When I Get Home

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	John
Lead Vocal	John
Recorded	Jun 1964
Length	2:17
Key	C
Noted Takes	11
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Norman Smith

Originally released on

A Hard Day's Night

Parlophone — PMC 1230 / PCS 3058

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Story

“When I Get Home” is a song written by John Lennon, and recorded by the English rock band the Beatles on 2 June 1964, during the last session for their third studio album A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Its first US release was on the Something New LP. [Wikipedia]

When I Get Home is a song by The Beatles, written by Lennon–McCartney and led on vocal by John Lennon. Up-tempo ‘whoa-I’ shouter; Lennon channeling Wilson Pickett. Within the catalogue, its shouter thread connects it to Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!; its r-and-b thread connects it to Anna (Go to Him). An up-tempo R&B shouter channeling Wilson Pickett’s energy, recorded 2 June 1964, exemplifies blues-rock foundation underlying British Invasion pop. Lennon’s raucous vocal delivery and repetitive ‘whoa-I’ refrain anchor the track in American soul tradition rather than original composition innovation.

The session work falls within the band’s Beatlemania (1962–1964) period, recorded 2 Jun 1964 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. George Martin produced; Norman Smith engineered.

What’s distinctive

At 2:17 it sits below the catalogue median (2:33). One of 101 songs led primarily by John. Recorded on the final session day for the A Hard Day’s Night LP — the evening of 2 June 1964 — making it one of the last songs taped for the only Beatles album comprised entirely of Lennon–McCartney compositions.¹ The recording session also produced the canonical Ken Scott tape-op anecdote — the 17-year-old second engineer heard “home” on the talkback and packed up to leave, only to discover Martin meant When I Get Home.^1,2 Take count: 11 (takes 1–11, with take 11 selected as master).¹

Recording

When I Get Home was recorded on the evening of 2 June 1964 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road (Studio Two), during the final session day for the A Hard Day’s Night LP. The evening session ran from 7.00 to 10.00 pm, with George Martin producing, Norman Smith engineering, and 17-year-old Ken Scott on his first week as second engineer (tape operator). The song was “another new Lennon number” — an up-tempo R&B shouter — “recorded in 11 takes”, after which the group returned to Any Time at All (takes 8–11) to complete that song’s middle eight, piano, guitar, and Paul McCartney’s “answering” vocal overdub. The afternoon of the same day had produced Things We Said Today (takes 1–3); between the two sessions, When I Get Home sits as the evening’s first completed recording. Take 11 was selected as master for all subsequent mono and stereo remixes.¹
The A Hard Day’s Night LP “is comprised entirely of Lennon–McCartney compositions, the only such occurrence in the Beatles’ career.” When I Get Home sits as track 11 on side B, between Things We Said Today and You Can’t Do That, on the non-soundtrack half of the LP — the songs recorded on 1–2 June 1964, after the film had been completed and holidays taken. The album and the A Hard Day’s Night / Things We Said Today single were released simultaneously on 10 July 1964 (Parlophone PMC 1230 mono / PCS 3058 stereo; single R 5160).¹
Two-source comparison — the Ken Scott tape-op anecdote. Both primary sources record Ken Scott’s account of his embarrassing debut-week incident during the When I Get Home session. The four-track tape machines were housed in separate machine rooms (Room 1A and 1B) along the corridor from Studio Two’s control room, with the tape operator communicating via a talkback speaker system. Lewisohn’s version: “George Martin was giving me the directions over the talkback and at one point I heard him say ‘home’. So I put the tapes away, switched off the power, put my coat on and left the room. As I was walking along the corridor I saw George standing in the doorway. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘is the tape lined up yet?’ ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘Is the tape of “When I Get Home” ready yet?’ ‘Aah, hang on George, I’ll just check and see’. I ran up that corridor, flicked all the switches and put the tape back on as fast as lightning, acting nonchalantly as if nothing was wrong!” K/R’s independently collected version adds a complementary detail absent from Lewisohn: “Nothing was ever said about it, but I would have imagined — because I’m sure he didn’t pull down the monitors — that my turning off the four-track machine must have made a pretty loud thump.” The two versions agree on all essential facts (talkback, “home”, packing up, corridor encounter, George Martin) and complement each other: Lewisohn preserves the comic dialogue; K/R adds the physical inference about the machine-room noise.^1,2
The session falls within the newly installed REDD.51 console era — Studio Two’s control room was rearranged in January 1964 when the REDD.51 desk replaced the older REDD.37, repositioned so that the balance engineer could look forward and maintain visual contact with the studio floor. The Fairchild 660 limiters were also introduced in January 1964: “The new 660s were available when work began on A Hard Day’s Night,” though Norman Smith initially continued with the familiar RS114 limiters before making “his peace with the 660” by the time Beatles for Sale sessions began. A pair of Fairchild 660s was inserted into Main Channels III and IV of the REDD.51, while RS124 Altec compressors occupied Main Faders I and II — patching directly tied to the four-track tape layout (Altecs on drums/bass/guitar tracks, Fairchilds on vocal tracks).²
Double-tracking context. K/R confirms that “every single song on A Hard Day’s Night featured double-tracked vocals at some point, as did every single the group released that year.” The available fourth track of the Telefunken tape machine “proved impossible to resist, and it made double-tracking a more instantly accessible procedure than it had been with Twin-Track.” When I Get Home is no exception — the released master carries double-tracked Lennon vocals consistent with this universal A Hard Day’s Night practice, and the master tape from the same session day’s I’ll Be Back explicitly documents “vocals, double-tracked” in the session log.^1,2

