I Saw Her Standing There, and its incredible recording process revealed here and now.

The Beatles at this point had recorded and released two British singles with varying degrees of success. “Love Me Do” had reached number 17 in December 1962, and “Please Please Me” had reached number 2 in February 1963. In order to capitalize on the national success of their recent single, George Martin, their record producer, decided to hastily record an album to satisfy whatever needs their fan base may have had. They were asked by George Martin what could be recorded quickly with only one day scheduled at EMI Studios. The answer the Beatles gave him was their “stage act,” which by this time contained the five-month-old “Seventeen,” as the song still held this unfamiliar early title at that time. They needed to record ten songs to complete the album, which would also include both sides of the two previously released singles, to comprise the standard fourteen songs per album in Britain.

The recording date was February 11th, 1963, and the song “Seventeen” rolled onto tape during the 10 am morning session that day. Although the first song recorded in this session was “There’s A Place” and that they recorded 10 takes of that song, “Seventeen” must have started around 11:30 am. The group played all of their usual instruments live along with lead and background vocals, with no overdubs at this point.

The first take of the song was complete and, for all intents and purposes, perfect. What is evident from this is that every aspect of the song was well rehearsed ahead of time, The Beatles had performed this composition repeatedly in their stage act for many months. Interestingly, we see that the production team purposely added a good amount of reverb to George Harrison’s guitar only during his guitar solo. This was their attempt to make the solo stand out as different from the rest of the song and, as soon as the solo was over, they decreased the reverb level to sound as before.

George Martin, though, thought this “take” could improve with another try. After engineer Norman Smith calls out for “take two,” Lennon quietly counts down the song, but only he starts playing. Paul then quietly but commandingly counts down the song as planned and everybody follows his lead.

However, there are several flaws in “take two.” Everything starts out fine, but John ends up coming in singing harmony in the second verse with “how could I dance” from the first verse instead of “she wouldn’t dance” like he should have. Then in the third verse, there must have been some confusion by both John and Paul as to what the correct lyrics were since they both awkwardly stumbled into the line “she wouldn’t dance” instead of “now I’ll never dance” as it should have been. We also can easily determine by this “take” that George’s guitar solo was ad-libbed since it was quite different from the first take although very well performed.

Finally, in their repeat of the third verse, they both get the lyrics right but Paul, probably figuring that they messed up the song too badly, ended the song with a falling note on his bass guitar while John commented to Paul about their mistakes.

Apparently not noticing the obvious vocal errors, George Martin suggested they perform an edit piece to correct the flubbed ending. “Take three,” therefore, was this short edit piece, which consisted of their three-times repeat of “since I saw her standing there” at the songs’ end along with the conclusion.

Having accomplished this edit piece acceptably, George Martin’s next idea was to have the Beatles perform an edit piece for the guitar solo, but this time without as much reverb and with more excited screams from John and Paul. “Take four” was their first attempt at this edit piece, which began with the last four measures of the third verse as an introduction. George Harrison’s ad-lib guitar solo wasn’t quite as good, so they tried it again as “take five.” After practicing their “wooohs,” they started off “take five” too fast and, although they shouted more during the solo, the actual guitar solo was not very good at all, which rendered this edit piece useless as well.

Having abandoned this idea, a decision to just start the song all over again from scratch followed. Before “take six” begins, Paul concerns himself verbally on how to remember the correct lyrics and how to get the right tempo for the song. After another quiet countdown, “take six” begins but breaks down during the second verse because Paul keeps getting the lyrics wrong. “Yeah, but I mean, it’s too fast anyway,” he tells Norman Smith who called the song to a halt.

Already feeling the frustration of having to do the song so many times, Paul exclaims “and again” before he starts off “take seven,” which he himself stops because he feels it’s going too fast. Showing himself as the perfectionist that he is, Paul explains “and again, I’m sorry, you know, but…” as he tries to demonstrate to the group what the correct tempo for the song should be. “Take eight” begins fine but when Ringo accidentally misses hitting his hi-hat during the first verse, everyone stops which prompts Paul to ask, “What happened?”

Being clearly frustrated, Paul counts down “take nine” with a loud “one, two, three, FAAA,” which propels the group through another complete version of the song. This spirited performance was excellent; they even got the lyrics correct. Being 1:00 pm already, everyone involved must have felt the song was complete and decided to finally move along to the next, but not before lunch. The Beatles, however, decided to skip eating and stayed in the empty studio to drink milk and practice for the rest of the session.

Little did they know at the time that they would return to the song later that day. At some point, George Martin thought having the group clap their hands throughout the song would create an exciting atmosphere, so at about 4:45 pm, the Beatles gathered around a microphone to do just that. “Take ten” was a playback of “take nine” for them to perform this overdub but, upon listening to it, George Martin decided that he liked “take one” better after all. So the first take of the song was spooled up for the handclap overdub.

