The 1964 film A Hard Day's Night was released at the height of Beatlemania and marked the Fab Four's first cinematic appearance.
The Beatles already had two hit albums - Please Please Me and With the Beatles - under their belt and their big screen debut's primary purpose was to assist sales of the accompanying soundtrack album. However, the 87 minute caper, which follows the band for 36 hours as they prepare for a performance, has become a classic in its own right, aided by the songs and The Beatles' comic chops.
The band set to work recording the album over a number of sessions in 1964. The songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but one penned by Lennon was not to director Richard Lester's taste, reports the Express.
READ MORE: The Beatles song the band 'hated' recording
The song I'll Cry Instead was included on the album and was released as a single in the US, but Lester had no desire to include it in his film. The track has a country sound and its lyrics verge on the sombre, despite its upbeat tempo.
The first lines say: "I've got every reason on earth to be mad / 'Cause I just lost the only girl I had / If I could get my way / I'd get myself locked up today / But I can't, so I'll cry instead."
When Lennon presented the song to Lester, he was rejected. He recalled the event in 1980: "I wrote that for A Hard Day’s Night, but Dick Lester didn’t even want it." Instead, Lester went on to pick out one of the band's more successful songs.
Lennon said: "He resurrected Can’t Buy Me Love for that sequence instead. I like the middle eight to that song, though – that’s about all I can say about it." The Imagine singer was a little hurt by Lester's dismissal of I'll Cry Instead - and with good reason.
There was supposedly more meaning behind its lyrics than was immediately apparent, according to Cynthia Lennon and Paul McCartney. The singer himself even later reflected that the lyrics of the song "represented his newfound feelings of frustration" with the band's success.
He added that this left him feeling as if he had "lost his freedom". Cynthia said I'll Cry Instead's lyrics were a "cry for help".
Cynthia said: "It reflects the frustration he felt at that time [of being] the idol of millions ... [while] the freedom and fun of the early days had gone." McCartney had a completely different take on the lyrics, however. Instead, he felt that Lennon had written the song autobiographically, and they instead reflected his relationship with his wife at the time, Cynthia.
The song used in place of I'll Cry Instead - Can't Buy Me Love - was a runaway success. It was the A-side of The Beatles' sixth single and topped charts across the world. It finished the 1960s as the fourth-best selling single in the UK.
