And I Love Her
(Lennon/McCartney)
Emi Ltd Records
2' 28

On February 27, 1964, The Beatles record one of their major pieces, a ballad primarily written by Paul McCartney, with the help of John Lennon for the writing of the second verse. This is a splendid acoustic love song composed by Paul for his fiancée, Jane Asher. The quality of Paul's writing is obvious and this piece appears to be a forerunner of another work of the same nature which will be soon composed by Paul, namely the enormous song Yesterday.

In the past, Paul had already shown his inclination towards performing ballads like Till There Was You, a song by Meredith Willson that Paul used to sing on stage in the Cavern Club and that he covered for the purpose of the album With The Beatles.

Finally, And I Love Her is the very first acoustic ballad signed by Lennon/McCartney. Several million records were sold in the United States. The song quickly became one of the greatest Beatles' standards and was covered by many other artists.

In spite of its qualities, the song was never performed on stage by The Beatles and it was recorded only once at the BBC.

The recording of the song in the Abbey Road studios was subject to various arrangements which were worked out over three working days.
The final version was built around Paul's solo vocal. Paul's voice was initially doubled by the usual double-tracking technique. It was then completed by the addition of his own harmonies. 
Ringo played his bongos again while Paul, John and George played some backing acoustic guitars. It is also necessary to note the excellence of the solo performed by George Harrison on Spanish guitar. 

There are obviously many versions and covers of this standard, among which we can list the following ones:

• the version included on the album A Hard Day's Night in its American version, in which Paul's vocal is not double-tracked whereas harmonies are double-tracked.
• the version published in 1980 in The Beatles Box. In this version, the guitar riff that ends the song is repeated six times instead of four.
• the version recorded at Abbey Road studios on February 25, 1964, two days before the recording of the final version of the song. On that day, The Beatles made their first takes of And I Love Her. Take #2 was taken from this session to be included in the compilation Anthology 1. This take is harder than the final version  and features an electric guitar in addition to the acoustic guitars.
• the recent version performed by Paul McCartney during the "Unplugged" show on MTV on January 25, 1991. This cover can be found on the album Unplugged (The Official Bootleg) released after the MTV show.