes with Zildjian cymbals — “the first of the Ludwig” kits, in use from 1 July 1963, and “notable for the small 20″ kick”. The small shell is a large part of why Beatles drums of this period read as tight and fast rather than deep: a shorter, drier note, which on a twin-track recording cannot be reshaped afterwards because it was printed alongside everything else on the same track. The triplet ride figure driving this song is that new kit four weeks into its working life.²
The bass rig in its last month — Paul’s amplification moved three times during 1963. The early part of the year used an EMI-provided arrangement — a Leak Point One preamp into a Tannoy Dual-Concentric 15″ speaker and cabinet — before a “Vox T.60 head (March through July)” and its matching speaker cabinet took over, and a “Vox A.C.30 Super Twin head (with added” Top Boost) followed from August through October. A session on 30 July catches the T.60 in its final weeks, which matters on a song carried by a walking bass line: that rig’s rounder, less forward voicing is part of why the bass here sits underneath the record rather than on top of it.²

Releases

Two tracks of tape, and sixty years of decisions about what to do with them. What separates the versions below is whether the band and the voices arrive together or from opposite walls.

1963 UK mono LP — With the Beatles (22 November 1963, Parlophone PMC 1206, side A track 3) — Both tape tracks summed to one place, so the walking bass, the triplet guitar and the double-tracked vocal all push from the same point. The record hits hardest here, and this is the mix the album was balanced for.
1963 UK stereo LP — With the Beatles (22 November 1963, Parlophone PCS 3045, side A track 3) — The band hard left, the voices hard right, nothing in the centre (see Studio Notes). Informative rather than comfortable, and the only way to hear what was committed to each track.
1963 German and Dutch stereo LPs — Odeon STO 83-568 (1963), Odeon SMO 83-991 Beatles Greatest (1965), Odeon OMHS 3001 (Holland, 1967) — The untrimmed stereo, and the best demonstration of the split anywhere: five taps on a hi-hat on the left, then an intake of breath on the right, before the song starts. The British pressing cuts both.
1964 US LP — Meet the Beatles! (20 January 1964, Capitol T-2047 mono / ST-2047 stereo) — The American mono is not the British one: Capitol folded its mono down from the stereo, so it carries the stereo’s balance rather than the mix made at Abbey Road in August. The Capitol stereo is the UK stereo through a brighter cutting chain.
1964 UK EP — All My Loving (7 February 1964, Parlophone GEP 8891, mono, side A track 1) — The album mono alongside Ask Me Why, Money (That’s What I Want) and P.S. I Love You. No new mix, but the form in which most British buyers without the LP first heard the song.
1987 CD — With the Beatles (EMI CDP 7 46436 2), then 2009 CD — With the Beatles (Apple 82420 2) — The first digital issue carried the mono and left the stereo off; the 2009 remaster carries the 1963 stereo with the hard split untouched and a cleaner top end. Between them they are the two 1963 mixes, one per disc.
1993 CD — The Beatles 1962–1966 (Apple 97036-2) — A remix, and the first version to put the voice in the middle: it centres the vocal track and leaves nothing far right, with the band still on the left. The halfway house between 1963 and everything after.
2023 — The Beatles 1962–1966 (2023 Edition), the “Red Album” — A new 2023 stereo mix, also issued in Dolby Atmos. The comparison to make is against the 1963 stereo above: the same recording, mixed without the constraints of a two-track tape.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 10, 34, 37.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 358, 362, 365, 369.

Frequently asked

Who wrote All My Loving?

“All My Loving” is credited to Paul (Lennon/McCartney), and he wrote the words before the tune — the first time he had composed that way.¹

Who sings lead on All My Loving?

The lead vocal on “All My Loving” is by Paul, double-tracked.

When was All My Loving recorded?

“All My Loving” was recorded on 30 July 1963 in Studio Two at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, in an evening session running 5.00 to 11.00pm. The mono mix followed on 21 August 1963 and the stereo mix on 29 October 1963.¹

How many takes did All My Loving require?

Thirteen. The takes were numbered 1 to 14 with no take five, and 12 to 14 were overdubs alone; the master is an overdub of take 14 onto take 11.¹

On this page

Story Section status: Outdated

What’s distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked