Rolling Stone The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs

95
Any Time at All
“Any Time at All” shows how much The Beatles learned from their hero Buddy Holly. The song has all the Holly trademarks—the jangling guitars, the openhearted generosity of the lyric, the urgent emotion in the voices. It’s a pledge of 24-hour devotion to a girl, with Lennon speaking his mind in a brash way (“Call me tonight, and I’ll come to you”) that would have made Holly proud—even though Lennon himself wasn’t thrilled with the results. (He dismissed the song as my “effort at [re]writing “It Won’t Be Long.”)

If the Beatles play the song like they’re in a hurry, it’s because they were—this was recorded on the last day of the sessions for A Hard Day’s Night, before they departed for a monthlong tour. (Unfortunately, the morning after they cut “Any Time at All,” Ringo collapsed with tonsillitis and pharyngitis, so they went to Denmark with a replacement drummer.) “Any Time at All” reprises a George Martin trick from “A Hard Day’s Night” by using a piano solo echoed lightly note-for-note on guitar by Harrison. Never a hit, “Any Time at All” became a fan favorite.
Appears on A Hard Day’s Night