   #copyright

I Want to Hold Your Hand

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Musical Recordings and
compositions

   "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
   "I Want to Hold Your Hand" cover
   Single by The Beatles
   from the album Meet the Beatles! in the United States
   Not featured on an original album in the United Kingdom
   Released November 29, 1963 (UK)
   December 26, 1963 (U.S.)
   Format vinyl record 7"
   Recorded Abbey Road: 17 October 1963
   Genre Rock and roll
   Length 2:25
   Label Parlophone R5084 (UK)
   Capitol 5112 (US)
   Writer(s) Lennon-McCartney
   Producer(s) George Martin
   Chart positions
     * #1 (UK)
     * #1 (U.S.)

   The Beatles singles chronology
   " She Loves You"
   (1963) "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
   (1963) " Can't Buy Me Love"
   (1964)

   "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is a 1963 Beatles song that was written by
   John Lennon and Paul McCartney and started the British Invasion of the
   United States music charts. It was the first Beatles record to be made
   using 4-track equipment, and The Beatles' first number one song on the
   Billboard Hot 100 chart, heralding nineteen more number one singles
   from The Beatles in the United States. It also held the top spot in the
   United Kingdom charts, where a million copies of the single had already
   been ordered on its release. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" became The
   Beatles' best-selling single worldwide.

   McCartney and Lennon did not have any particular inspiration for the
   song, unlike some of their later hits such as " Yesterday", "Hey Jude"
   and " Let It Be". Instead, they had received specific instructions from
   manager Brian Epstein to write a song with the American market in mind.
   The song was also recorded in German as "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand"
   ("Come, give me your hand"), one of the only two times The Beatles
   recorded a song entirely in a language other than English (the other
   being " She Loves You").

Writing in a basement

   Lennon and McCartney were encouraged by manager Brian Epstein to write
   something intended to cater to the interests of American listeners. The
   two Beatles sat at a piano in the basement of a house, and began
   jamming with it. However, whose house it was is in contention. Most
   sources state that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was composed in the
   cellar of Jane Asher's home in Wimpole Street; she was McCartney's
   girlfriend at the time. This story was supported by Lennon; in
   September 1980 (the interview was published in the month of his death,
   December of the same year), he told Playboy magazine:

     We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball.
     Like in 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord
     that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the
     cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh
     you-u-u/ got that something...' And Paul hits this chord, and I turn
     to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days,
     we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each
     other's noses.

   McCartney, however, disagreed, saying only a year after writing the
   song:

     Let's see, we were told we had to get down to it. So we found this
     house when we were walking along one day. We knew we had to really
     get this song going, so we got down in the basement of this disused
     house and there was an old piano. It wasn't really disused, it was
     rooms to let. We found this old piano and started banging away.
     There was a little old organ too. So we were having this informal
     jam and we started banging away. Suddenly a little bit came to us,
     the catch line. So we started working on it from there. We got our
     pens and paper out and just wrote down the lyrics. Eventually, we
     had some sort of a song, so we played it for our recording manager
     and he seemed to like it. We recorded it the next day.

   In 1994, McCartney stated he agreed with Lennon's description of the
   circumstances surrounding the composition of "I Want to Hold Your
   Hand", but did not specifically mention Lennon's claim that it had been
   written in Asher's home: "'Eyeball to eyeball' is a very good
   description of it. That's exactly how it was. 'I Want To Hold Your
   Hand' was very co-written."

   McCartney and Lennon did not have a specific inspiration for the song.
   However, they were considerably impressed by the song, and so was
   Epstein, who had been in a state of worry after several of The Beatles'
   earlier singles had flopped in the U.S. charts. Upon hearing the song,
   goes the legend, Epstein confidently booked several venues in America
   for Beatles performances, a full two months before the song came out on
   a single. The Beatles took the story further when they arrived in
   America, declaring that they refused to go to America until they had a
   number one there. However, in reality, Epstein first booked a venue for
   a Beatles performance in America before "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was
   even recorded.

In the studio

   The Beatles started recording "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at Abbey Road
   Studios in Studio 2 on 17 October 1963. Notably, this marked the end of
   The Beatles using two-track recording; from then until 1968, all
   Beatles releases were recorded in four-track. A studio montage in The
   Beatles Anthology includes an amusing audio clip of McCartney
   instructing Ringo on the dynamics of the drums in the song's intro.

   "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was one of the few Beatles songs to be
   recorded in German. The German arm of EMI (the parent company of The
   Beatles' then record label, Parlophone Records) was convinced that The
   Beatles' releases would not sell unless they were in German. The
   Beatles detested the idea, but George Martin managed to persuade them
   to give it a try. However, when they were due to record the German
   version on 27 January 1964, they did not arrive for the session.

