'I Want to Hold Your Hand': Facts About The Beatles' First No. 1 Hit

If you were to listen to The Beatles catalog from 1963's Please Please Me to 1970's Let It Be, what stands out is the sheer evolution of the songwriting abilities and craftsmanship of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star, yet if you were forced to pick one song that best epitomizes the band as a whole, it would have to be "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

In many ways, it's the song that launched Beatlemania both in England and the United States, and it stands as The Beatles' most successful single.

Music journalist Rob Sheffield, quoted in 2004's The Rolling Stone Album Guide, said, "'I Want to Hold Your Hand' explodes out of the speakers with the most passionate singing, drumming, lyrics, guitars and girl-crazy howls ever — it's no insult to The Beatles to say they never topped this song, because nobody else has either. It's the most joyous three minutes in the history of human noise."

As these 9 facts prove, there's a lot more to know about "I Want to Know Your Hand" — yeah, yeah, yeah! (Oh wait, that's the other song)

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1. John and Paul on writing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'

In 1964, Paul McCartney reflected on the writing of the song, explaining, "We were told we had to get down to it, so we found this house when we were walking along one day. We got down in the basement of this disused house and there was an old piano, so started banging away. There was a little old organ, too. So we wre having this informal jam and we started banging away. Suddenly a little bit came to us, the catch line. So we started working on it from there. We got our pens and paper out and just wrote down the lyrics. Eventually we had some sort of a song, so we played it for our recording manager and he seemed to like it. We recorded it the next day."

In 1980, shortly before his death, John Lennon detailed that, "We wrote alot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like with 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u/ got that something...' And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that-- both playing into each other's noses."

For his part, McCartney agreed with this assessment in 1994, saying, "Eyeball-to-eyeball is a very good description of it. That's exactly how it was. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was very co-written."

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2. Peter Asher confirms John's view of the story

Paul McCartney's girlfriend at the time was model and actress Jane Asher, and, according to her brother Peter (of the duo Peter & Gordon), the song was written in the family home (which obviously goes against McCartney's comment above, but goes with Lennon's).

"My mother," he told gibson.com, "had a practice room that she used to give private oboe lessons in when she wasn't teaching at The Royal Academy, where she was a professor. There was just a piano, and an upright chair and a sofa. Paul used that room to write in from time to time. One afternoon, John came over while I was upstairs in my room. The two of them were in the basement for an hour or so, and Paul called me down to listen to a song they had just finished. I went downstairs and sat on the sofa, and they sat side by side, on the piano bench. That's where they played 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' for the first time anywhere. They asked me what I thought and I said, 'I think it's very good.'"

3. Recording History

On October 17, 1963, The Beatles went into EMI Studios' Studio 2 to record both "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and the single's B-side, "This Boy." Each track needed 17 takes, with producer George Martin mixing mono and stereo versions on October 21.

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4. The song got hijacked by a U.S. DJ

Capitol Records got "scooped" on the song by Washington, D.C. radio station WWDC when DJ Carroll James was given the single from a stewardess returning to the States from England. So impactful was the song on James' listeners, that it prompted Capitol to change the official release date.

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5. The American release took place in December 1963

Capitol Records had originally scheduled the release for "I Want to Hold Your Hand" for January 13, 1964, but, given the success the song was having in Washington, D.C., moved it up — backed by the song "This Boy" — to December 26, 1963. In its first 10 days of release, it outsold any previous British single.

6. Reaching #1

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" officially topped the American charts on February 1, 1964, slightly more than a week prior to The Beatles making their American debut February 9 on The Ed Sullivan Show. It stayed at that position for seven weeks (replaced by the group's "She Loves You") and would go on to sell 12 million copies, more than any other single from the Fab Four.

The song was actually released on January 18 at number 45.

In 2018, Billboard named it the 48th biggest hit ever on the Hot 100 chart.

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7. The impact in the U.K. of 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was seismic

In November 1963, Beatlemania was spreading over the UK thanks to the success of "She Loves You." The band's acclaimed biographer, Mark Lewisohn, gave an interview with Mojo magazine in which he explained, "'She Loves You' had already sold an industry-boggling three-quarters of a million before these fresh converts were pushing it into seven figures. And at this very moment, just four weeks before Christmas, with everyone connected to the music and relevant retail industries already lying prone in paroxysms of unimaginable delight, EMI pulled the trigger and released 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' And then it was bloody pandemonium."

The song entered the British charts on December 14, 1963 and displaced "She Loves You" as No. 1, which was actually the first time a band replaced itself at the top of the charts there. It stayed at No. 1 for five weeks, and on the overall charts for 15 more.

8. 'Kom Gib Mir Deine Hand': That's German for 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'

Thanks to all of the time they spent performing in Hamburg prior to their true explosion, The Beatles had a large and loyal German fanbase. Attempting to capitalize on that, they recorded German language versions of both "I Want to Hold Your Hand" — titled "Kom Gib Mir Deine Hand" — and "She Loves You" ("Sie Liebt Dich"). The former reached No. 1 on the German charts.

In the documentary series The Beatles Anthology, producer George Martin said of the two tracks, "They were the only things they have ever done in a foreign language. And they didn't need to anyway ... The records would have sold in English, and did."

Not needing to do so was something The Beatles recognized as well, and they even boycotted the initial recording session in Paris on January 27, 1964 at EMI's Pathe Marconi Studios. Angry, Martin insisted they show up to record and they ultimately agreed.

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9. I Wanna Hold Your Hand: The Movie

Given that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is generally credited (along with "She Loves You") with launching Beatlemania, it makes total sense that a film wanting to capture the pop culture insanity of that period would be called "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

Released in 1978, it's about a group of high school kids who desperately attempt to get tickets to attend the Fab Four's February 9, 1964 premiere performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. It's directed and written by the Back to the Future team of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, respectively, with Steven Spielberg serving as producer. If you want to get a comic sense of what those days some 60 years ago were like, it's highly recommended.