In the studio
Which songs were recorded in German?
I Want to Hold Your Hand
The Beatles started recording "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at EMI Studios in Studio 2 on 17 October 1963. This song, along with the single's flip side, "This Boy", was the first Beatles song to be recorded with four-track technology. The two songs were recorded on the same day, and each needed seventeen takes to complete. Also, the Beatles were experimenting with organ-sounding guitars, which was achieved by extreme compression on John Lennon's rhythm guitar. Mono and stereo mixing was done by George Martin on 21 October 1963; further stereo mixes were done on 8 June 1965, for compilations released by EMI affiliates in Australia and the Netherlands, and on 7 November 1966. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was one of two Beatles songs (along with "She Loves You" as ""Sie liebt dich"") to be later recorded in German, entitled "Komm, gib mir deine Hand". Both songs were translated by Luxembourger musician Camillo Felgen, under the pseudonym of "Jean Nicolas". Odeon, the German arm of EMI (the parent company of the Beatles' record label, Parlophone) was convinced that the Beatles' records would not sell in Germany unless they were sung in German. The Beatles detested the idea, and when they were due to record the German version on 27 January 1964 at EMI's Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris (where the Beatles were performing 18 days of concerts at the Olympia Theatre) they chose to boycott the session. Their record producer, George Martin, having waited some hours for them to show up, was outraged and insisted that they give it a try. Two days later, the Beatles recorded "Komm, gib mir deine Hand", one of the few times in their career that they recorded outside of London. However, Martin later conceded: "They were right, actually, it wasn’t necessary for them to record in German, but they weren’t graceless, they did a good job". "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" appeared in full stereo in the United States on the Capitol LP "Something New" and years later on the Capitol CD compilation called "The Capitol Albums, Volume 1". The German-language track was a big hit in Germany at the time, but today, like all the other German-lyrics versions of English-language pop songs that were popular in that country during the 1950s and 1960s, it is generally considered as a cultural curiosity from a by-gone era at best. The English versions are much better known in Germany today; the Beatles' Red and Blue albums of the 1970s already featured the English hits on the German pressings.