Album covers - A Hard Day's Night

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

A Hard Day's Night - Robert Freeman

For the cover of the third Beatles album, Robert Freeman was asked again. He wanted to suggest the idea of movement, by expressing a flow of a pictures: four rows of four head shots, set up as though they were frames from a movie. The pictures of the four individual Beatles were taken in Freeman’s studio, in London. He asked them to make another facial expression for each new photo.

This UK movie poster had even more images

The photos were also used at the end of the movie.






While there was a blue frame for the British albums, in some countries they used a red frame. For example for the Brazilian and the American album. The US counterpart of A Hard Day's Night had only four large frames instead of sixteen small ones, thus ruining the original idea.

The US album, ruining the original idea but still a cool design

The Brazilian album

The german film programme was also designed with a red frame. Note Wilfred Brambell as one of the heads.


For the last time, the back cover notes are written by Tony Barrow. There are also four head shots of the Beatles, taken from the movie.

A Hard Day's Night back cover - Robert Freeman

This article was written by Patrick Roefflaer and you can find it in it's older incarnation here.

Sources:
Books: 'Yesterday' by Robert Freeman, The Beatles Anthology book, 'Many Years From Now' by Miles, 'In My Life' by Pete Shotton, 'The complete EMI Recording Sessions' by Mark Lewisohn and 'The Beatles London' by Mark Lewisohn and Peter Schreuder. And countless websites.