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road — Studio Two (recording, 2 Jun 1964); Studio One control room (mono + stereo remixes, 22 Jun 1964)
Tape machine	Telefunken M10 / T9U four-track (housed in machine rooms 1A/1B along the corridor from the control room)²
Console	REDD.51 (installed January 1964, replacing the REDD.37)²
Microphones	STC 4038 (drums overhead); STC 4033-A (bass drum, bass amp); Neumann U47, U48 and/or KM54 (vocals, guitars)
Outboard / effects	RS124 Altec compressors (Main Faders I–II); Fairchild 660 limiters (Main Faders III–IV); EMT 140 plate reverb; STEED tape echo (via BTR2 pre-delay into echo chamber)
Guitars	Rickenbacker 325 (Lennon), Gretsch Country Gentleman / Tennessean (Harrison), Höfner 500/1 violin bass (McCartney), Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl kit (Starr)
Amplifiers	Vox AC30 (Top Boost and non-Top-Boost variants)

Recording Timeline

2 June 1964 (Tue) — recording, evening session, Studio Two — EMI Studios, Abbey Road, 7.00–10.00 pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Recording: When I Get Home (takes 1–11); Any Time at All (takes 8–11). The evening session opened with When I Get Home, “another new Lennon number… recorded in 11 takes.” After completing the song, the group returned to Any Time at All (begun in the afternoon session, takes 1–7) to add “a perfected middle eight, piano, guitar and an ‘answering’ Paul McCartney vocal.” Take 11 of When I Get Home was selected as the master. This was 17-year-old Ken Scott’s session as second engineer (tape operator) — his first week in the role — during which his mishearing of “home” on the talkback produced the canonical debut anecdote (see Recording).¹
4 June 1964 (Thu) — mono mixing (unreleased), Studio Two control room — EMI Studios, 2.30–7.00 pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Richard Langham. Mono mixing: When I Get Home (remix 1, from take 11). This remix was not released — the same session also produced the unreleased first remix of Any Time at All (from take 11).¹
22 June 1964 (Mon) — released mono + stereo remixes, Studio One control room — EMI Studios, 10.00–11.30 am (mono), 11.30 am–1.00 pm (stereo). P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. Mono mixing: When I Get Home remix 2 (for the UK, from take 11) and remix 3 (for the USA, from take 11). Stereo mixing: When I Get Home (from take 11). This exhaustive day’s remixing covered the bulk of the A Hard Day’s Night LP — “The Beatles themselves could not have been further away from the action — they were in Wellington, New Zealand, at the time.”¹
10 July 1964 — LP + single release — A Hard Day’s Night LP: Parlophone PMC 1230 (mono) / PCS 3058 (stereo), side B track 4. Single: A Hard Day’s Night / Things We Said Today, Parlophone R 5160. When I Get Home appears between Things We Said Today and You Can’t Do That on the non-soundtrack side of an album “comprised entirely of Lennon–McCartney compositions, the only such occurrence in the Beatles’ career.”¹

