In 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr starred in their first film, A Hard Day’s Night. They acted in the film and wrote music to go with it. While Lennon found some portions of the movie embarrassing, he was happy with the songs he wrote with McCartney. Here are Lennon’s favorite songs from A Hard Day’s Night.
John Lennon shared his favorite songs from ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
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As with most of The Beatles’ early albums, Lennon and McCartney took over songwriting duties. They wrote all 13 tracks on the album together. Lennon said it was a challenge, though they enjoyed working on it.
“Paul and I enjoyed writing the music for the film. There were times when we honestly thought we’d never get the time to write all the material,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “But we managed to get a couple finished while we were in Paris. And three more completed in America, while we were soaking up the sun on Miami Beach.”
Lennon said he had four favorite songs from the album.
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“There are four I really go for: ‘Can’t Buy Me Love,’ ‘If I Fell,’ ‘I Should Have Known Better’ — a song with harmonica we feature during the opening train sequence — and ‘Tell Me Why,’ a shuffle number that comes at the end of the film.”
John Lennon said Ringo Starr inspired the title for ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
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Though Lennon and McCartney were the sole songwriters, Starr inspired the titular song.
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“And he said after a concert, ‘Phew, it’s been a hard day’s night,’” McCartney recalled, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “John and I went, ‘What? What did you just say?’ He said, ‘I’m bloody knackered, man, it’s been a hard day’s night.’”
Lennon liked it so much that he included it in his book, In His Own Write. The band later used it for the song.
“I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title from something Ringo had said,” Lennon said. “I had used it in In His Own Write, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo, one of those malapropisms — a Ringoism — said not to be funny, just said. So Dick Lester said, ‘We are going to use that title,’ and the next morning I brought in the song.”
The writing process was like ‘hysteria’
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Lennon said the writing process for A Hard Day’s Night symbolized the exciting beginning of his collaboration with McCartney. Though they initially weren’t sure they would be able to get everything done, the music came quickly when they began to write.
“The early stuff — the ‘Hard Day’s Night’ period, I call it — was the sexual equivalent of the beginning hysteria of a relationship,” he said in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff. “And the Sgt. Pepper–Abbey Road period was the mature part of the relationship.”
