I Want to Hold Your Hand

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	John & Paul
Lead Vocal	John & Paul
Recorded	Oct 1963
Length	2:24
Key	G
Noted Takes	17
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Norman Smith

Originally released on

I Want to Hold Your Hand (single)

Parlophone — R 5084

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Story

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Recorded on 17 October 1963 and released on 29 November 1963 in the United Kingdom, it was the first Beatles record to be made using four-track recording equipment. [Wikipedia]

McCartney and Lennon wrote it in the basement of Jane Asher's parents' house in late September 1963. Their brief from Brian Epstein was explicit: 'Write a song to crack America.' Capitol Records had refused to release the previous two UK No.1 singles in the US; this was the song that finally changed their mind. An original Lennon-McCartney composition recorded 17 October 1963, 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' became the Beatles' first major American chart hit and their most commercially successful single to date. The song's direct fan-address strategy placed it squarely within the Lennon-McCartney template of personal, intimate messages to listeners. The track's meticulously crafted production and infectious melodies established the single as a landmark of 1960s pop (Lewisohn 1988, p.32). The ambitious introduction features guitar chords as a springboard that propels the listener into the verse; released one week after With the Beatles, the song achieved remarkable commercial success, selling 1.5 million copies in six weeks (Kozinn 1995, p.73-74).

Cut on 17 October 1963 — the band's first session on the four-track machine that EMI had just installed. Seventeen takes. Hand-claps were overdubbed to fill the stereo image; the song was the band's first to be properly stereo-mixed. The track was recorded efficiently from take 2, suggesting the group's complete preparation and arrangement clarity before entering the studio. Two-track recording required precise coordination of all instrumentation and vocals performed simultaneously. George Martin's arrangement, with its distinctive guitar riff and clear harmonic support, created maximum radio impact within the technical constraints of early 1960s recording (Lewisohn 1988, p.32). The use of four-track recording provided George Martin and Norman Smith greater control over instrumental balance compared to two-track limitations; both felt the song might exceed She Loves You in commercial potential (Emerick 2006, p.202).

It'll still go straight to number one, you mark my words.- George Martin, Emerick 2006, p.205

…and sing 'The Twelfth Of Never' and she said "He loves me" because he sang it right at her off the telly. We were aware that that happened when you sang to an audience. So 'From Me To You', 'Please Please Me', 'She Loves You'. Personal pronouns. We always used to do that. 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'. It was always some…— Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p.9

What's distinctive

The Beatles' first four-track recording — the technological hinge of the whole studio method. One of the canon's dual John-and-Paul lead vocals. Recorded approximately 33 of 67 into the Beatlemania (1962–1964) sessions. Carries the unique tag ‘first-us-no1’ — no other song shares it. Take count: 17 — Lewisohn’s session log documents takes 1–17, the released master being take 17 (the pre-V12-C “21” was a highest-take-number layer, not the documented count).¹

Recording

The Beatles’ first four-track recording — the engineering hinge. The technical weight of I Want to Hold Your Hand is fixed not by anything inside the arrangement but by the machine it was committed to. The 17 October 1963 session “marked the dawn of a new era for the Beatles at Abbey Road: four-track recording, ushering in entirely new processes” — splitting a single live-to-two-track capture into a basic rhythm track that could be built up by overdub. That the record which would break the United States is also the group’s first four-track recording is the single most consequential engineering fact attached to the song.¹
A song perfected before the tape rolled. The tapes “reveal that the Beatles had the song perfected before the session, the first take sounding not unlike the last.” The seventeen takes refined rather than discovered the arrangement; Lewisohn records only two micro-variations — a take-two idea to hush the line “And when I touch you” and a take-four moment where Paul introduced “the not uncommon 1963 Beatle ‘h’ into words (‘shay that shomthing’).” The released master is take 17, mixed on 21 October 1963 — not the “21 takes” the pre-V12-C infobox layer carried.¹
The rare master carried abroad and re-vocalised. The song’s most distinctive technical chapter is one the English single never reveals: I Want to Hold Your Hand is the rare Beatles master that was carried abroad, reduced, and re-sung in a foreign language. For EMI’s West German branch, Odeon, the group cut a German version — Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand — at EMI’s Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris on 29 January 1964, their first EMI recording session outside Abbey Road. It was not a fresh recording but a re-vocal of the existing English backing, physically carried to France as a tape-to-tape copy of take 17.¹