“George Martin was giving me the directions over the talkback and at one point I heard him say ‘home’. So I put the tapes away, switched off the power, put my coat on and left the room. As I was walking along the corridor I saw George standing in the doorway. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘is the tape lined up yet?’”— Ken Scott^1,2

Studio Notes

Four-track tape layout and the machine-room isolation — The Telefunken four-track machines (M10 and T9U) were housed in machine rooms 1A and 1B, separate spaces along the corridor from Studio Two’s control room. Communication between the tape operator and the control room relied on a talkback and listening setup: “Microphones hung over the mixing desk picked up the sound of the Control Room and sent this signal to a small powered speaker in each machine room.” The tape operator could only monitor one of the four tracks at a time. This physical separation — the source of Ken Scott’s mishearing during the When I Get Home session — remained the standard arrangement until 1966, when each control room received its own dedicated four-track machine.²
Echo chamber practice in 1964 — By the start of 1964, Norman Smith had stopped printing the echo chamber to tape during recording: “everything was recorded to tape dry, and chamber was added during the mix.” The echo chambers “continued to be widely used (as they would be for most of the Beatles’ career),” but the shift to dry recording gave greater flexibility at the remix stage — a relevant factor for When I Get Home, whose released remixes were prepared on 22 June, twenty days after the recording session, without the band present. The STEED (Send Tape Echo to Echo chamber with Delay) system used a dedicated BTR2 tape machine to provide a pre-delay feed into the echo chamber, and it was already installed in the rearranged Studio Two control room from January 1964.²
Double-tracking as universal A Hard Day’s Night practice — “Every single song on A Hard Day’s Night featured double-tracked vocals at some point, as did every single the group released that year.” The standard four-track layout of the era dedicated track 4 to vocal double-tracking: “By this time, the fourth track was invariably used to double-track the vocals.” The transition from twin-track to four-track had made double-tracking “a more instantly accessible procedure”; the same principle extended to instruments, with 1964 also seeing double-tracked guitar solos become commonplace (Can’t Buy Me Love, Baby’s in Black, Matchbox, She’s a Woman, I Feel Fine).²
REDD.51 desk + Fairchild 660 limiter transition — The REDD.51 console, installed in Studio Two in January 1964, was positioned so the balance engineer faced the studio window — a significant ergonomic improvement over the REDD.37. The Fairchild 660 limiters arrived at the same time, though Norman Smith continued using his familiar RS114 limiters through the early A Hard Day’s Night sessions before transitioning to the 660s. By Beatles for Sale, “every session from that point forward made use of a pair of them.” The Main Fader patching convention (RS124 Altecs on I–II for drums/bass/guitar; Fairchild 660s on III–IV for vocals) was “directly tied to the four-track tape layout” and remained standard through 1964.²
Repeat Echo absent from A Hard Day’s Night LP — The Abbey Road “Repeat Echo” effect (a regenerating tape delay taken from the playback head of a BTR recorder) was first used on the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night title track — session outtakes reveal “a whopping dose of the effect applied to the introductory crashing chord” on takes 1–4. “By Take 4, however, it had been decided against, and the effect was subsequently nowhere to be heard on the entire A Hard Day’s Night album” — including When I Get Home. The effect would not appear on a released Beatles track until Beatles for Sale (Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby and Rock and Roll Music).²
Microphone setup: unchanged from the STC-era standard — “Sessions for A Hard Day’s Night made use of the same microphone setup employed in the previous years: STC 4038 and 4033-A on drums; STC 4033-A on bass; Neumann U47, U48 and/or KM54 on electric guitar; U47 or U48 on acoustic guitar, piano and vocals.” The transition to AKG microphones on the rhythm section had not yet begun — it was only “by the time sessions for Beatles for Sale got underway” that Norman Smith “had begun to make changes to his microphone setup,” retiring the STC 4038 overhead in favour of the AKG D19c and replacing the STC 4033-A on bass drum with the AKG D20. The bass cabinet microphone was not replaced by the D20 until 1965, when “Norman Smith completed the transition from all STC rhythm section mics to all AKG.” Smith had a “fairly specific idea of what kind of snare sound he wanted from Ringo”: “I requested that Ringo not hit the rim of the snare… I asked him to hit it solidly in the middle of the drum.”²
Same-day cluster: 1–2 June 1964 session block — When I Get Home was the sixth of seven songs recorded across the 1–2 June 1964 session block that completed the A Hard Day’s Night LP. The previous day (1 June) had produced Matchbox (takes 1–5), I’ll Cry Instead (Section A takes 1–6, Section B takes 7–8), Slow Down (takes 1–6), and I’ll Be Back (takes 1–16). The 2 June afternoon yielded Any Time at All (takes 1–7) and Things We Said Today (takes 1–3), before When I Get Home opened the evening session and Any Time at All was completed (takes 8–11). All seven songs share the same production team (Martin/Smith) and the same second engineer for the 2 June session (Ken Scott).¹
Ken Scott’s career trajectory — The 17-year-old tape operator on the When I Get Home session was “destined — like so many others at Abbey Road — for great things in his career, producing David Bowie and Supertramp amongst many others.” Scott admitted to having been “completely and utterly terrified” at the prospect of working with the Beatles at such an age. The When I Get Home talkback incident was his debut-week introduction to the realities of the remote machine-room setup.^1,2

