The Beatles recorded “It’s Only Love” during an afternoon session on June 15, 1965. It took six takes to get right, though only four of those were complete. Its original working title was “That’s A Nice Hat.”

John Lennon double-tracked his vocals onto take six, and five guitars were recorded: two acoustic, including a 12-string, and three electric guitars, with a tremolo effect applied to George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker.

The second take of “It’s Only Love” was included on Anthology 2 in 1996, along with the aborted take three from the session. Interestingly, Ringo Starr’s drum part on the second take was very similar to the one later heard on another Lennon song, Rubber Soul’s “In My Life” from December 1965.

Although John didn’t like the song, Paul McCartney, who co-wrote the piece at Lennon’s home in Weybridge, was slightly more forgiving.

Sometimes we didn’t fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs, like ‘It’s Only Love.’ If a lyric was really bad we’d edit it, but we weren’t that fussy about it, because it’s only a rock ‘n’ roll song. I mean, this is not literature.

— Paul McCartney (from Barry Miles' November 1997 biography, Many Years From Now)