Can't Buy Me Love

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	Paul
Lead Vocal	Paul
Recorded	Jan 1964
Length	2:12
Key	C
Noted Takes	4
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Norman Smith

Originally released on

Can't Buy Me Love (single)

Parlophone — R 5114

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"Can't Buy Me Love" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released in March 1964 as the A-side of their sixth single. It was written by Paul and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The song was included on the group's album A Hard Day's Night and was featured in a scene in Richard Lester's film of the same title.

Can't Buy Me Love is a song by The Beatles, written by Paul and led on vocal by Paul. Cut in Paris; first Beatles single to top US/UK charts simultaneously. Cut during the Beatles' first EMI session outside Abbey Road at the Paris Pathé Marconi studio during their Olympia Theatre concert run, this track captured Beatlemania's commercial reach. Paul originally attempted a bluesy vocal style before settling on the final bright treatment. The four-take efficiency demonstrated ensemble confidence despite unfamiliar recording equipment (Lewisohn 1988, p. 38). The song was recorded in Paris at EMI Pathe Marconi and established Paul's commercial strength; it achieved top-of-chart status in America and exemplified the band's calculated confidence in the US market (Kozinn 1995, p. 234).

The session work falls within the band's Beatlemania (1962–1964) period, recorded 29 Jan 1964 at EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris. George Martin produced; Norman Smith engineered. For session-by-session detail, see Mark Lewisohn's account on p.38 of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (excerpt below). Take four served as the master after Paul refined the arrangement away from elaborate backing vocal harmonies in early takes. George Martin supervised the basic rhythm track adaptation, enabling rapid overdub-free completion within the foreign studio setting. Engineer Norman Smith praised the efficient turnaround, noting the unfamiliar equipment proved no obstacle (Lewisohn 1988, p. 38).

They were extremely pleased to get it over with.- Norman Smith, Lewisohn 1988, p. 38

Paul's double-tracked vocal with George's rhythm guitar; the composition emerged as an optimistic counterpoint to John's self-promotional moves, demonstrating rebounded competitive songwriting energy (MacDonald 1994, p. 50). The Paris recording established cross-generational American viability for the group (MacDonald 1994, p. 40).

Can't Buy Me Love established cross-generational viability in America.- Ian MacDonald, MacDonald 1994, p. 40

What’s distinctive

Paul’s song, taped in Paris in four takes at the end of a session that had been booked to put German words on two earlier hits. The first takes were a blues with John and George answering Paul; by take four the answers had gone, and George Martin had the record open on its chorus. One mono made in February served the British and the American singles alike.^1,2

Recording

A session booked for German. The Beatles were in Paris for a 19-day concert season at the Olympia Theatre, and EMI’s West German branch, Odeon, wanted the group’s two biggest hits sung in German. “Odeon was adamant. They couldn’t sell large quantities of records unless they were sung in German,” recalls George Martin; it had “mistakenly been assumed that this was necessary for success in the German market”. So on Wednesday 29 January 1964, at EMI’s Pathé Marconi Studios in Boulogne-sur-Seine, the group taped Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand and Sie Liebt Dich, in the Beatles’ first EMI recording session outside of Abbey Road. George Martin produced, Norman Smith engineered and Jacques Esmenjaud was second engineer.^1,2
A new song, with time to spare. The German work did not fill the session. “With their equipment set up and time to spare”, the group recorded four takes of a new song, which Norman Smith announced on the tape as “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”. “Remarkably, the song was recorded from start to finish in just four takes”, and “in what was probably under one hour’s work the Beatles had started, altered and completed one of their biggest selling songs.” The title was shortened afterwards, and the song became the group’s next single.^1,2
An arrangement that changed between takes. Take one shows the song in another shape. Paul sings it in “a very bluesy vocal style similar to his late-1964 offering” She’s A Woman, and John and George add backing vocals that answer him: “Ooooh satisfied”, “Ooooh just can’t buy”. Take two was much the same. Take three switches to the style of the finished record but breaks down, and the answering voices were “an idea they had discarded by take four”. In four takes the song went from a call-and-response blues to the lean single everyone knows.¹
Take four, and what went onto it. Take four is “the final version subject to later remixes”, and on the session record it already “features a vocal overdub by Paul and a lead guitar overdub by George”, made in Paris. Kehew and Ryan describe the Paris tape differently, as “four takes of the backing track”, after which “the engineer would escort this tape back to Abbey Road, where it would later be completed with more overdubs”. The two accounts are set side by side under Studio Notes. Either way, the next documented work on the song is the mono mix made at Abbey Road on 26 February.^1,2
The chorus first. The record opens on its hook. Much as with the crashing chord that opens A Hard Day’s Night, George Martin “suggested that ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ begin with the song’s infectious chorus”, so the listener hears the title line before a single verse has been sung. It is an arranger’s decision rather than a recording one, and it is the first thing anyone hears.²