   Martin later recounted his anger at The Beatles' rudeness:

     The boys were enjoying their new life. They were very busy and they
     were tasting their first fruits of success. I had asked them to
     appear at the EMI studios one afternoon and I got there with this
     German fellow, who came to coach them with this language and when
     the time came, I think it was four o'clock, there was no sign of
     them, at all! I was a bit puzzled by this, and thought, 'I wonder
     what has happened to them?' So I rang their hotel and I spoke to
     Neil Aspinall, who said, 'Oh, they are having tea. They're not going
     to come.' And so I said, 'But, why?' And he said, 'Well, they don't
     want to. They've decided they don't want to make a record in German,
     after all.' I was absolutely livid! So, I hopped in a cab, together
     with the German, and I tore to the George V Hotel and I burst in on
     the scene and they were all having tea there, the four Beatles, the
     two road managers, and the only woman present was Jane Asher. It was
     rather like the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice In Wonderland
     because Jane was pouring tea from a China tea pot with her long gold
     hair and the others sitting around, rather like the March Hare. And
     as I burst into the room, and yelled at them, they all fled to
     corners of the room. The place disintegrated. There wasn't anyone
     left at the table except Jane Asher pouring tea. The four mop-tops
     were in each corner of the room, just looking over a cushion, or a
     chair, pretending to hide, and laughing. I said, 'Look, you really
     owe this fellow a great apology. He's come all this way, over from
     Germany, so, say you're sorry.' And they, in their cheeky Liverpool
     way, said, 'Oh, sorry, so sorry!' After that, they came and did the
     German record in the studio. They still didn't like doing it very
     much, but they did it. That was the very first time I had a row with
     them, and probably the only time.

   Two days later, The Beatles recorded "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" at the
   Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris, one of the few times in their career
   that they recorded outside of London.

Launching the invasion

   On 29 November 1963, Parlophone Records released to the United Kingdom
   "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with " This Boy" joining it on the single's
   B-side. Demand had been building for quite a while, as evidenced by the
   one million advance orders for the single. When it was finally
   released, the response was phenomenal. A week after it entered the
   British charts, on 14 December 1963, it knocked " She Loves You",
   another Beatles' song, off the top spot, the first such instance of the
   same act taking over from itself at number one in British history,
   clinging on to it for a full five weeks. It stayed in the charts for
   another fifteen weeks afterwards, and incredibly made a one week return
   to the charts on 16 May 1964. Beatlemania was peaking at that time;
   during the same period, The Beatles set an incredible record by owning
   the top two positions on both the album and single charts in the United
   Kingdom.

   EMI and Brian Epstein finally convinced American label Capitol Records,
   a subsidiary of EMI, that The Beatles could make an impact in the
   United States, leading to the release of "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
   with "I Saw Her Standing There" on the B-Side as a single on December
   26, 1963. Capitol had previously resisted issuing Beatle recordings in
   the U.S. This resulted in the relatively modest Vee-Jay and Swan labels
   releasing the group's earlier Parlophone counterparts in the U.S.
   Seizing the opportunity, Epstein demanded US$40,000 from Capitol to
   promote the single (the most The Beatles had ever previously spent on
   an advertising campaign was US$5,000). The single had actually been
   intended for release in mid-January of 1964, coinciding with the
   planned appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. However, a
   15-year old fan of The Beatles, Marsha Albert, was determined to get
   hold of the single earlier. Later, she said:

     It wasn't so much what I had seen, it's what I had heard. They had a
     scene where they played a clip of ' She Loves You' and I thought it
     was a great song ... I wrote that I thought [The Beatles] would be
     really popular here, and if [ deejay Carroll James] could get one of
     their records, that would really be great.

   James was the deejay for WWDC, a radio station in Washington, D.C.
   Eventually he decided to pursue Albert's suggestion to him, and asked
   the station's promotion director to get British Overseas Airways
   Corporation to ship in a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from
   Britain. Albert related what happened next: "Carroll James called me up
   the day he got the record and said 'If you can get down here by 5
   o'clock, we'll let you introduce it.'" Albert managed to get to the
   station in time, and introduced the record with: "Ladies and gentlemen,
   for the first time on the air in the United States, here are The
   Beatles singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.'"

   The song proved to be a huge hit, a surprise for the station, as they
   catered mainly to a more staid audience, which would normally be
   expecting songs from singers such as Andy Williams or Bobby Vinton
   instead of rock and roll. James took to playing the song repeatedly on
   the station, often turning down the song in the middle to make the
   declaration, "This is a Carroll James exclusive", to avoid theft of the
   song by other stations.

   Capitol threatened to get a legal injunction banning airplay of "I Want
   to Hold Your Hand", which was already being spread by James to a couple
   of deejays in Chicago and St. Louis. James and WWDC ignored the threat,
   and Capitol came to the conclusion that they could well take advantage
   of the publicity, releasing the single two weeks ahead of schedule on
   December 26.

   The demand was insatiable; in the first three days alone, a quarter
   million copies had already been sold. In New York City, 10,000 copies
   flew off the shelves every hour. Capitol was so overloaded by the
   demand, it contracted part of the job of pressing copies off to
   Columbia Records and RCA. By January 18, the song had started its
   fifteen-week chart run, and on February 1, The Beatles finally achieved
   their first number-one in America, emulating the success of another
   British group, The Tornados with " Telstar", which was number one on
   the Billboard charts for three weeks over Christmas and New Year
   1962/63. The Beatles finally relinquished the number one spot after
   seven weeks, passing the baton to the very song they had knocked off
   the top in Britain; "She Loves You". Hunter Davies biography on the
   band states that I Want to Hold Your Hand received certification for
   sales of 5 million copies in the US alone. The replacement of
   themselves at the summit of the US charts was the first time since
   Elvis Presley in 1956, with "Love Me Tender" beating out "Don't Be
   Cruel", that an act had dropped off the top of the American charts only
   to be replaced by another of their releases.

