Featured In: Ferris Bueller's Day OffComposer/Lyricist: Phil Medley & Burt Russell
Performer: The Beatles
Description:"Twist and Shout" was originally titled "Shake It Up, Baby" and recorded by the Top Notes and then covered by The Isley Brothers. The Beatles released the song on their first UK album,
Please Please Me, the recording of which on February 11, 1963 was their first album session and is notable for eleven songs recorded in a mere ten hours. "Twist and Shout", with John Lennon on lead vocals, was the last song recorded; producer George Martin knew Lennon's voice would suffer from the performance, so he left it until last, with only fifteen minutes of scheduled recording time remaining.
Lennon was suffering from a cold, and was drinking milk and sucking on cough drops to soothe his throat. His coughing is audible on the album, as is the cold's effect on his voice. Even so, he produced a memorable vocal performance: a raucous, dynamic rocker. He later said his voice was not the same for a long time afterward, and that "every time [he] swallowed, it felt like sandpaper".
The Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout" was featured in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a 1986 American teen coming of age comedy film written and directed by John Hughes. The film follows high school senior Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), who decides to skip school and spend the day in downtown Chicago. Accompanied by his girlfriend Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) and his best friend Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck), he creatively avoids his school's Dean of Students Edward Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), his resentful sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), and his parents. During the film, Bueller frequently breaks the fourth wall by speaking directly to the camera to explain to the audience his techniques and thoughts.
"Twist and Shout" charted again, sixteen years after the Beatles broke up, as a result of its prominent appearance in both this film and
Back To School (where Rodney Dangerfield performs a cover version) which was released the same weekend as
Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The re-released single reached #23 in the U.S; a US-only compilation album containing the track The Early Beatles, re-entered the album charts at #197. The version heard in the film includes brass overdubbed onto the Beatles' original recording, which did not go down well with Paul McCartney. "I liked (the) film but they overdubbed some lousy brass on the stuff! If it had needed brass, we'd had stuck it on ourselves!" Upon hearing McCartney's reaction, Hughes felt bad for "offend(ing) a Beatle. But it wasn't really part of the song. We saw a band and we needed to hear the instruments."