Equipment

Studio	EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, 62 Rue de Sèvres, Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris (recording, 29 Jan 1964); EMI Studios, Abbey Road, control rooms only: Studio Two (mono mixing 26 Feb; stereo mixing 10 Mar), Studio Three (tape copies 9 Jun), Studio One (stereo mixing 22 Jun)^1,2
Tape machines	Telefunken four-track at Pathé Marconi, the same kind the Beatles had recently begun using at Abbey Road, with mono and stereo Telefunkens for mixdown²
Console	12-input desk built by CLG, essentially identical to Abbey Road’s REDD.37²
Microphones	Pathé Marconi’s stock was the standard EMI Neumann set: U47, U48, U67 and M49; which were used on this song is not recorded²
Outboard / effects	RS124 Altec compressors in the Paris studio²
Guitars / bass	Lead guitar overdub by George on take four, a double-tracked solo; instrument models not recorded^1,2

Recording Timeline

29 January 1964 (Wednesday) — recording, takes 1–4, EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Jacques Esmenjaud. The session’s booked work was the German-language Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand (takes 1–11) and Sie Liebt Dich (takes 1–14), with an edit of the former; Can’t Buy Me Love took takes 1–4, and take 4 is the master. The session ran from late morning into the afternoon. The takes went onto the studio’s Telefunken four-track, and Norman Smith slated the song as “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”.^1,2
26 February 1964 (Wednesday) — mono mixing, Studio Two (control room only), 10.00am–1.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Richard Langham. Mono remixes of You Can’t Do That (from take 9) and Can’t Buy Me Love (from take 4) were the morning’s work, and the Can’t Buy Me Love remix “was identical for both territories”, so the British and American singles were cut from the same mono. The afternoon and evening went to re-makes of I Should Have Known Better and And I Love Her.^1,3
10 March 1964 (Tuesday) — stereo mixing, Studio Two, 10.00am–1.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. A stereo remix from take 4, made with stereo mixes of Long Tall Sally, I Call Your Name and You Can’t Do That. These stereo remixes “were experimental and none was ever released”, so the first stereo of the song was never heard.¹
16 March 1964 (Monday) — US single release. Capitol 5150, backed with You Can’t Do That, four days ahead of the British issue. In America the single “sold more than 2,000,000 copies within a week”.^1,3
20 March 1964 (Friday) — UK single release. Parlophone R 5114, Can’t Buy Me Love / You Can’t Do That, “truly a worldwide smash hit single”. In Britain “advance orders alone passed the 1,000,000 mark”.¹
3 June 1964 (Wednesday) — rehearsal, Studio Two, 3.00–4.00pm. The group ran through six songs with Jimmy Nicol, a 24-year-old session drummer brought in as a replacement: I Want To Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There, This Boy, Can’t Buy Me Love and Long Tall Sally.¹
9 June 1964 (Tuesday) — tape copying, Studio Three (control room only), 2.00–5.45pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Can’t Buy Me Love was among the songs copied onto “two identical tapes of the best mono remixes, for Capitol Records and United Artists”, United Artists being the company that issued the American soundtrack album of A Hard Day’s Night.^1,3
22 June 1964 (Monday) — stereo mixing, Studio One (control room only), 2.30–5.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. A new stereo remix from take 4, first in an afternoon list that went on through You Can’t Do That, Tell Me Why, Things We Said Today, Matchbox, Slow Down and Long Tall Sally, in a day of “remixing, predominantly for the A Hard Day’s Night” LP. This is the stereo that was released.^1,3
10 July 1964 (Friday) — UK LP release. A Hard Day’s Night, Parlophone PMC 1230 (mono) and PCS 3058 (stereo). Can’t Buy Me Love closes side A, after Tell Me Why.¹

