pair wrote both sides of the non-album single, "I Feel Fine" backed with "She's a Woman", which accompanied the LP's release. At this stage in their partnership, Lennon and McCartney rarely wrote together as before, but each would often contribute key parts to songs for which the other was the primary author. Nevertheless, Lennon's level of contribution to Beatles for Sale outweighed McCartney's, a situation that, as on A Hard Day's Night, author Ian MacDonald attributes to McCartney's commitment being temporarily sidetracked by his relationship with English actress Jane Asher. At the time, Lennon said of the album: "You could call our new one a Beatles country and western LP." Music critic Tim Riley views the album as a "country excursion", while MacDonald describes it as being "dominated by the [country-and-western] idiom". The impetus for this new direction came partly from the band's exposure to US country radio stations while on tour; in addition, it was a genre that Ringo Starr had long championed. Lennon's "I'm a Loser" was the first Beatles song to directly reflect Dylan's influence. Author Jonathan Gould highlights the influence of blues and country-derived rockabilly on the album's original compositions and in the inclusion of songs by Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly. He also comments that Dylan's acoustic folk sound was a style that the Beatles tended to identify as country music. McCartney later said that Beatles for Sale inaugurated a more mature phase for the band, whereby: "We got more and more free to get into ourselves. Our student selves rather than 'we must please the girls and make money' …" According to author Peter Doggett, this period coincided with Lennon and McCartney being feted by London society, from which the pair found inspiration among a network of non-mainstream writers, poets, comedians, film-makers and other arts-related individuals. Doggett says that their social milieu in 1964 represented "new territory for pop" and a challenge to British class delineation as the Beatles introduced an "arty middle-class" sensibility to pop music. Recording The sessions for Beatles for Sale began at EMI Studios on 11 August, one month after the release of A Hard Day's Night. The majority of the recording sessions took place during a three-week period beginning on 29 September, following the band's return from the US tour. Much of the production was done on "days off" from performances in the UK, and much of the songwriting