“If I Fell”

October 2, 2013 • 4:03 am

This beautiful ballad—surprisingly, a Lennon composition—was released as a single in 1964 and then put on the A Hard Day’s Night album a month later. It’s one of the best early Beatles songs, and the album itself  is underrated. Have a look at its tracks:

Side one
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. “A Hard Day’s Night“ Lennon and McCartney 2:34
2. “I Should Have Known Better“ Lennon 2:43
3. “If I Fell“ Lennon and McCartney 2:19
4. “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You“ Harrison 1:56
5. “And I Love Her“ McCartney 2:30
6. “Tell Me Why“ Lennon with McCartney 2:09
7. “Can’t Buy Me Love“ McCartney 2:12
Side two
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. “Any Time at All“ Lennon 2:11
2. “I’ll Cry Instead“ Lennon 1:46
3. “Things We Said Today“ McCartney 2:35
4. “When I Get Home“ Lennon 2:17
5. “You Can’t Do That“ Lennon 2:35
6. “I’ll Be Back“ Lennon with McCartney 2:24

My other favorites on that album are “Tell Me Why,” “Any Time at All,” and the haunting “I’ll Be Back,” which I mistakenly left off my list of songs to be posted (listen to it here; as with “If I Fell,” it has great harmony). We have five more to go.

“If I Fell” is ranked #26 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs, and that’s about where it belongs.

This is a rare version recorded in the BBC studios on July 14, 1964.

Some notes from Rolling Stone:

“If I Fell” was Lennon’s first attempt to write a slow, pretty number for a Beatles record. “People forget that John wrote some nice ballads,” McCartney said. “People tend to think of him as an acerbic wit and aggressive and abrasive, but he did have a very warm side to him, really, which he didn’t like to show too much in case he got rejected.”

Lennon said the lyrics — in which he begs a new lover for tenderness after being wounded by the last girl — were “semiautobiographical, but not consciously.” On the surface, they had little to do with his life: He had been with his wife, Cynthia, for years, and their son, Julian, was almost a year old.

And the album version, with wonderful harmony between Lennon and McCartney. I love to sing the harmony part (which is pretty easy) when I’m alone. Note that McCartney’s voice famously breaks on the word “vain”.

Wikipedia gives details about the melody:

The song is notable for its unusual structure, which includes an unrepeated introductory section sung by Lennon, followed by sequential verse sections, each having a slightly expanded form, but with no obvious chorus or bridge section. The demo version (just John on acoustic guitar) from early 1964, does include the introduction, as well as an alternate ending. The remainder of the song features a two-part harmony, sung by Lennon and McCartney together into a single microphone at their suggestion, with Lennon singing the lower harmony while McCartney sings the higher one. It also features intricate chord changes. The key changes from D flat major to D major between the introduction (a series of descending barre chords) and the main song, which uses mainly open chords, including an unusual D ninth.

And a bit more from Rolling Stone:

. . . musically, it was one of Lennon’s cleverest songs to date: The harmonic tricks of its strummy, offbeat opening were miles beyond what other bands were doing at the time, and it was “dripping with chords,” as McCartney said. It also showcased some of the Beatles’ finest singing. Lennon and McCartney shared a single microphone for their Everly Brothers-like close harmonies.

“[‘If I Fell’] was the precursor to ‘In My Life,'” Lennon pointed out later. “It has the same chord sequences: D and B minor and E minor, those kind of things. It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads, silly love songs, way back when.”

Lennon was prone to denigrating his early songs (and McCartney’s); there is no way this is a “silly love song.”

14 thoughts on ““If I Fell””

  1. A perfect pop song. I know it but would never have been able to tell you the title. I think so many Beatles songs were just ‘there’ in the background when I was growing up, even though my parents were not popular music fans.

  2. You are probably getting sick of me mentioning that I’m reading Many Years from Now (but it’s quite good and I recommend it).

    McCartney/Miles describes the writing of the (Film and Album) title this way (I paraphrase):

    1. They wrangle over the title of the film, eventually landing on “A Hard Day’s Night”, from a comment that Ringo overheard/made [Ringo often came up with these interesting turns of phrase.]
    2. Lennon: “right, I’ll work on that”
    3. Next morning, he comes in with the essentially-complete song
    4. They run through it a couple of times
    5. An hour later, they prform it for the producer, director, Brian Epstein.
    6. An hour after that, they are in the Abbey Road studies with George Martin and got it recorded in less than an hour.