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road — Studio Two (basic track + overdubs, 17 Oct 1963); Studio One control room (mono + stereo mixing, 21 Oct 1963); EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris (German re-vocal, 29 Jan 1964)¹
Tape machine	Telefunken four-track — the machine in use at Abbey Road in October 1963; the Studer J37 four-track did not arrive until early 1965²
Console	REDD valve desk (REDD.37 / REDD.51 era)
Microphones	Neumann U47, U48; AKG D19 (drums); STC 4038 (overheads)
Outboard / effects	EMI RS124 compressor (Altec 436B mod), EMT 140 plate reverb, STEED tape echo
Guitars	Rickenbacker 325 (Lennon), Gretsch Country Gent / Tennessean (Harrison), Höfner 500/1 violin bass (McCartney), Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl kit (Starr)
Amplifiers	Vox AC30 (TB & non-Top-Boost variants)

Recording Timeline

17 October 1963 (Thu) — basic track + overdubs, takes 1–17, EMI Studio Two — 2.30–5.30pm and 7.00–10.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. The session that “marked the dawn of a new era… four-track recording” ran I Want to Hold Your Hand across takes 1–17 (master take 17) alongside its B-side This Boy (also takes 1–17), the group’s annual Christmas fan-club disc, and a four-track re-take of You Really Got a Hold on Me. An early Beatles session credit for Emerick, later the group’s principal engineer.¹
21 October 1963 (Mon) — mono single mix + stereo remix 1 from take 17, EMI Studio One control room — 10.00am–1.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. Both the mono single mix and a stereo remix 1 were struck from take 17, annotated by Lewisohn “Mono mixing for the single, stereo for unforeseen future use.” The single appeared on 29 November 1963 (Parlophone R 5084, b/w This Boy).¹
24 January 1964 (Fri) — tape-to-tape copy of take 17 for Paris, EMI Studio One control room — 10.00–10.45am. E: Norman Smith. 2E: A.B. Lincoln / Geoff Emerick. “A tape-to-tape copy of the ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ basic rhythm track, take 17 from 17 October 1963; hand-luggage for George Martin and Norman Smith, soon to be leaving for Paris and the Beatles’ first EMI recording session outside of Abbey Road.”¹
29 January 1964 (Wed) — German re-vocal Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand (takes 1–11; edit of takes 5 and 7), EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Jacques Esmenjaud. The German vocals were overdubbed onto the English rhythm track “mixed down from four-track to two-track”; the “best” versions were takes 5 and 7, with overdubbed handclaps, later edited together. The same Paris session also cut Sie Liebt Dich and the first takes of Can’t Buy Me Love.¹
10 March 1964 (Tue) — German mono mix from the takes-5/7 edit, EMI Studio Two — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. Mono mixing of Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand from the edit of takes 5 and 7 — the release mono of the German version, two-plus generations removed from the English multi-track.¹
12 March 1964 (Thu) — German stereo mix; copies despatched to West Germany and the USA, EMI Studio Three control room — 10.00am–12.00 noon. Stereo mixing of Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand from the takes-5/7 edit: “Stereo remixes of the two German-language songs, equalised and compressed with added echo. Copy tapes were despatched to West Germany, and even to the USA, for record release.”¹

With four-track one could do a basic rhythm track and then add on vocals and whatever else later. It made the studios into much more of a workshop.— Ken Townsend¹

Studio Notes

The actual 1963 machine was a Telefunken, not a Studer. The four-track that captured I Want to Hold Your Hand belonged to the pre-J37 era: “the two Telefunken four-track machines were responsible for recording some of the Beatles’ best-known work during the first wave of Beatlemania,” before being “almost entirely eclipsed by the machine that eventually replaced them: the Studer J37.” The J37 popularly associated with the Beatles only arrived “in early 1965”; the first-wave-of-Beatlemania four-track sound, this song included, is a Telefunken sound. Any “Studer J37 … 1963” attribution is a dating error — the ground truth behind this page’s Equipment Tape row.²
Four-track reduced to two-track for the German overdub. “First task was to add ‘Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand’ vocals to the English rhythm track of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, mixed down from four-track to two-track.” The reduction freed tape tracks for the new German vocal and handclaps — the same track-economy logic the four-track format had introduced four months earlier, now run in reverse to bounce the existing arrangement down and re-open the canvas.¹
Handclaps are unique to the German version. “The ‘best’ versions were takes 5 and 7, with overdubbed handclaps, later edited together.” The handclaps are a German-version overdub on the reduced two-track, not a feature of the 17 October English master; the released Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand is therefore a tape splice of two German vocal takes over the English instrumental, distinct from the single-take-17 English master.¹
Pathé Marconi — alien equipment, the first EMI session abroad. The 29 January session ran at “EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, 62 Rue de Sèvres, Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris.” Norman Smith found it hard going: “I found the studio very odd to work in, the equipment was alien to anything we were used to.” This is the documented exception to the Abbey-Road-centred recording history — the one occasion an EMI Beatles session, on this song’s tape, was cut outside Abbey Road, on unfamiliar consoles and machines.¹
The tape that survived — the contrast with Sie Liebt Dich. The German re-vocal of this song was possible only because its English tape still existed. Its session-mate She Loves You had no such luck: for Sie Liebt Dich the Beatles had to record a new rhythm track, the original two-track tape having been scrapped once the mono master was prepared. I Want to Hold Your Hand’s four-track master was retained and copied; She Loves You’s was destroyed — a direct primary-source illustration of EMI’s inconsistent early-1960s tape-retention practice.¹

