The Beatles – “It Won’t Be Long” Live
Everyday, We’ll Be Happy I Know!
“It Won’t Be Long” was primarily written by John Lennon but with assistance from Paul McCartney for the arrangement and lyrics. It was released on November 22, 1963 for The Beatles’ second album “With The Beatles.” It features a chorus with a juxtaposition on “be long” and “belong.”
It heavily featured the band’s distinctive “Yeah, yeah” signature established with She Loves You, this time in a call-and-response style between Lennon on lead vocals, and McCartney and Harrison doing harmonies.
It also had scaling guitar riffs and a melodramatic ending. The band recorded this in two sessions with ten takes in the morning and seven in the afternoon. However, this wasn’t a staple in any of their concert or live repertoire.
John Lennon, in his last interview, told Playboy magazine that the song was the beginning of a wider audience for Beatles’ music than the youthful throngs that had fervently followed them from their Liverpool clubbing days. “It was only after a critic for the [London] Times said we put ‘Aeolian cadences’ in ‘It Won’t Be Long’ that the middle classes started listening to us. … To this day, I have no idea what ‘Aeolian cadences’ are. They sound like exotic birds.”
It’s the perfect way to kick off their second album!
