I’ll Be Back

Story Section status: Outdated

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

• 1 June 1964 (Monday) — recording, takes 1–16, EMI Studio Two, 7.00–10.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. The day’s second session. The afternoon block, 2.30–5.30pm, recorded Matchbox (takes 1–5), I’ll Cry Instead in two sections (takes 1–6 and 7–8) and Slow Down (takes 1–6); after a break came I’ll Be Back, taken to sixteen takes in the evening. Takes 1–9 made the rhythm track and takes 10–16 carried the double-tracked vocals and the acoustic guitar overdub. It was the first day of recording for the side of the album that the film would not use.¹
• 10 June 1964 (Wednesday) — mono mix, Studio Two (control room only), 10.00–11.00am. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Richard Langham. Remix 1, from take 16: the song’s first mono. The session sheet’s verdict on it is two words, “Never used.” Both of the monos that were released were made twelve days later.¹
• 22 June 1964 (Monday) — mono mixes, Studio One (control room only), 10.00–11.30am. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. Remix 2 “for the UK” and remix 3 “for the USA”, both from take 16, in a block that treated Any Time At All and When I Get Home the same way, a UK and a US mono each, and also mixed And I Love Her. Two monos of one take, made within the same ninety minutes for two different markets.¹
• 22 June 1964 (Monday) — stereo mix, Studio One (control room only), 11.30am–1.00pm. Same team. Stereo mixing of I’ll Be Back from take 16, in a run that also took in And I Love Her, When I Get Home, Any Time At All, If I Fell, A Hard Day’s Night, I Should Have Known Better, I’m Happy Just to Dance with You and I Call Your Name. It was an exhaustive day of remixing, predominantly for the A Hard Day’s Night LP. “The Beatles themselves could not have been further away from the action”: they were in Wellington, New Zealand. The same all-day session is where the need for a standardised four-track layout may first have been realised (see Studio Notes).^1,2
• 10 July and 15 December 1964 — release. The British A Hard Day’s Night LP, Parlophone PMC 1230 in mono and PCS 3058 in stereo, ends with I’ll Be Back, the last song on side two. In America the song waited until Beatles ’65, first issued by Capitol on 15 December 1964 as T-2228, carrying the mono that had been mixed “for the USA” six months earlier.^1,3

Studio Notes

• Rhythm first, voices second. The take numbers record a working order: the evening split into a backing-track stage, takes 1–9, and an overdub stage, takes 10–16. That fits the standard 1964 layout. “Drums, bass, and rhythm guitar were on one track,” George Martin recalled, “lead guitar on another; the voices on a third. The fourth track was reserved for any little extras, like piano overdubs or backing voices.” A layout like that leaves room on the tape for exactly what the last seven takes added, a double-tracked vocal and an acoustic guitar. Neither source prints a track sheet for I’ll Be Back, so which track carried what on this particular tape is not on record.^1,2
• Double-tracking as a habit. The double-tracked vocal is the one overdub the session sheet names, and in 1964 it was close to universal: every single song on A Hard Day’s Night “featured double-tracked vocals at some point, as did every single the group released that year.” The available fourth track of the Telefunken machine “proved impossible to resist, and it made double-tracking a more instantly accessible procedure than it had been with Twin-Track”. I’ll Be Back is a clean instance of the method, a whole seven-take stage given over to the doubled voice and the guitar that sits with it.^1,2
• Overdubbing to a loudspeaker. When overdubbing in 1964, “the pre-recorded tracks would be played out loud in the studio” through an RLS10 “White Elephant” speaker, and the group listened to it while they performed, which opened an obvious route for the speaker’s sound to leak onto the new track. For vocal overdubs Norman Smith “called again upon the figure-of-eight pattern of the Neumann” microphone. The last seven takes of I’ll Be Back, voices and acoustic guitar over a finished rhythm track, are this method’s natural territory, though the session sheet does not record the microphones used.²
• The U47 that became a U48. Early in 1964 the studio’s Neumann U47s were modified by Neumann in Berlin to behave as U48s, gaining the figure-of-eight pattern. “For all intents and purposes, the U47s and U48s had become essentially the same microphones.” The engraved names of the U47s were changed too: instead of “U47”, their labels read “U47/8” or “U47/48”. By June, when this song was recorded, the pattern used for overdubbing was therefore available on every microphone of either name, which is also why the 1964 inventory can give “U47 or U48” for the acoustic guitar without the distinction mattering.²
• Recorded dry, echoed at the mix. “At the start of 1964, Norman Smith finally stopped printing the chamber to tape during recording. Instead, everything was recorded to tape dry, and chamber was added during the mix.” For I’ll Be Back that means the amount of echo was a control-room decision taken in June, not something fixed in the studio on 1 June, and the two June monos show it: the American mono has “a little echo while [a] has none”, [a] being the British mono.^2,3
• Two monos for two markets. On 22 June the same take was mixed twice for mono, remix 2 “for the UK” and remix 3 “for the USA”, and Any Time At All and When I Get Home were given the same pair in the same block. The two I’ll Be Back monos are audibly different. Besides the echo, the US mono “runs slower than [a] and actually wobbles at a few points”. The session sheets do not say why a separate American mono was made, and nothing is supplied here to fill that gap; what is on record is that it was made, from the same take, in the same room, within the same ninety minutes as the British one.^1,3
• Stereo made on the old desk. The new REDD.51 in Studio Two gave the engineer only severely limited panning control, through a device called the Spreader, so the album’s songs were mixed for stereo on Studio One’s REDD.37 with full panning. I’ll Be Back followed that pattern exactly: recorded in Studio Two, mixed for stereo in the Studio One control room on 22 June. It may also have been during that all-day mixing session for A Hard Day’s Night that the need for a standardised track layout was first realised, and the layout itself was “directly influenced by a peculiarity of the REDD.51 mixing console during stereo mixing.”^1,2
• Capitol’s echo, and a later correction. When the stereo mix reached America on Beatles ’65, it arrived changed: “Capitol’s stereo version has an unusually large amount of added echo.” Late in the LP era, on the 1983 black-label pressing, “a new master was made for Capitol with a version sounding like the UK version”. Across two decades of American vinyl a listener could therefore meet three different balances of this one take: the slower US mono, the echo-heavy Capitol stereo, and the 1983 master that brought the record back into line with Britain.³
• An engineer’s drum sound. Norman Smith, the year’s primary balance engineer, wanted “a fairly thick sound with a nice crisp top” from the snare, and “occasionally, I would ask Ringo to put a tea towel over his snare”, a tea towel being “a lightweight cloth common in UK kitchen and tea services”. Whether the towel went on for this song is not recorded, and nothing here assumes it did; what the year’s drum inventory does record is the STC 4038 overhead and STC 4033-A bass-drum microphones of the first half of 1964, the months in which this song was made.²

Releases

• 1964 UK mono LP — A Hard Day’s Night (10 July 1964, Parlophone PMC 1230, side two) — the 22 June mono made for Britain, dry, with no added echo, and steadier and faster than its American counterpart. It is also the mono on the album’s first CD (Parlophone 46437-2, 1987).
• 1964 UK stereo LP — A Hard Day’s Night (10 July 1964, Parlophone PCS 3058, side two) — the 22 June stereo mix, made on the Studio One desk with full panning (see Studio Notes).
• 1964 US LP — Beatles ’65 (15 December 1964, Capitol T 2228 mono / ST 2228 stereo) — the mono pressing carries the separate US mono: slower than the British one, wobbling at a few points, and with a little echo where the British mono has none. The stereo pressing carries the 22 June stereo mix with an unusually large amount of added echo; a 1983 black-label Capitol master replaced it with a version sounding like the UK record. The US mono later reappeared on CD in The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1.
• 1995 — Anthology 1 (Apple 34445-2) — two early takes from the rhythm-track stage of 1 June, in mono: take 2, a breakdown heard through to its apparent end and edited straight into the studio talk before take 3, and take 3 itself. Some ears detect a very slight processing of the track towards mock stereo.
• 2009 remaster — A Hard Day’s Night (2009, Apple 82413 2) — the stereo remaster carries the 22 June 1964 stereo mix; it is a new transfer, not a new mix.