Remembering When an EP Brought Four New Beatles Recordings to the Brits in 1964

It’s fascinating to look back at The Beatles’ early days to see how they delivered their music to the public. In addition to LPs and singles, they also delivered extended plays, or EPs, at a steady rate.

In most cases, the group utilized these EPs to milk some more money out of songs that they’d already released. Once, however, in 1964, they used an EP as a delivery system for four songs that fell through the cracks.

Extended Excellence

The Beatles kept up a pace in the first few years of their career that was nothing short of exhausting. They were expected to crank out two LPs per year, along with a handful of singles that, for the most part, included songs that wouldn’t go on the albums. On top of that, there were concerts, TV appearances, and in-studio radio performances.

1964 raised the degree of difficulty when they made their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night. Still, somehow, they provided an excess. They occasionally recorded more songs than they could fit in all those various avenues.

By the middle of 1964, Parlophone, The Beatles’ label in England, had already released four EPs of their material within the UK. But there were no revelations on these records. Everything had already been released before as part of a single or an LP. Long Tall Sally would change all that.

Four Extras

In the run-up to the release of the A Hard Day’s Night album, The Beatles were furiously writing and recording material to fill up the record. When all was said and done, all 13 songs were originals by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the first time that the duo had written all the material on a full-length Beatles release.

They did record some cover songs in that stretch. Three of them (“Long Tall Sally”, “Matchbox”, and “Slow Down”) appeared on the Long Tall Sally EP, which appeared on shelves in Great Britain in June 1964. That was a month before the release of A Hard Day’s Night.

As such, the EP allowed the band to tide fans over, fans who were hungry for new stuff. Interestingly enough, because of the separate release schedule in America from England, two of the songs on the EP had already been released on The Beatles’ Second Album in the US. That included “Long Tall Sally” and the lone John Lennon-Paul McCartney original of the four.

A Musical Footnote

“I Call Your Name” is an odd duck of a song. John Lennon wrote the main section when he was a teenager, even before The Beatles formed. For a song written by a young man, it certainly features some unexpected chord changes and bluesy lyrics.

By the time the song appeared on Long Tall Sally, it had already been covered a year earlier by Billy J. Kramer, who had scored a bit hit with the Lennon-McCartney song “Bad To Me”. The Beatles briefly considered putting the song on A Hard Day’s Night, instead deciding it worked better as part of the EP.

Long Tall Sally represented an interesting footnote in Beatles history. Most folks likely forgot about it not long after A Hard Day’s Night came down the transom. But the EP showed the group, even on songs that didn’t quite earn their full attention, could still make magic.

(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)