The Beatles’ fourth US album, A Hard Day’s Night, was the soundtrack for their debut film. It was released in America on 26 June 1964.
A Hard Day’s Night was released by United Artists Records, whose parent company owned the rights to the film. The catalogue numbers were United Artists UA 6366 (mono) and United Artists UAS 6366 (stereo).
The album contained all seven songs from the film, plus ‘I’ll Cry Instead’, which was written for the film but cut at the last minute. In addition to The Beatles’ original songs, there were also four orchestral instrumentals by George Martin and his orchestra. All tracks were credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
A Hard Day’s Night topped the US Billboard chart for 14 weeks, which was the longest run at the top for any album in 1964.
The tracklisting was as follows:
- ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
- ‘Tell Me Why’
- ‘I’ll Cry Instead’
- ‘I Should Have Known Better’ (orchestral instrumental)
- ‘I’m Happy Just To Dance With You’
- ‘And I Love Her’ (orchestral instrumental)
- ‘I Should Have Known Better’
- ‘If I Fell’
- ‘And I Love Her’
- Ringo’s Theme (This Boy) (orchestral instrumental)
- ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’
- ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (orchestral instrumental)
I guess I’ll Cry Instead made its first appearance because it contains an extra since it’s the longer version. Right, guys?
Question.. just obtained a stereo copy of the UA LP and all of the Beatles songs sound to be mono mixes, although the label says “high fidelity stereo”. The non-Beatles songs do appear to be stereo to my ear. Did UA not have real stereo versions of these songs and actually release it this way?
This appears to be the case, Matt. True stereo remixes of the songs that wound up on the United Artists soundtrack LP were not created until June 22, and the UA LP was released in the States on June 26 — far too short a time period to ship stereo tapes to the US and physically prepare an album for release. Thus having only mono tapes to work with, UA apparently decided to fudge their “stereo” album.
Further details can be found here:
Even though this LP had fake “Stereo” mixes I always preferred them to the stereo ones, especially And I Love Her which is a single track lead vocal except in spots. The stereo version was all double tracked, which I read was a mistake on the engineer’s part. To me the double track makes it too heavy. And then there’s the extended version of I’ll Cry Instead…..
There were pressings of the album that did have mono mixes of the songs and stereo George Martin tracks
But there IS a full stereo AND mono versions of the album
In 1980, Capitol released A HARD DAY’S NIGHT soundtrack. The LP contained the purple Capitol label. This was the soundtrack’s final pressing, as it eventually went out of print for good. Recently, however, a CD version was released in the US albums box set.
Looking for info. on my sealed pressing which is apparently a
counterfiet.
It’s a Stereo version and appears as nirmal until…
Released Thru
Alun Owen
Screenplay By
United Artusts
Does have ” I Cry Instead”.
I have a couple first press mono copies and I’ll Cry Instead is listed as I Cry Instead.
Will Giles Martin un-mix and then remix this?
So, is the ‘I Cry Instead’ version more valuable?