   With that, the "British Invasion" of America had been launched, and the
   music scene there would never be the same. Throughout the whole of
   1964, only British artists were flying high at the top of the American
   charts; besides The Beatles, other dominant British acts of that period
   included the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the
   Hollies and Herman's Hermits.

   The American single's front and back sleeves featured a photograph of
   The Beatles with Paul holding a cigarette. In 1984, Capitol Records
   airbrushed it out, for their re-release of the single.

   "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was also released in America on Meet the
   Beatles!, which groundbreakingly altered the American charts by
   actually outselling the single. Beforehand, the American markets were
   more in favour of hit singles instead of whole albums; however, two
   months after the album's release, it had shipped more than
   three-and-a-half million copies, a little over a hundred thousand ahead
   of the "I Want to Hold Your Hand" single.

Aftermath

   As mentioned, the song was greeted by raving fans on both sides of the
   Atlantic, but dismissed by some critics as nothing more than just
   another fad song that would not hold up to the tests of time. Cynthia
   Lowery of the Associated Press expressed her exasperation with
   Beatlemania by saying of The Beatles: "Heaven knows we've heard them
   enough. It has been impossible to get a radio weather bulletin or time
   signal without running into 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'." Another critic
   declared that The Beatles were "really pretty boring to listen to.
   Their act is absolutely nothing," and that "[t]heir greatest asset is
   that they look like rather likable, almost innocent young fellows who
   have merely hit a lucky thing."

   Bob Dylan was impressed by The Beatles' innovation, saying, "They were
   doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just
   outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid." Dylan for a time
   thought The Beatles at one point were singing "I get high" instead of
   "I can't hide". He was understandably surprised when he met them and
   found out that at the time, none of them had actually smoked marijuana.
   Even The Beatles could be unsure of the lyrics; some concert recordings
   of theirs indicate that Lennon sometimes sang "I want to hold your
   head".

   Although the song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the
   Year, the award went to Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz for " The Girl
   from Ipanema". However, in 1998, the song won the Grammy Hall of Fame
   Award. It has also made the list in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's
   500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. In addition, the Recording
   Industry Association of America, the National Endowment for the Arts
   and Scholastic Press have named "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as one of
   the Songs of the Century.

   "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was not subject to numerous cover versions
   like other Beatles' songs such as "Yesterday" or " Something", although
   Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops Orchestra did attempt an instrumental
   version in 1964, which actually rose as high as number 55 in the
   American charts. Another notable cover was by The Moving Sidewalks who
   did a psychedelic version in the late 1960s. French parodic band Odeurs
   covered the song as a military march sung with a strong German accent.
   Most notably, bop-guitarist Grant Green included a stunning jazz
   recording of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as the title track of a 1965
   album. Interestingly, the other tunes were jazz standards; indicating
   perhaps Green's prescient appreciation of The Beatles' burgeoning
   musicality. The American band Sparks also delivered an unusual
   Philadelphia Sound-style cover of the song in the mid-1970s. It was
   also covered by R&B band Lakeside. The Beatles/ Metallica fusion group
   Beatallica performed an homage to the song, titled "I Want to Choke
   Your Band", on their 2004 eponymous second album. Neil Innes' The
   Rutles also memorably pastiched the song with laser-like accuracy as
   "Hold My Hand" in 1978.

Melody and lyrics

   Reminiscent of Tin Pan Alley and Brill Building techniques and an
   example of modified thirty-two-bar form, the song is written in a
   two-bridge model, with only an intervening verse to connect them. The
   original song has no real "lead" singer or even a clearly defined
   melody, as Lennon and McCartney sing in harmony with each other. It
   could be argued that Lennon is leading McCartney, as Lennon's vocals
   are more prominent on the recording; however, when The Beatles
   performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964,
   McCartney's vocals could be heard more clearly (although this may have
   been due to a poor audio mix). The song opens with a few stuttering
   guitar chords, then, in true Beatles fashion, lunges upward, relying on
   a surprising minor chord, joined by George Harrison's guitar riffs.
   During each verse, the singers make a sudden jump a whole octave higher
   with the word "hand", harmonized with a jump of a fifth.

   The song is about a man expressing his feelings for his lover, and at
   first, the singing is done in a seemingly shy and bashful manner, with
   the singer pausing every few words: "Oh yeah, I (pause) tell you
   something (pause) I think you'll understand". However, when the chorus
   is reached and the singers make the octave-long jump, there is no
   hiding their feelings, with an uninterrupted "I want to hold your
   hand". The lyrics are straightforward and simple compared with later
   works of The Beatles.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_to_Hold_Your_Hand"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
