Studio Two, EMI Studios, Abbey Road
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Following Jimmie Nicol’s hastily-arranged rehearsal ahead of The Beatles’ world tour, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison recorded three songs in Abbey Road’s Studio Two.
The session lasted from 5.30-9pm, and began with George Harrison recording a demo of ‘You Know What To Do’, which remained unreleased until Anthology 1 in 1995; documentation for the session was discovered in 1991, but the tapes only came to light in 1993.
Harrison first recorded a test version of the song lasting just 30 seconds. It was followed by just one full take, lasting 1’56”, which was issued on Anthology 1.
The second song was a version of ‘You’re My World’, which had been a hit for Cilla Black earlier in 1964. It was not a Lennon-McCartney composition, but had been produced by George Martin and recorded at EMI Studios, Abbey Road.
McCartney led Lennon and Harrison through a brief, off-the-cuff rendition of ‘You’re My World’ lasting for a little over 30 seconds. It has been reported that on this day they also recorded a demo of ‘It’s For You’, a song which was later given to Black, but this did not happen.
The third recording was a demo of John Lennon’s ‘No Reply’, which eventually surfaced on Beatles For Sale. Curiously, a drummer is on the tape, although Nicol had departed by this time. It is likely that McCartney filled the drum stool on this occasion, and that Harrison played bass guitar.
There has also been speculation that, had Starr not been taken ill, one of these songs would have been included on A Hard Day’s Night, which was, unusually, released with 13 tracks.
Towards the end of the session, the three Beatles taped a number of overdubs onto ‘Any Time At All’ and ‘Things We Said Today’, which were the last recordings made for A Hard Day’s Night.
Firstly, I don’t see how it can be Norman Smith on drums because he announces the take.
The drumming on No Reply is truly terrible and by 1968 Paul was a far, far better drummer than this so I doubt he was this bad 4 years earlier. It’s also extremely unlikely it’s Jimmy Nicol – if they heard him drum like this I doubt they would have hired him for the tour!
I think it’s John on guitar, Paul on bass (the bass isn’t great either but I think that’s more because of the drumming) and George on drums.
I agree with your belief that it’s likely to be John on guitar, Paul on bass and George covering for Ringo on drums. If it was George covering on drums, he obviously did his best to play a basic beat, and being a demo, it was okay for him not to play perfectly. He must’ve known that he was going to be back to playing guitar on the final version once Ringo was back.
Paul is a capable drummer, that’s true, and he freely admits that he can play straight 4/4, but not shuffles.
With John and Paul sharing the vocals on the demo of “No Reply”, they obviously would’ve sung into the same microphone, and therefore it wouldn’t have been possible for Paul to be on drums; besides, George couldn’t have possibly played Paul’s left-handed bass.