Releases

1964 UK mono LP A Hard Day’s Night (10 July 1964, Parlophone PMC 1230, side B track 4) — Released mono master: remix 2, prepared at EMI Studio One control room on 22 June 1964 (from take 11). P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. An earlier mono remix (remix 1) had been made on 4 June 1964, with Richard Langham as second engineer, but was not released. A separate US mono remix (remix 3) was also prepared on 22 June. The 22 June remixing session covered the bulk of the A Hard Day’s Night LP, with the Beatles absent in New Zealand.¹
1964 UK stereo LP A Hard Day’s Night (10 July 1964, Parlophone PCS 3058, side B track 4) — Released stereo master, remixed at EMI Studio One control room on 22 June 1964 (from take 11). P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Geoff Emerick. As was standard for the period, “the Beatles attended only the mono mixes through Sgt Pepper” — the stereo remix was prepared without the group and is now considered secondary by many listeners.¹
1964 US Capitol LP Something New (20 July 1964, Capitol ST 2108, side A track 5) — First US release of When I Get Home, on a Capitol-compiled LP that predated the US issue of the full A Hard Day’s Night album. Capitol’s standard mastering chain applied (generally brighter EQ on early US pressings); no Capitol-specific remix is documented.¹
1964 UK EP Extracts from the album A Hard Day’s Night (6 November 1964, Parlophone GEP 8924) — EP release pairing When I Get Home with other non-soundtrack album tracks. Same mono remix as the UK LP.¹
2009 Stereo Remasters — A Hard Day’s Night (Stereo Box) (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI) — Allan Rouse / Guy Massey / Steve Rooke 24-bit flat transfer of the 1964 stereo master. The 2009 Mono Masters companion carries the 1964 UK mono master (remix 2).
2014 US CD/digital reissue — A Hard Day’s Night (Apple/Universal) — Remastered for the US market; same fundamental mix lineage as the 1964 stereo master. No new remix from the multitrack is documented.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 44–47.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 220, 372–81.

Frequently asked

Who wrote When I Get Home?

“When I Get Home” is credited to John Lennon (Lennon–McCartney).

Who sings lead on When I Get Home?

The lead vocal on “When I Get Home” is by John Lennon.

When was When I Get Home recorded?

“When I Get Home” was recorded on 2 June 1964 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road (Studio Two), during the evening session from 7.00 to 10.00 pm. The released mono and stereo masters were remixed on 22 June 1964.¹

How many takes did When I Get Home require?

Eleven — takes 1–11, with take 11 selected as master for all subsequent mono and stereo remixes.¹

On this page

Story

What’s distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked