A Hard Day’s Night began a new era for The Beatles. They were evolving into a whole new band. In the early days, they covered Chuck Berry and Little Richard songs. The gigantic success of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” shook up the world.
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The soundtrack of their first feature-length movie called for new material from John Lennon and Paul McCartney. This was when the band was evolving past “yeah, yeah, yeah,” but not yet moving into the experimental directions they would travel. This acoustic phase produced “If I Fell,” “No Reply,” and “I’ll Follow The Sun.” They still covered early rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm ‘n’ blues, and rockabilly songs, but were finding their footing. Let’s look at the meaning behind the crushingly beautiful “And I Love Her” by The Beatles.
I give her all my love
That’s all I do
And if you saw my love
You’d love her too
I love her
A Love Song
The title says it all. The verses are all just a set-up to deliver the big payoff. “And I Love Her” is almost an aside, an “oh, by the way” kind of thing. But that line does all of the heavy lifting in the song. McCartney was inspired by girlfriend Jane Asher, whose house he lived in. In Barry Miles’ biography Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, he remembered, “I can actually see Margaret Asher’s upstairs drawing room. I remember playing it there, not writing it necessarily.”
In his own book The Lyrics: 1956 To the Present, McCartney recalled, “Precisely because Jane was my girlfriend, I wanted to tell her there that I loved her, so that’s what initially inspired this song; that’s what it was. Listening to it so many years later, I do think it’s a nice melody. It starts with F-sharp minor, not with the root chord of E major, and you gradually work your way back. When I’d finished it, I felt almost immediately proud of it. I thought, ‘This is a good’ un.”
It certainly is. The lyrics are heartfelt and honest. The guitar solo is perfectly placed as well.
She gives me everything
And tenderly
The kiss my lover brings
She brings to me
And I love her
The Recording
The song was worked on for three days beginning on February 25, 1964 (guitarist George Harrison’s birthday). Two takes were recorded using the traditional electric guitar lineup. The band was unhappy with the results, and they returned to Abbey Road Studios the following day to attempt 17 takes. Harrison and Lennon switched to acoustic guitars, and drummer Ringo Starr switched to bongos. Two takes on February 27 got the job done. A second McCartney vocal was overdubbed, and Starr added claves. The arrangement evolved over those three days.
McCartney remembered in The Lyrics, “I brought it to the recording session where The Beatles’ producer George Martin listened to it. We were about to record it, and he said, ‘I think it would be good with an introduction.’ And I swear, right there and then, George Harrison went, ‘Well, how about this?’ and he played the opening riff, which is such a hook; the song is nothing without it. We were working very fast and spontaneously coming up with ideas.”
A love like ours
Could never die
As long as I
Have you near me
The Middle Eight
By all accounts, McCartney composed most all of the song. Lennon told David Sheff in 1980, “‘ And I Love Her’ is Paul again. I consider it his first ‘Yesterday.’ You know, the big ballad in A Hard Day’s Night. The middle eight, I helped with that.”
McCartney responded in Many Years From Now, “The middle eight is mine. I would say that John probably helped with the middle eight, but he can’t say, ‘It’s mine.’ I wrote this on my own.”
Bright are the stars that shine
Dark is the sky
I know this love of mine
Will never die
And I love her
The Key Change
“Another thing worth recalling is that George Martin was inspired to add a chord modulation in the solo of the song, a key change that he knew would be musically very satisfying; we shifted the chord progression to start with G minor instead of F-sharp minor—so, up a semitone,” McCartney recalled. “I think George Martin’s classical training told him that that would be a really interesting change. And it is. And this sort of help is what started to make The Beatles’ stuff better than that of other songwriters.
“In the case of this song, the two Georges—George Harrison with the intro and then George Martin on the key change into the solo—gave it a bit more musical strength,” he continued. “We were saying to people, ‘We’re a little bit more musical than the average bear.’ And then, of course, the song—which is now in F major, or arguably D minor—eventually finishes on that bright D major chord, a lovely, pleasing resolution. So, I was very proud of that. It was very satisfying to make that record and to have written that song for Jane.”
Bright are the stars that shine
Dark is the sky
I know this love of mine
Will never die
And I love her
The Instrumental
Martin recorded orchestral versions of many Beatles songs and released his own albums. The American soundtrack to A Hard Day’s Night included four wordless versions. The instrumental version of “And I Love Her” was released as a single by George Martin & His Orchestra. The song failed to make the charts, peaking at No. 105. The Beatles version with words fared much better, peaking at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, a recording by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain performing the song was discovered. It was included in the movie Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and released as a single.
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Photo by William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