    These guys were machines!

    2. for the producer, the director, and for Brian Epstein [who was neither] (I really need to proof-read … 🙂 )

      1. In that book, Miles may be giving excessive credit and flattery to McCartney, just as Philip Norman’s Shout is needlessly critical of McCartney. For me, the best exposition of Beatles music by far remains the late Ian Macdonald’s Revolution in the Head. He gives an interesting summary of the unusual nature of If I Fell as a Lennon song.

        1. It’s stated very clearly in the Acknowledgments section at the front that this is (essentially) purely Paul’s recollections (and Miles’ own) and that it necessarily isn’t an accurate history.

          Fascinating nonetheless.

    4. The first album was recorded in an afternoon. Less than a decade later, McCartney did an album in a week, because it was an interesting challenge to do something so quickly. (To be fair, though, in the 1970s some bands spent time in the studio working on writing and arranging songs, whereas the first Beatles album was essentially half of their stage set at the time.)

      1. The point is then I suppose, that as with many other popular beat combos of that era, they did not waste time overproducing songs until later in their careers when they had the luxury of studio time & record label money?

  3. This is the greatest of all their pre-Rubber-Soul songs, bar none IMO.

    There is a fantastic scene in the movie “Shoot the Moon” where Diane Keaton’s character after a painful split from her husband (played by Albert Finney) sings this slowly and painfully lying in the bathtub. It’s one of the greatest uses of the Beatles music in a movie I’ve ever seen. You can watch it here. The first line is in French. I don’t remember if that’s in the original version of the movie.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LBy7gbgXAk

  4. “If I Fell” is just plain a simple delight… As were many of the early love songs by the Fab Four.

    And ignoring the monster Beatle hits which made them famous (like “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”) for me their music of that era falls into two camps, one being love songs with a tender approach like that above (musically that is) and the other with a stone hard beat and some killer rhythm and blues.

    “If I Fell” “This Boy” and “And I Lover Her” all fall into the former group along with my favorite early love song by The Beatles “Yes it Is”.

    Songs like “Tell Me Why” “I Call Your Name” and “Money” epitomize the latter group and for me make clear that the Beatles were never just a lightweight pop band. They had a dark side and one with a sharp edge all along. “You Can’t Do That” is my favorite here and at the very least nobody can ever say it doesn’t have enough cowbell.

    And yes, I love hearing their early songs of any variety done live for the BBC and in other venues. But sadly regret that the tune “Tell Me Why” was never recorded/bootlegged in that manner as far as I can tell.

    I do however think that in the movie “Hard Days Night” that John Lennon was indeed belting out his lyrics for “Tell Me Why” live before the erupting audience… But to date have never seen this confirmed by anyone else, although I am certain.

    My position about this arises from the open quality of Lennon’s voice (which indeed sounds live in the movie) and also because the first part of the word “Well” in the line “Well I gave her everything I had” isn’t double tracked as on the albums it appears on (“HDN” and “Something New”).

    But in any case The Beatles sin (blue) and tan (xx/xy) are fab I must say.

    Be it live or in the studio, The Beatles early on were GREAT, if now somewhat forgotten and perhaps overshadowed by a few monsters full of hope.

    1. “Money” was not a Lennon/McCartney song; it was recorded in 1959 by Barrett Strong, and co-written by later Motown founder Berry Gordy. It was a staple in their live performances. But your point is still made; the songs that they covered from others (Little Richard, Chuck Berry, etc.) showed that they were hard rockers in their early live shows.

      Somehow I can’t see George Martin shouting, “I need more cowbell”, even if a song did. It may have been unavoidable to mix the cowbell so high in “You Can’t Do That”?

      1. Thanks for the input Frank, all those early RnB songs the Beatles covered were one way or another great.

        Another of my favorites was “You Really Got a Hold on Me”. Like “Money” they took a standard oldies classic and gave it a new kind of energy such as only The Beatles could produce. Likewise with “Twist and Shout” where they covered a song originally made famous by the Isley Brothers.

        And speaking of energetic performances, based upon listening the Hollywood Bowl album (and at the max tolerance of my ears)that last song live was incredible… The performance before the Queen with this song was awesome also and can be seen one YouTube I believe, if for an audience a little more restrained.

        And last lol my cowbell comment was a pun regarding Christopher Walken in a SNL skit. Maybe a little obscure I agree but probably not as much as the whole sin and tan thing…

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