Remarkably, the song was recorded from start to finish in just four takes… In what was probably under one hour’s work the Beatles had started, altered and completed one of their biggest selling songs. It was to be typical of their industry throughout the year.— Mark Lewisohn¹

Studio Notes

A Paris room built on Abbey Road lines. Pathé Marconi had a large main room, “slightly smaller than Abbey Road’s Studio One, with ample space for orchestral recordings”, and it had been treated for its acoustics in the same way: “dozens of geometric wooden boxes lined the walls, intended to deflect sound in various directions”. The equipment would have looked familiar. There was a “Telefunken four-track recorder (like the one the Beatles had only recently begun using at Abbey Road), plus mono and stereo Telefunkens for mixdown”; the “12-input desk in the Control Room was essentially identical to Abbey Road’s REDD.37, but had been built by CLG”; the microphones were “of the standard EMI variety, with the usual preference for Neumanns, namely U47, U48, U67, M49”; and there were “the RS124 Altec compressors, a favourite of Abbey Road’s engineers”. Norman Smith, all the same, “was not particularly impressed by Pathé Marconi”.²
A blues, made bright. Allan Kozinn’s reading of the song is that its verses “are set to a standard blues progression, its bright, bouncy arrangement offsetting its mildly bluesy melody and a minor key bridge”. The early takes leaned the other way, “highlighting the song’s blues character, partly by using a call and response approach”, and through take three George punctuated Paul’s lines with “a descending guitar figure in the style of Carl Perkins”. By take four the answering voices and the guitar punctuation had both been dropped.^1,4
Where were the overdubs made? The two primary accounts do not agree. In Lewisohn, take four “features a vocal overdub by Paul and a lead guitar overdub by George”, and the song was “recorded from start to finish in just four takes” in Paris; the next work on it at Abbey Road is mixing, not recording. Kehew and Ryan record “four takes of the backing track” in Paris and a tape taken back to Abbey Road, “where it would later be completed with more overdubs”, at which time the title was shortened. No Abbey Road overdub session for the song appears in the session record. The session record is the firmer evidence for what is on take four; the Abbey Road account stands beside it as a flagged alternative, not a correction.^1,2
The hi-hat that may never have been overdubbed. Geoff Emerick remembers a fault on the Paris tape, “discovered when the tape was brought back and played at our studios”: “Perhaps because it had been spooled incorrectly, the tape had a ripple in it, resulting in the intermittent loss of treble on Ringo’s hi-hat cymbal.” There was “tremendous time pressure to get the track mixed and delivered to the pressing plant”, and with the group away on tour, he says, George Martin and Norman Smith “took it upon themselves” to make a repair: Emerick “eagerly moved into the engineer’s seat for the first time”, while Norman went into the studio “to overdub a hastily set-up hi-hat onto a few bars of the song”, with a two-track to two-track dub running at the same time. Emerick has told it elsewhere as Norman leaving him alone behind the desk “whilst he overdubbed cymbal onto another Beatles song”, this one. Norman Smith, though, “denies this ever happened”, and Kehew and Ryan think Emerick is recalling the session for A Hard Day’s Night, when he was left alone in the control room while Norman overdubbed bongos.^2,5
A doubled guitar solo. The solo is George’s lead guitar overdub, and it is double-tracked. 1964 was the year “the double-tracking of instruments became commonplace on Beatles sessions”: Can’t Buy Me Love, Baby’s In Black, Words Of Love, Matchbox, She’s A Woman and I Feel Fine all “had double-tracked guitar solos”. With a fourth track to put the second pass on, doubling a solo was “a relatively simple task”, and the Paris machine was a four-track like the one at Abbey Road.^1,2
Drums that swell between the lines. The mono and the stereo are balanced differently, and the stereo carries something odder. The mono “has the rhythm track mixed more upfront, and sounds more powerful”, while “the guitar is less audible”. In both stereo mixes “some of the drum sound appears in the center, fading up in between vocal lines and then back down”, as though it were on the multitrack that way. But the outtake from the same Paris day does not have it, so it may have “happened during the work in February rather than during recording”: an effect that may make for “a better compressed sound in mono but sounds bad in stereo”.³
One mono for two countries, and a stereo that waited. The 26 February remix “was identical for both territories”, so the American single on Capitol and the British single on Parlophone, issued four days apart, carry the same mono. Stereo took longer. The first stereo remix, on 10 March, was experimental and never issued; the one that was released was made on 22 June, among a long afternoon of stereo mixes for the album, nearly five months after the Paris session. United Artists, which issued the American soundtrack album, worked from a copy of the mono and made its own “stereo” from it (see Releases).^1,3

Releases

One mono made in February served every single and every mono LP; the stereo came four months later, and the American soundtrack’s “stereo” was neither.

1964 US and UK single — Can’t Buy Me Love / You Can’t Do That (US 16 March 1964, Capitol 5150; UK 20 March 1964, Parlophone R 5114) — the 26 February mono, the same mix in both countries. The rhythm track is further forward than in stereo and the record sounds more powerful for it, with the guitar less audible. The same mono is on the UK mono LP (Parlophone PMC 1230), the American United Artists mono soundtrack (UAL 3366) and the first CD of the album (Parlophone 46437 2, 1987).
1964 US soundtrack LP — A Hard Day’s Night (1964, United Artists UAS 6366, “stereo”) — not a stereo mix at all. United Artists made it from the mono: the song stays mono throughout, except that it bounces towards the right channel and then the left at the vocal lines.
1964 UK stereo LP — A Hard Day’s Night (10 July 1964, Parlophone PCS 3058, side A track 7) — the 22 June stereo. Some of the drum sound sits in the centre and swells up between the vocal lines, then falls back, an effect that works in mono but sounds awkward spread across two channels (see Studio Notes). The same stereo is on A Collection of Beatles Oldies (1966), Hey Jude in America (1970), The Beatles 1962–1966 (1973) and the 2009 CD of the album (Apple 82413 2).
1993 stereo remix — The Beatles 1962–1966 (1993, Apple 97036 2) — a new stereo mix, made for the compilation’s 1993 CD. It keeps the same swelling drum sound in the centre.
1995 outtake — Anthology 1 (1995, Apple 34445 2) — the Paris session before the song found its shape: take 2, with the guitar solo from take 1 edited in, in mono with added reverb. The bluesy vocal and John and George’s answering “Ooooh” backing lines are both here.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 38, 40, 42–43, 45–47.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 55, 323–324, 381.
Joseph Brennan, Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations (rev. edn.), “Can’t Buy Me Love”.
Allan Kozinn, The Beatles (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), 86.
Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), ch. 6.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Can’t Buy Me Love?

Paul. Like all their joint catalogue it is credited Lennon/McCartney.⁴

Where was Can’t Buy Me Love recorded?

In Paris, at EMI’s Pathé Marconi Studios, on 29 January 1964, at the end of a session booked for the German-language versions of two earlier hits. It was the Beatles’ first EMI recording session outside of Abbey Road.^1,2

How many takes did Can’t Buy Me Love require?

Four. The song was “recorded from start to finish in just four takes”, probably in under an hour, and take 4 is the master.¹

Who plays the guitar solo on Can’t Buy Me Love?

George. His lead guitar was overdubbed onto take four, and the solo is double-tracked.^1,2

Why does Can’t Buy Me Love start with the chorus?

It was George Martin’s suggestion. As he had with the opening chord of A Hard Day’s Night, he had the song begin with its chorus.²

Are the mono and stereo mixes of Can’t Buy Me Love different?

Yes. The mono, made on 26 February 1964, has the rhythm track further forward. The stereo, made on 22 June, has some of the drum sound in the centre swelling up between the vocal lines.^1,3

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What’s distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked