Eight Days A Week

Three days before their autumn tour of the UK, The Beatles were at Abbey Road with an idea for a
song. Although this was the first time they had gone into the studio with an unfinished number, it was a way of working that would become increasingly common over the next few years. They spent nearly four hours on ‘Eight Days A Week’ that day, and for the following two weeks
the consensus was that it would be their next single.

The band returned to the studio on a day off from their UK tour and after a nine-hour session they had completed ‘Eight Days A Week’, bar a few minor over-dubs and edits. As Derek Taylor remarked in his original sleeve notes for Beatles for Sale, “At least three of the LennonMcCartney songs were seriously considered as single releases until John popped up with ‘I Feel Fine’.” The track was recorded on the same day as ‘Eight Days A Week’ was finalised, and everyone agreed it
would be the ideal next single.

‘Eight Days A Week’ was included on Beatles For Sale as the opening track on side 2, and was never again considered as a UK single. In America, however, following its release as the follow-up to ‘I Feel Fine’, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in March 1965. The band’s instincts had told them the track could have been a hit single, and they were proved right.

In a wonderful moment of foresight Derek Taylor, again on the original liner notes for Beatles For Sale, writes, “The kids of AD 2000 will probably draw from the music much the same sense of well being and warmth as we do today.” The Beatles 1 was released in 2000.

This new clip is a montage of material from The Beatles’ historic Shea Stadium performance on 15
August 1965 in front of 55,000 fans during which the band performed twelve songs, but ‘Eight Days A Week’ was not among them. The song’s title and the clip say so much about the band’s frenetic lifestyle in 1965, at the very pinnacle of Beatlemania.