And I Love Her

McCartney conceived this song, and Lennon collaborated. It was the first of several soft, ballad-like songs McCartney wrote over the years. He wrote it in the house of his girlfriend, Jane Asher in February of 1964 between the Paris and US outings. Lennon helped work out the middle eight bars during the initial recording sessions. The large number of takes reflects the fact that the song evolved greatly during recording. The structure of And I Love Her is a fairly standard verse-verse-bridge followed by bridge-verse-to-final, except that in place of the second bridge there is a guitar solo in a higher key. As the only ballad in the Hard Day's Night soundtrack, this song helped establish the Beatles in the minds of their fans as a full-spectrum pop group, capable of exquisite productions beyond rock-'n'-roll.