Releases

1963 UK mono — Parlophone R 5084 (29 November 1963) — The released single is the 21 October 1963 mono remix from take 17, annotated by Lewisohn “Mono mixing for the single.” Mono was the contemporaneous release format for the 1963 single, backed with This Boy.¹
1963 stereo remix 1 — cut 21 October 1963, not issued at the time — A stereo remix 1 from take 17 was made in the same session, described by Lewisohn as stereo “for unforeseen future use” — held against later stereo demand rather than for the 1963 single. The first stereo release lineage is not specified by Lewisohn and is left unstated here rather than inferred (per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain).¹
1964 Paris source tape — 24 January tape-to-tape copy of take 17 — The released English four-track master (take 17) was copied tape-to-tape on 24 January 1964 in the Studio One control room as “hand-luggage” for Paris. This intermediate generation — not a release in itself — is the physical lineage step that fed the German re-vocal: every German mix below derives from this copy, not from the Abbey Road multi-track directly.¹
German re-vocal — Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand, 29 January 1964 (EMI Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris) — German vocals (takes 1–11; best takes 5 and 7 edited together, with overdubbed handclaps) over the English I Want to Hold Your Hand rhythm track reduced from four-track to two-track. The foreign-language re-make lineage of the song — the same backing, a new vocal and handclaps — and the group’s first EMI recording outside Abbey Road.¹
German mono mix — 10 March 1964 (Abbey Road, Studio Two) — Mono mixing of Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand from the edit of takes 5 and 7 — the release mono of the German version, two-plus generations removed from the English multi-track (multi-track → 24 January copy → four-to-two reduction → mono remix).¹
German stereo mix — 12 March 1964 (Abbey Road, Studio Three control room) — Stereo mixing of Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand from the takes-5/7 edit: “equalised and compressed with added echo. Copy tapes were despatched to West Germany, and even to the USA, for record release.” The only documented I Want to Hold Your Hand-derived lineage explicitly prepared for the US market in the Lewisohn record, by way of the German re-vocal rather than the English single.¹
1966 — A Collection of Beatles Oldies (9 December 1966, Parlophone PMC 7016 / PCS 7016) — the non-album single was gathered onto the UK Oldies compilation.¹
1988 — Past Masters, Volume One (Parlophone) — the non-album single was collected (in stereo where available). Per §1, this reissue post-dates the Lewisohn 1988 / Kehew & Ryan 2006 primary-source canon and is documented in official Apple/EMI release metadata.
2009 stereo remaster — Past Masters (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI) — the single’s stereo master remastered (Allan Rouse / Guy Massey / Steve Rooke / Sean Magee). Same §1 caveat.
2009 mono remaster — Mono Masters (The Beatles in Mono, 9 September 2009) — the single’s mono master remastered for the mono box. Same §1 caveat.
2014 mono vinyl — Mono Masters / The Beatles in Mono vinyl box (2014, Apple/UMe) — an all-analogue cut from the mono master. Same §1 caveat.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 9, 36–38, 42, 200.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 222.

Frequently asked

Who wrote I Want to Hold Your Hand?

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” was written by Lennon–McCartney.

Who sings lead on I Want to Hold Your Hand?

The lead vocal on “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a John Lennon and Paul McCartney duet.

When was I Want to Hold Your Hand recorded?

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” was recorded on 17 October 1963 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road — the Beatles’ first four-track session.¹

How many takes did I Want to Hold Your Hand require?

Lewisohn’s session log documents takes 1–17; the released master is take 17, mixed on 21 October 1963. The “21 takes” carried by the earlier infobox was a highest-take-number layer, not the documented count.¹

On this page

Story

What's distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked