Tracks: 1) A Hard Dayʼs Night; 2) I Should Have Known Better; 3) If I Fell; 4) Iʼm Happy Just To Dance With You; 5) And I Love Her; 6) Tell Me Why; 7) Canʼt Buy Me Love; 8) Any Time At All; 9) Iʼll Cry Instead; 10) Things We Said Today; 11) When I Get Home; 12) You Canʼt Do That; 13) Iʼll Be Back.
REVIEW
Time has solidified the status of A Hardʼs Day Night as that one early Beatles album you have to get if you are only going to get one (although the World Health Organisation has officially stated that only a person in dire need of medical help would settle for only one early Beatles album) — if only for the formal reason that this is the only early Beatles album which consists entirely of originals; the next one in line would only be Rubber Soul, belonging to the period where the band was already entering artistic maturity, and so there is no better point in time than A Hard Dayʼs Night to witness them in all the glory of unspoiled youthful innocence.
It is true that, in the UK at least, A Hard Dayʼs Night sort of turned the whole idea of a movie soundtrack on its head. In the US, which the Beatles had only just finished conquering in early ʼ64 with the success of ʽI Want To Hold Your Handʼ, it was released as a proper soundtrack — seven songs on Side A and a bunch of movie-related instrumental versions of Side B (including, among others, a very stylish Duane Eddy-style reworking of ʽThis Boyʼ as ʽRingoʼs Themeʼ — this is the track played in the movie when Ringo takes his solitary stroll upon «leaving» the band). But at home, the second side was completely unrelated to the first: six more songs, all of them originals, that had nothing to do with the movie. Yet formally the album remained a «soundtrack», perhaps intentionally and subtly provoking the casual fan into thinking that, from now on, every recording even a collection of toothpaste commercials with the Beatlesʼ name on it might still be worth buying for some great pop music.
As for artistic growth, the true strength of A Hard Dayʼs Night lies in the small details rather than in any conceptual framing. At this point, experimentation was not yet an integral part of the bandʼs career: as much as they did try out new ideas and approaches, it did not seem as if anybody was too obsessed about «pushing the limits» at the time. John and Paul were bursting with melodies, not innovative concepts, and the only global thing that A Hard Dayʼs Night proved to us was that Lennon and McCartney no longer really needed all those covers from other people — in other words, their self-confidence as songwriters had reached peak levels.
For one thing, up until that moment, the Beatles had a hard time coming up with original gritty rockers: other than ʽI Saw Her Standing Thereʼ and, to a lesser extent, ʽShe Loves Youʼ (really more of a «loud pop song» than a genuine «rocker»), they preferred to rock out on their cover versions (ʽTwist And Shoutʼ, ʽRoll Over Beethovenʼ, ʽMoneyʼ etc.). Now, with ʽCanʼt Buy Me Loveʼ they showed the world that they could just as easily craft a fast, kick-ass pop-rocker along with the best of them; and on the other end of the spectrum — with ʽYou Canʼt Do Thatʼ, that they could leisurely rock out in a mean and nasty manner, holding their own on the same field with contemporary R&B heroes and blues-rockers (I suspect that ʽYou Canʼt Do Thatʼ was John intentionally pulling a Mick, or at least intentionally trying to be mean and lean in order to scrub away some of that good-boy reputation and finally start playing on the ultra-cool side of the scruffy rhythm-and-blues people — it did not really help, but at least he got it out in the open).
At the opposite end of the pop scale, ʽAnd I Love Herʼ establishes Paul as the epitome of an independent, fully self-confident lyrical balladeer for his generation — placed at approximately the same strategic juncture on the LP as ʽTill There Was Youʼ was on the previous album, and showing that the band no longer requires the services of Meredith Willson to feed its fans with wonderful roses and sweet, fragrant meadows. Granted, we have not yet entered the Age of Seriousness, and Paul still cannot write a decent non-clichéd lyric to save his life, but here, the clichés work as a sort of minimalistic device: there is a solid charm in "I give her all my love / Thatʼs all I do / And if you saw my love / Youʼd love her too" which sits perfectly at home with the equally minimalistic four-note acoustic «Spanish» riff driving the song. And to conclude with a bit of self-confident teasing, at the end of the song that minimalistic riff is forcefully rammed home with four more definitive bars («yes, this song is simple and naive, but you will never forget this coda anyway»).
That said, at this time John still represents the dominant presence in the band. To be sure, most songs were still written collectively, yet Paulʼs stamp is strongly felt only on ʽAnd I Love Herʼ, ʽCanʼt Buy Me Loveʼ, and ʽThings We Said Todayʼ — an almost pitiable three out of thirteen! (This might actually explain some of the extra-ordinary old school fan worship towards the album, although now that in the era of «poptimism» Paul has largely replaced John in terms of significance in the public eye, the explanation no longer holds water). And by this time, Johnʼs songwriting had reached a level of perfection from which it would never fall back again (except for those short periods when he would be derailed by avantgarde temptations or politics).
Of course, not all of his songs here are equally deserving. On Side B, the rather unfortunate ʽWhen I Get Homeʼ frequently gets the flack for being cruder and less coherent in its melody than the rest (although the chief culprit is usually the lyrics: word-wise, it is like the little imbecile brother of ʽA Hard Dayʼs Nightʼ — in my case, for some reason, the line "Iʼm gonna love you till the cows come home" and especially its almost solemn, triumphant vocal delivery have always been a particular irritant). To throw in another nitpick, ʽIʼll Cry Insteadʼ suffers notably from the lack of a guitar solo: it is quite a respectable little pseudo-rockabilly number as such, but way too repetitive as a result. Most importantly, these two tunes just do not look particularly imposing against the background of everything else.
But although John is overrepresented on the album and Paul is underrepresented, now that I think of it, the starkest contrast on the record is between the best songs of each one of them — and that contrast, funny enough, is just the opposite of the publicʼs general opinion on their artistic and personal natures, since it is John who is primarily responsible for the brightest song on the album and Paul who is behind the creation of the darkest one. Coincidence, or one of those «stereotypes suck» kind of moments?..
The brightest song is, of course, ʽI Should Have Known Betterʼ. Its glorified anthemic nature feels utterly artificial against John’s personality as we know it (even as we see it in the movie in which he sings it), and yet it is probably the most successful attempt they ever made at capturing the mood of «first love feeling», swaying innocent teenagers all over the world. Three ingredients combine to make it into this kind of mind-blower: Johnʼs massive harmonica runs, triumphantly overwhelming all the other instruments for miles around; Georgeʼs brilliantly minimalistic solo which, once again, makes the right choice in mimicking Johnʼs already perfect vocal melody rather than trying to invent something different; and the singing, of course — all the prolonged notes that bookmark the verses from both ends, all the "whoah-whoahs", all the sexy "oh-oh"s and dips into falsetto in the bridge section, so many individual snares within so short a track, and not a single ounce of croony sentimentality in sight. Anybody who is incapable of reflecting and radiating pure joy at the sound of this song is probably in very deep psychological trouble.
The darkest song is, of course, ʽThings We Said Todayʼ. The lyrics are actually stronger here than on ʽAnd I Love Youʼ, but whether they really fit the doom and gloom of the tune is questionable. There is a little bit of irony in the words, but, overall, the theme of separation is much better indicated by the music: although the tempo is relatively fast and the rhythm is quite toe-tap-provoking, the minor mode of the song provokes an entirely different reaction. And as the whole thing eventually fades away on the same melody that opened it, it becomes the first in a relatively short line of «wholesale tragic» Beatle songs.
Actually, I would say that in general, there is a certain drift in A Hard Dayʼs Night from Side A to Side B: the movie-related songs are, perhaps predictably, lighter, brighter, and fluffier, whereas as we get to the second side, the mood becomes darker and denser. John allows himself to be a nasty jealous guy on ʽYou Canʼt Do Thatʼ, Paul goes all melancholic on ʽThings You Said Todayʼ, and even the opening drum crack on ʽAnytime At Allʼ would probably seem a bit out of place, had they wanted to put that song in the movie as well. Then it all ends with ʽIʼll Be Backʼ, a song that vies with ʽThingsʼ for the title of «saddest» — only barely losing out because the vocals do not quite manage to outshine the ominous tingle of "you say you will love me...".
Itʼs just these little things, really, that elevate A Hard Dayʼs Night above the general «good pop album» status. It may be all about trivial sentiments dressed in simple musical forms, but never in simple musical clichés. The slamming chord that opens the title track; the falsetto peaks on ʽI Should Have Known Betterʼ; the deletion of the verse/chorus opposition on ʽIf I Fellʼ; and so on and on and on, from the bright lights of Side A to the relative darkness of Side B.
There is nothing genuinely «revolutionary» about the album, because the songwriting and the artistic personae of John and Paul had already become fully formed on With The Beatles. There is simply a sense of a sort of completeness: it is the ultimate «light-pop» experience of its epoch, and an experience that could not even theoretically be reproduced once pop-rock had gotten out of its infancy stage. It is, at the same time, utterly naïve / formulaic and hunting for genius musical decisions. Genius musical decisions would, of course, be quite plentiful in years to come, but the virginity would be lost forever. Look at all the «twee-pop» bands of today — many of them are quite fine, but nobody in their right mind strives to close up that hymen, understanding well enough that it is impossible. As of the 2010s, naïveness and innocence in attitude is reserved for the likes of Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran — mainstream puppets that are almost always the laughing stock of «advanced» music listeners. The miracle of A Hard Dayʼs Night is in that, even today, «advanced» music listeners may easily listen to it without laughing it off, and cherish it as one of the greatest pure pop albums ever made.
P.S. A few words about the movie are probably in order as well. Time has been a little less kind to the movie than the accompanying album, I think. In 1964, it was seen as an even more colossal breakthrough: Richard Lester showed the world that a «pop artist movie» could actually be seen as an individual work of art, not just a dumb vehicle for the current teen idol to show off his charisma. That alone was a staggering discovery, rendering insignificant the fact that most of the Beatles could barely act (fortunately, Lester had the good sense not to ask them to act, so most of the time they were just being themselves — good news for John, worse for the rest of them), or that most of the jokes, puns, and gags, now that you look at them with a fresh eye, arenʼt really all that funny. (One exception is the cut-in scene between George and the advertising executive — some truly wicked dialog out there, as relevant for us today as it was fifty years ago, if not more so). Nevertheless, even if the movie is not as hot on its own as it is sometimes proclaimed to be, it is still one of the most fascinating — and, in a way, «authentic» — documents of its era. For best effect, watch it on a double bill with Viva Las Vegas and savor the difference.
Only Solitaire: The Beatles reviews
I think you predicted the reappraisal of this album well even when you first reviewed it, George. In each revision of Rolling Stone's Best Albums list, this one keeps moving up the ranks (though it's at #263 now, nobody's elevating it into the Pet Sounds pantheon or anything), and now that the world knows that Rubber Soul is so good, every good hipster needs an overlooked gem to talk about, and I think AHDN is a great candidate for it.