{"id":408,"date":"2025-01-30T14:52:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T14:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/?p=408"},"modified":"2025-07-14T12:18:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T12:18:38","slug":"145-when-i-get-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/145-when-i-get-home\/","title":{"rendered":"145: When I Get Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I Get Home is a song written by John Lennon that appears on A Hard Day’s Night. This album came at an interesting time in the Beatles development. In Britain they were already the focus of Beatlemania<\/a>, an unprecedentedly intense fandom, that meant they were regularly mobbed. The term had been coined towards the end of 1963 when, for example, hundreds had gathered outside EMI studios during the recording of She Loves You, and thousands of screaming fans had greeted the band at Heathrow Airport when they returned from a tour of Sweden. When the Beatles were not recording they were touring with barely a day off between engagements, and at the beginning of 1964 they were making a film, about to embark on their first hectic visits to the USA and after that a world tour. Recording for the album took place in several sessions of one to three days spread over the period from January through to June 1964.<\/p>\n\n\n

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

\u2018When I Get Home\u2019 was written by John Lennon, and taped by The Beatles during the final recording session for the A Hard Day\u2019s Night album.<\/p>\"AContinue reading on Beatles Bible \u2192<\/a><\/div><\/div>

\"Wikipedia\"Wikipedia<\/span><\/div>
"When I Get Home" is a song written by John Lennon (credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney), 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).[1] Its first US relea…<\/div>Continue reading on Wikipedia \u2192<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

They had ample reason to think about home and their feelings about being separated from their partners. In Lennon’s case, these were complex. His marriage to Cynthia had been kept secret (for example<\/a>, an NME article listed 25 biographical facts about each Beatle, but did not mention his marriage). It had – perhaps always – been a rather one-sided relationship. For example, I opened her book, John<\/em>, at a random page (here describing events from February 1963):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That night I put my hair in rollers, so that when he came in late he couldn’t see what had happened, but the next morning there was no hiding it. I had known he wouldn’t like it but I wasn’t prepared for just how angry he would be. He looked at me with real hatred and screamed “What have you done?” Then her refused to talk to me, or even look at me for two days. It was awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John was due home in a few days and, keen to look as good as I could for him, I decided to get my hair done. Unfortunately I let the hairdresser talk me into having it cut to shoulder length. When I saw it I was horrified and I knew John would hate it. My hair was one of the things he loved best about me. I spent the evening wondering what to do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The marriage had come to light in a press expos\u00e9 after Julian’s christening in November 1963. and by January 1964, Cynthia, who had been living in Liverpool until that point moved into a London flat with John. As recording sessions for A Hard Day’s Night began, the couple were living together for the first time in their sixteen month marriage. However, after a few weeks, the address was discovered and was thereafter regularly besieged by fans. Cynthia said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I did my best to be polite, but it could be overwhelming and sometimes frightening. Outside I’d push through them to get to the front door, trying to stay calm, but desperate to get in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For John, it was worse: they surrounded him whenever he came home, begging for autographs, locks of hair, a chance to touch him.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In this context, the lyrics of When I Get Home make a lot of sense, and it suggests to me that many of Lennon’s lyrics, even to apparently simple pop-songs draw on real life experiences that concern him, rather than just being made up to fill a few minutes of vinyl. These are the verses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Come on, out* my way,
’cause I’m going to see my baby today;
I’ve got a whole lotta things I got to say to her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come on, if you please,
I got no time for trivialities;
I’ve got a girl who’s waiting home for me tonight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come on, let me through,
I got so many things I got to do;
I’ve got no business being here with you this way<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

OK, maybe I am reading into this too much, but it does seem to fit the situation of pushing through a crowd of fans to try to get into his home. I find the last line of the last verse interesting: “I’ve got no business being here with you this way<\/em>” (my emphasis) hints that, with all this attention from his young fans, he is struggling a bit with his fidelity. Again I suspect this is true. It’s a clever, if rather subtle, twist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I Get Home combines some of the urgent intensity seen in earlier tracks like Please Please Me,<\/a> with an increasingly frustrated world view. To me, some of the ideas are a little unpolished by the Beatles’ high standards: the “Whoa I” hook is a bit jarring rather than uplifting, and the line about “love her till the cows come home” stands out like a sore thumb. However, it is saved by a typically committed vocal performance and there are other promising touches which are perhaps not fully developed; the melody underpinning the lines ” I’ll love her more, till I walk out the door again” is extremely catchy (unlike the rest of the bridge), and it’s a shame we don’t hear more of it. Come to think of it, the “till I walk out the door” sentiment sounds like another deliberate and perhaps revealing caveat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall the feeling of the song is not the longing expressed (perhaps artificially) by McCartney in P.S. I Love You<\/a> and All My Loving<\/a>, but rather a kind of tetchy impatience. This can be read alongside other Lennon songs of the period You Can’t Do That, Help! Run For Your Life, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man; Lennon reveals himself to be possessive, controlling, prone to infidelity, and adrift emotionally, but in doing so he is also (sometimes unconsciously) honest and reflective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/summary>\n

This word definitely sounds like “out” rather than “on” as in the official lyrics<\/a>. I also got rid of some of the weird contractions.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

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

When I Get Home is a song written by John Lennon that appears on A Hard Day’s Night. This album came at an interesting time in the Beatles development. In Britain they were already the focus of Beatlemania, an unprecedentedly intense fandom, that meant they were regularly mobbed. The term had been coined towards the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-song-a-day","tag-a-hard-days-night"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","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=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}