“Take eleven” only made it through the first few measures of the first verse before engineers stopped the tape; it wasn’t run at a loud enough volume. The Beatles kept clapping afterwards which motivated Paul to say “we have to keep Britain tidy” and got them all laughing. The EMI staff started playing “take one” again at the proper volume as the group clapped their hands (with reverb) all through the song. This became “take twelve,” which was now considered the new “best.” Therefore, the song was actually complete by about 5:00 pm.

Both the mono and stereo mixes of the song, as well as the rest of the ten songs recorded on February 11th, were created on February 25th, 1963 in the control room of EMI Studio One by George Martin, Norman Smith, and 2nd engineer A.B. Lincoln. Before any mixing took place on this day, George Martin decided to edit in Paul’s excited “One, Two, Three, FAAA” countdown of the song from “take nine” onto the beginning of what was now “take twelve.” He felt this would add the desired “potboiler” atmosphere he wanted for the song. After the edit, both the mono and stereo mixes took place from this edited master. This became the exuberant kick-off to the soon-to-be-released first British album, entitled “Please Please Me with Love Me Do and 12 other songs.” (The original “take nine” can be heard on the CD single for “Free As A Bird,” which Apple released on December 31st, 1995.)

An interesting side-note is that the song did see the recording studio another time by a former Beatle on July 21st, 1987. Paul McCartney recorded "I Saw Her Standing There" along with 21 other classic rock and roll standards as contenders for an album originally released in Russia entitled "CHOBa B CCCP" (which is Russian for "Back In The U.S.S.R."). The album did receive a worldwide release in 1991, but no version of the album contains this version of the song.  McCartney decided not to include it on the album, and it remains unreleased to this day.

On June 23rd, 1994, the surviving three Beatles met at George's private studio at his Friar Park home at Henley On Thames, England, to film and record footage for possible inclusion in the "Anthology" television special. With Paul and George on acoustic guitars and Ringo on drums (playing with brushes), they went through a variety of older songs they used to perform with The Beatles in the Cavern days and even back during their Quarrymen period. Anthology TV director Bob Smeaton recalls: "There's a whole lot of that stuff; we were there for a full day...They did a whole lot of rock and roll songs." Producer Jeff Lynne remembers: "It was just a time warp kind of thing. We played some old rock and roll stuff, a couple of Chuck Berry's, even "I Saw Her Standing There.'" Neither the recording nor the film footage has yet to be released.

Song Structure and Style

The song copies one of the most established formulas of popular music of its time. It flows in the 'verse/ verse/ bridge/ verse' style (or aaba) which does not have a repeatable chorus. The songwriting style of many of The Beatles favorite artists of the time duplicates a similar song structure, such as Fats Domino and Arthur Alexander. The title, or hook-line, of the song, appears at the end of each verse, which helps listeners remember the title of the song. In this case, The Beatles may very well have not caught on to this established practice, based on they named the song “Seventeen” and had continued performing the song in their “stage act” for about five months with this title. We do know that sometime before the release of the British album “Please Please Me” by March 22nd, 1963, the name had been officially changed to “I Saw Her Standing There,” possibly at the suggestion of the all-wise George Martin.               

After the rousing count-in by Paul, the song creates anticipation with its two opening instrumental bars in their established “beat” style, leading to the first verse, each verse consisting of 8 bars. Paul also handles the lead vocals, joined by John with lower harmony vocals for the second half of each verse, culminating in the accentuation of the song's title. After the second verse, the chords rise, and the harmonies continue as they enter the 5 bar bridge, which creates an illusion of sexual climax before bringing us back to the ground with the third and final verse in the song structure, which satisfies the listener with a happy ending; boy gets girl!      

We then are treated to the first guitar solo officially recorded in The Beatles cannon performed by George Harrison. This numbered only the sixth song recorded with intention the studio released it for the LP. Harrison, hands down, amazingly earns his keep as the lead guitarist in the band. (George did perform lead guitar solos in the Hamburg recording sessions of 1961, although these differed from under the “Beatles” name. “My Bonnie” had been released on record before this time, but was billed as “Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers.”) His solo, which plays during the same chord structure as a verse, was recorded live with the rest of the band who all had confidence performing the song live. Soon after this, it became common practice to overdub a guitar solo later to refine the solo and get the best performance. Because the band repeated performing the song over the previous five months, George had already refined his solo, as evidenced by listening to take 9 of the song, almost equally well performed.

The song then returns to the climactic bridge, and final “boy gets girl” verse, repeating the song's title three times to, inadvertently, drive home the title of the song in our heads. The chords take a surprise left turn at the end to switch things up a bit, before crashing down with a triumphant clang of a guitar chord coupled with a vocal accentuation from its lead singer. A conclusion like this can only encourage applause.      

It is interesting to note that in some of their performances of the song during the next year or so, as well as McCartney’s performances in much later years, the second bridge is eliminated. After the guitar solo, McCartney goes right into the final verse. Whether this was intentional has not been confirmed, although it’s suggested the band shortened the tune during performances in order to move on to newer songs, since the lads considered the song appeared already “old” by mid-1963, in their minds at least.

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