I'll Be Back

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I'll Be Back is a song off The Beatles' 1964 album A Hard Day's Night. It was written by John Lennon, with help from Paul McCartney.

Contents

Writing

John Lennon wrote I'll Be Back around the chords of the 1961 Del Shannon song Runaway. John told Playboy in 1980 that the song was "Me completely. My variation on the chords of a Del Shannon song. Paul wrote one, too. Mine was I'll Be Back." On the first two Beatles albums, Please Please Me and With The Beatles, the last track were rockers sung by Lennon (Twist And Shout and Money (That's What I Want), repectively). This song, the final track on A Hard Day's Night, showed that they were growing as musicians with this song's slight sadness. Paul recalled in his authorized biography, Many Years From Now, that the song was "co-written but it was largely John's idea. When we knew we were writing for something like an album he would write a few in his spare moments, like this batch here. He'd bring them in, we'd check 'em. I'd write a couple and we'd throw 'em at each other, and then there would be a couple that were more co-written. But you just had a certain amount of time. You knew when the recording date was and so a week or two before then we'd get into it." Unusually, the song contains no chorus, though it does have two bridges. Also unusual, the introduction and outtro feature switches between A-major and A-minor. John said of the song in a 1972 issue of Hit Parader that it was "A nice tune, though the middle is a bit tatty."

Recording

I'll Be Back was recorded on June 1, 1964, in sixteen takes. The first nine takes were the basic track, and the rest were lead and backing vocals, as well as Paul McCartney's acoustic guitar part. The song went through different arrangements during the reording. Takes 2 and 3 were included on Anthology 1 in 1995. Take 2 shows how the song was originally intended to be a waltz in 3/4 time. However, this take breaks dwn, as Lennon claimed that it was "too hard to sing." Take 3 was in the same time signature as the album version, however, it was performed on electric guitars as opposed to the acoustic final version. It is believed that The Beatles wanted to record a fourteenth song for A Hard Day's Night on July 3. However, Ringo became ill with tonsilitis and pharyngitis at a photo session that morning. Because of this, The Beatles recorded with replacement drummer Jimmy Nicol so he could rehearse with them to prepare for their upcoming world tour. This rehearsal took place between 2:30 and 5:30 PM at Abbey Road Studios, replacing a pre-scheduled session. After Nicol left, the remaining Beatles, with an unknown drummer, recorded demos of You Know What To Do, No Reply, It's For You, and even did a quick run-through of You're My World.

Recording Sessions


Personnel

The Beatles

Prouction

Available Versions

Available On

Cover Versions

Source

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