{"id":367,"date":"2025-01-19T16:27:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T16:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/?p=367"},"modified":"2025-07-14T12:18:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T12:18:39","slug":"153-it-wont-be-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/153-it-wont-be-long\/","title":{"rendered":"153: It Won’t Be Long"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It Won’t Be Long was the first track on With The Beatles. It was written mainly by Lennon who also takes the lead vocal. <\/p>\n\n\n

\"BeatlesThe Beatles Bible<\/span><\/div>

\u2018It Won\u2019t Be Long\u2019 kicked off The Beatles\u2019 second UK album, With The Beatles. It heavily featured the band\u2019s distinctive \u201cYeah, yeah\u201d signature established with \u2018She Loves You\u2019, this time in a call-and-response style between John Lennon on lead vocal…<\/p>\"ItContinue reading on Beatles Bible \u2192<\/a><\/div><\/div>

\"Wikipedia\"Wikipedia<\/span><\/div>
"It Won't Be Long" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, released as the opening track on their second UK album With the Beatles (1963), and was the first original song recorded for it.[1] Although credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney, it was prima…<\/div>Continue reading on Wikipedia \u2192<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

I hadn’t heard the song for a while and it was a real pleasure to listen again this morning when preparing this article. It has many of the hallmarks I am (normally subliminally) looking for in a great Beatles song. Hearing them made me more conscious of what those hallmarks are. One thing I hadn’t realized before reading the Beatles Bible article, was that this had been thought of as a potential single:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u2018It Won\u2019t Be Long\u2019 is mine. It was my attempt at writing another single. It never quite made it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect it makes perfect sense, and that’s probably why more of those hallmarks are present on the song, and also why it was such a great choice for the first track of the album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. It’s a Lennon-McCartney original<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The songwriting and arrangement show some clever and purposeful decisions<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. It is innovative and distinctive<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. It expands or crosses genre boundaries<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. It has great contributions from all four Beatles<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. The performance is authentic and powerful<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Here are some of the purposeful and distinctive features:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It starts with the chorus<\/strong>. This is a “trick” albeit, a very common one, that demands attention and makes maximum use of the hook. The clich\u00e9 is “don’t bore us, get to the chorus”, a quote attributed to hitmaker-supreme Berry Gordy. Although I doubt the quote was in circulation in 1963, the sentiment was (I think) already well known. Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be The Day, Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti, and Chuck Berry’s Rock And Roll Music are all examples of songs that started with the chorus (sometimes after a very brief instrumental lead in) and I am sure there are many more. However, it was probably not quite as<\/em> common before the 1960s and the Beatles along with Motown bands were among those who helped popularize this song structure. Probably the Beatles most influential and powerful example was She Loves You, a single whose release immediately preceded* With The Beatles and It Won’t Be Long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Songwriters may not know it explicitly, but human memory is very much biased toward the beginning and end of things<\/a>. and retrospectively we evaluate experiences according to the peak (i.e., the most intense bit) and end<\/a>. It makes sense to put the best bits of your track near the beginning and end (the end already gets a natural boost, so if you put the peak at the beginning you get an extra benefit). Similarly you probably should put the best tracks at the beginning and end of an album (or side of a vinyl album). This probably has at least something to do with the way we preferentially allocate attention to new things – helping us form a better memory.**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The hook is powerful and very, very tight.<\/strong> The most striking thing about the hook is the “yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh” back and forth. Using “Yeah, Yeah” was of course a feature of She Loves You, and a masterstroke because it’s positive, uplifting and singable. But in It Won’t Be Long it is sharpened and intensified because there is no gap at all<\/strong> between the lead “call” “vocal”yeh” (C#) and the backing “response” “yeh” which is sung loud (but mixed down)and with a fifth harmony (F#), sounding incredibly urgent like a siren. And then it shifts up from C#m to E; even more urgency. Its the incredibly lean timing of the back and forth that makes it so distinctive – not a millisecond is wasted. It’s a brilliant idea, but not one that even would cross your mind unless you work working with a very tight group who had great confidence in one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The bridge.<\/strong> I am talking about the bit that goes “Since you left me I’m so alone…”. The chords open up a whole world of possibilities and a new texture, at the same time it feels kind of inevitable. And it has answering\/parallel backing vocals singing an offset melody with words (a bit like in Help!) it’s something that the Beatles did really well and perfected in some of their later songs, but more than anything it shows their confidence as a group and it goes beyond the call of duty. In this instance, I think it may have worked even better if they’d have sung ooh’s, but it is the innovation that’s important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The little guitar lick.<\/strong> At the end of every line in the verse George (I think it must be George) plays a little run. To me it sounds a tiny bit country and western and it may even have a bit of Bigsby style vibrato<\/a>. It’s just the right amount: enough to add some interest to the verse, but not so much as to make the song sound like a country pastiche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The timing of the verse.<\/strong> Each line of the verse is only 3 bars long (including the little run), whereas it would be more normal to use multiples of 4. This is very John Lennon. It’s quite subtle but adds to the overall urgency of the song, and it is slightly unexpected which grabs your attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Adding an extra bar would have made it much easier to play. Those little extra bars at the end of a line or the end of a verse give the instrumentalists time to find their bearings – it would be important if it were an inexperienced band, playing live or learning the song. The Beatles did not need that, and I think there ability to pick up one another’s songs quickly was a huge factor in their success. They were finding they could introduce demanding ideas to one another and get them down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The fruits of this trust and familiarity are seen a lot in their more ambitious later work. Examples would be All You Need Is Love and Across The Universe, where in each case, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a similar trick at the end of every line in the verse. It means no compromise is necessary – the words can shape the song. Its tight, lean, concentrated Beatles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    All of these choices were deliberate, intended to create a stronger track perhaps for a single release. They reveal the effort that the Beatles took to develop the raw songs and take them to a new level. Taken in isolation, each change would be beneficial but in combination they create an innovative sound that doesn’t fit neatly within a specific genre. You hear it as “Beatles”, and it has an urgency that makes you – in the context of an album – want to listen to the rest of the record, and afterwards it helps you to remember it positively. Ingenious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    *<\/summary>\n

    The timeline a bit mixed up in my mind, and I had thought She Loves You came out after With The Beatles. In fact in the UK She Loves You was released on 23\u00a0August\u00a01963, whereas With The Beatles was released on 22nd November with I Want To Hold Your hand coming out just a few days later on 29\u00a0November. What an amazing time it must have been. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

    **<\/summary>\n

    Although starting, repeating, and ending with the catchiest most engaging elements of the song is probably the easiest way to grab attention and form a lasting positive impression, because it can be a cliche, the opposite approach – withholding the chorus, staying on the same chord etc. – is good because it perhaps subverts expectations, and is thus surprising and engaging. Papa Was A Rolling Stone is a great example of using a feeling of suspense to keep people listening, and maybe even deepen their concentration; it’s artistically very satisfying when it comes off. However, this approach is asking a lot of the listener, so it may not the greatest commercial strategy if you have just a few inches of vinyl (or nowadays a few seconds of a stream) to convert someone.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It Won’t Be Long was the first track on With The Beatles. It was written mainly by Lennon who also takes the lead vocal. I hadn’t heard the song for a while and it was a real pleasure to listen again this morning when preparing this article. It has many of the hallmarks I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39,47,10],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-song-a-day","tag-hallmarks","tag-notation","tag-with-the-beatles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}