A Hard Day's Night

Today we're beginning the album A Hard Day's Night, released on July 10th, 1964 as the soundtrack to The Beatles' first film of the same name. (I'm currently waiting for the movie to come out on Netflix, so when it does I'll do a review of it. If it takes too long I'll just see if it's at the library lol.) Wikipedia says that "the album and film are said to portray the classic image of the Beatles, as it was released at the height of Beatlemania." It's the first Beatles album to feature solely original material; most of the songs were written primarily by Lennon.

The name of the album came about in an odd way. It was something Ringo Starr said one day, what John (in the 1980 Playboy interview) called, "you know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny... just said it." Ringo himself, in an interview with DJ Dave Hull in 1964, said about his creation: 

We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day... and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '...night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'

(Ringo's so quirky--he reminds me of Virginia, the mom from "Raising Hope", who always mispronounces things, so words like "hereditary" become "heredimatary".) At any rate, Ringo's quote first inspired the film, and then the song, which seems backward but isn't really. :)

As for the song, "A Hard Day's Night" is the first song on the album. It was an important step in their continued success in America: "Featuring a prominent and unique opening chord, the song's success demonstrated that The Beatles were not a one-hit wonder in the United States." 

There is a great deal of fuss made over the opening chord of this song (you can listen to it here). In fact, there's a whole section on the song's wiki page about it, beginning with quotes like, "'A Hard Day's Night' is immediately identifiable before the vocals even begin, thanks to George Harrison's unmistakable Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string guitar's 'mighty opening chord'." There's lots of discussion and debate over what chord(s) it is, precisely, as well as other aspects of it. Definitely worth having a look-see if you're really into the technical side of music.

I love this song--it's just the thing to perk you up after a long day (or night) of work. :) So, that's it for today... See you later!

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Heard It Tally: 4

Songs Completed: 38