It's Only Love
From BeatlesWiki
It's Only Love is a song off The Beatles' 1965 album Help!. It was written mainly by John Lennon.
Contents |
AKA and Working Titles
- That's A Nice Hat: Working Title
Writing
It's Only Love was written mainly by John Lennon with a small amount of help from Paul McCartney. John would later criticize the song for it's corny lyrics, later telling Hit Parader, "That's the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric." He said in another interview that this song and Run For Your Life, also written by Lennon, were his least favorite Beatles songs. John said, "It's Only Love is mine. I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics were abysmal. I always hated that song." Paul cowrote the song at John's Weybridge home. He was not as harsh in his criticism of the song. "Sometimes we didn't fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like It's Only Love. If a lyric was really bad we'd edit it, but we weren't that fussy about it, because it's only a rock 'n' roll song. I mean, this is not literature."
Recording
It's Only Love was recorded in a three-hour session on June 15, 1965. Six takes were recorded, four of which were complete. John's vocals were overdubbed onto Take 6. George's electric guitar parts were recorded using a rotating Leslie speaker, which was later used for John's vocal effect on Tomorrow Never Knows. An edit of Takes 2 and 3 were included on Anthology 2. Take 3 is the breakdown included during the beginning, while Take 2 was the majority of the track.
Personnel
The Beatles
- Lead Vocals: John Lennon
- Rythm Guitar: John Lennon
- Bass: Paul McCartney
- Lead Guitar: George Harrison
- Drums: Ringo Starr
- Tambourine: Ringo Starr
Production
- Producer: George Martin
- Engineer: Norman Smith
Available Versions
Available On
- Help! UK edition, 1965.
- Rubber Soul US edition, 1965.
- Love Songs, 1977.
- Anthology 2, 1996.
