Slow Down

The motifs of plea, nostalgia and relationship are in there, if not always in the foreground. The lyric turns to anaphora (verse 1 lines begin 'Come on, pretty baby'), a habit that peaked in 1968. Curiously, the line "Well you know that" turns up in 3 Beatles songs, among them 'Hey Jude' and 'Run for Your Life'.

'Slow Down' is a rock and roll and R&B song in C major, around 168 BPM, and it owes something to blues. It has a guitar solo, and it reaches for a ninth chord, heard on fourteen Beatles records in all. Then, the performance shows a vocal ad-lib ('Ow!', 'Brr!', 'Woo' interjections). The song runs on a 12-bar blues, which 32 of theirs do, such as 'Roll Over Beethoven' and 'Little Child'.

Basic track cut in three takes at EMI Studio 2, with George Martin overdubbing piano in a later session and Lennon double-tracking his lead vocal. That Rickenbacker 325 is Lennon's guitar, in use since 1963 and heard on 44 Beatles records in all, such as 'Baby It's You' and 'Boys'. This one came out of a four-song day, the 47th to the 50th of their career.

Larry Williams wrote it and Lennon sings lead. George Martin played piano, as he also did on 'Matchbox' and 'A Hard Day's Night'.

The song was released in the UK on the Long Tall Sally EP and in the US as the B-side of the Matchbox single, reaching #25 on the Billboard Hot 100. Something New gathered it up in America four weeks later, on Capitol, with remaining A Hard Day's Night tracks plus Long Tall Sally EP tracks. This is the Beatles' 41st record, and the 7th of the 35 they released in 1964.