Studio Two, EMI Studios, London
On July 5th, Brian Epstein verbally agreed to the group undertaking a June 1964 concert tour of Australia, and on December 2nd the contract was formally signed. Now though, to satisfy demands from Australian radio, the group recorded four messages for broadcast there, three addressed directly to Bob Rogers (a DJ at the Sydney station 2SM) and one "open-message", to be used by any station. These semi-scripted, semi-spontaneous lines consisted of typically witty Beatles chatter and were the first of a number of speech items the group taped at EMI over the years.
The recordings were made between 2:30 and 6:30 pm along with ten takes of a re-make of "Hold Me Tight", first attempted for "Please Please Me" on February 11th, but completed more successfully this time around.
Between 7:00 and 11:30 pm, which meant running 90 minutes over the blocked time of 10:00, the Beatles set about another re-make, of George's Don't Bother Me", with ten takes needed to complete the recording, and then resumed work on two songs began the previous day, taping 16 more takes of "Little Child" and six more of "I Wanna Be Your Man".
