Long Tall Sally

This song names real people (Aunt Mary, Uncle John, Sally), and the lyric deals in the motifs of sex and character. The words are observational, watched rather than lived, and the Beatles had done the same on 'Roll Over Beethoven' eight months earlier. It uses alliteration ('Long, tall Sally'), and a multi-syllabic rhyme arrives once, "Sally/alley". Curiously, the title names somebody. Interestingly, the line "Yeah yeah yeah" turns up in 12 Beatles songs, among them 'She Loves You', 'Hey Jude' and 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. The Family motif first appears in the Beatles catalogue here.

'Long Tall Sally' runs near 180 BPM in G major, and it is a rock and roll piece start to finish. The guitar solo here is two guitar solos - Lennon then Harrison, and the record features a lead sung at full stretch (full-power scream vocal). The harmony takes in a ninth chord, which fourteen Beatles songs use. Underneath it is a plain 12-bar blues, the shape behind 32 of their recordings, such as 'Little Child' and 'Chains'. As it happens, the chords run C → G → D7 → C7 → G → D7, the same shape 'You Can't Do That' plays as C7 → G7 → D7♯9 → C7 → G7 → D7.

The tape rolled at EMI Studio 2, cut live in one take with twin lead-guitar solos from Lennon and Harrison. The band had performed it onstage for years before recording. Lennon brought the Rickenbacker 325, his guitar, something they had reached for on 'Boys' a year earlier. The kit in the room included the Ludwig Downbeat, Starr's own kit since 1963. It shares its session day with two others, the 43rd to the 45th of their career.

Little Richard, Robert Blackwell and Enotris Johnson wrote it, and McCartney sings lead. There is a role swap on it, Lennon on lead guitar, a habit that peaked in 1967.

The record came out on June 19, 1964, and its home now is Past Masters, the 1988 collection of the singles and B-sides. America got it two months earlier, on The Beatles' Second Album, put out by Capitol, with leftover With The Beatles tracks plus singles and EP tracks not on Meet The Beatles!. This song was the 6th of the 35 records they released in 1964, and the 40th of their career.