I recently attended a showing of The Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night. The audience was cautioned that the opening of the film might be a bit startling.

That “startling” opening was, of course, the flaring crash of sound that opens the title song of the movie and the movie itself.

This chiming clang of music is described as “the most famous chord in all of rock & roll.” But new research indicates, after all, that it’s not.

And why not? Well…because it’s not a chord.

Rock & Roll raconteur Randy Bachman recently spent time in London’s EMI’s Abbey Road Studio Two, where most of The Beatles recordings were made, with Giles Martin. Giles is the son of George Martin, who produced most of the group’s records. Giles is now the defacto custodian of the Beatles’ masters – the tapes and the individual tracks from which the final records were produced. These were the recorded sounds that were mixed and released to a waiting world.

Giles explained what he had apparently gleaned from the master tapes. That the opening “chord” was in fact played by the entire Beatle “front line,” that is, the guitarists, John, Paul and George. It was not a single chord, which explains why for nearly fifty years Beatle musicologists and other musicians have puzzled and argued over it.

Filming of the Beatle movie was well along and as yet untitled when Ringo commented, as a day’s work turned into evening, that it had been “a hard day’s… night.” The line had appeared in John Lennon’s recently published book In His Own Write, but until Ringo muttered the line on the movie set, its appropriateness for the title of the film was overlooked. With a title finally chosen came the need, and quickly, for a made-to-order song. Something the song writing team of Paul McCartney and John Lennon had never done before.

In these heady days, as the bachelor Beatles were enjoying the extravagances of their extraordinary fame, new husband and father John Lennon was slightly more homebound. It is noticeable that the majority of the thirteen tracks on the British version of the Hard Day’s Night album are John “weighted’ compositions. Paul was probably out and about in London while John soldiered on at home.

So John was likely at home on Saturday, April 11, 1964, coming up with a basic outline of a song, written to order, entitled A Hard Day’s Night. Over the course of the next three days, John and Paul polished up and finished off John’s rough draft of the song.

On Wednesday, April 16, at seven o’clock in the evening, after a day spent filming the scene in which the Beatles are chased by London constables up and down a dreary London cul-de-sac, the seemingly tireless Beatles showed up at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios. John and Paul stood with their acoustic guitars and played a basic, barebones song to producer George Martin, sitting between them on a high stool, listening intently.

The usually tight-knit crew, Norman Smith, Geoff Emerick, George Martin, who presided over Beatle recording sessions were joined by an apparently unwelcome but necessary guest. This was amateur musician and professional director of the Beatles’ movie, American Dick Lester. Lester was there to make sure the title song was appropriately “cinematic.” It was probably Dick Lester who was responsible for the most famous “chord” in rock & roll. He wanted the title song to open the movie and he wanted to open the movie with a bang.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison stood around their carefully miked amps (two Vox AC-50 and Paul’s AC-100 bass) and experiment with notes and chords looking for what George Martin and Richard Lester wanted – a strident beginning to the song – a strident beginning that would also open the film. George was playing his brand new twelve string 360 Rickenbacker guitar, a gift from the Rickenbacker Company, presented to George in New York in February on the group’s first visit to the U.S. The twelve string had the top two strings simply doubled up, while the lower four strings were matched with higher octave strings. The unique sound of this guitar was the Beatles’ secret weapon, at least until the movie came out. John was playing his Rickenbacker 325, a standard six string electric guitar known as a “short arm” Rickenbacker because the guitar neck was shortened so the frets on the neck were closer together. Paul was holding his light, inexpensive (fifty-two guineas he claimed) Hofner “violin” bass guitar, designed for a left-handed player…a four string guitar, with much heavier strings set in the lowest range of the guitar. The three of them were poised to play the strident opening their record producer and their movie director were looking for.

Ringo, sitting behind a new Ludwig drum kit with a new and slightly altered THE BEATLES logo on his twenty inch bass drum head, provided his steady, percussive backbeat.

The Beatles recorded nine takes of their brand new song. Over the course of three hours John and Paul altered the lyrics slightly, smoothed out and tightened up their delivery, while the Georges, Harrison and Martin, worked out a lead guitar break. At some point in those three hours, they all experimented with and settled on the “cinematic, strident” opening that George Martin and Richard Lester were looking for.

Of the nine takes that evening, take nine is the one you hear in the movie and on the record.

On what might be take number one or two, John Lennon muttered one of his usual goofy, oafish “one, two, three, four” count ins, followed immediately by a dissonant clang of guitars, then silence. John mutters “That’s not the one. I’m still doing This Boy.” John repeats the count in, there’s a stuttered clang and again John stops and mutters “I missed the beat…” A third try, the same joking growl of a count in and the famous, unmistakable Hard Day’s Night guitar opening chimes out in all its glory. They had got it.

What “it” was, according to Giles Martin and passed along by Randy Bachman after studying the source tapes preserved on a computer at Abbey Road Studios, “it” was George on his 12 string playing a modified F chord, with a G note on top, a G on the bottom and a C note next to the G. John playing (eventually) a modified D chord with a suspended fourth with a G note. And Paul plucks his third string, a bass D.

Later on, the song was touched up with John adding an acoustic guitar backing on George’s J-160E Gibson and a bongo track, courtesy of Ringo Starr.

And the world was a better place.

Thanks to Geoff Emerick’s Here, There and Everywhere, Andy Bobiak’s The Beatles Gear, Mark Lewisohn’s, The Beatles Recording Sessions and Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap radio program on CBC.