Who Wrote the Beatle Songs
Page 4
“Memphis, Tennessee ” (Chuck Berry). John sings lead. Chuck Berry was another leading inspiration of the early Beatles. John usually sang lead vocals on Berry songs, but Paul was also a committed fan. [20] Other versions of this are on the Live at the BBC compilations.
“Sure to Fall (In Love with You) ” (Carl Perkins, Bill Cantrell, Quinton Claunch). Paul sings lead. Perkins, representing the rockabilly genre, was another major inspiration for the early Beatles. Other versions of this are on the Live at the BBC collections.
“Hello Little Girl ” (Lennon–McCartney). John sings lead. This song was first released by the Fourmost in 1963, see below. The Decca performance can be found on Anthology 1 .
“Three Cool Cats ” (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller). George sings lead. The Coasters released this as the B-side of their single “Charlie Brown” in 1959. The Decca version can be found on Anthology 1 .
“Crying, Waiting, Hoping ” (Buddy Holly). George sings lead. This Buddy Holly song was released in 1959 as the B-side to “Peggy Sue Got Married.” A different Beatle version is on Live at the BBC .
“Love of the Loved ” (Lennon–McCartney). Paul sings lead. The Beatles gave this to Cilla Black, who released it in 1963, see below. The Decca audition version has never been released.
“September in the Rain ” (Harry Warren, Al Dubin). Paul sings lead. This song was a standard, first published in 1937. No Beatle version of this has been released.
“Bésame Mucho ” (Consuelo Velázquez). Paul sings lead. The Beatles followed the Coasters’ version of the song. Other Beatle versions can be found in the Let It Be movie and on Anthology 1 .
“Searchin ’” (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller). Paul sings lead. A Coasters single, released in 1957, this was another key rock song for the Beatles. [21] The Decca version can be found on Anthology 1 .
The Decca Audition has been released, without the three Beatle-written songs. Five of the songs performed at the audition can be found on Anthology 1 , including two of the Beatle songs.
The contrast between this and the next major Beatle recording — the album Please Please Me , recorded only about a year later — is remarkable. The Lennon-McCartney originals in the later recording are mature and substantial, in contrast to the three lesser Lennon-McCartneys here. The performance of a cover song such as “Money” — later the final cut on With the Beatles , the Beatles’ second album — is also startlingly different and more powerful in the later recording.
Some blame the selection of songs for the Decca audition’s weakness. By some accounts, Brian Epstein chose the songs, [22] and he highlighted ballads and novelty songs rather than American rhythm and blues numbers more characteristic of the early Beatles. Nevertheless, there were some hard rockers included (“Money” and “Searchin’”) along with Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Motown songs. And all of these songs were in the Beatles’ live repertoire. In addition, George Harrison remembered that each Beatle chose a number he wanted to do. [23]
John Lennon, in 1972, said, “When you hear the tape, it’s pretty good. It’s not great, but it’s good and it’s certainly good for then, when you consider that all that was going on was The Shadows — especially in England.” [24] That’s about right.
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[1] Beatles interview, Jerry G. Bishop, Aug. 13 to Sept. 1, 1965, in Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 359. See also Chris Roberts, “John Lennon,” Melody Maker 39 (April 4, 1964) (Sandercombe, The Beatles: Press Reports , 57); Lewisohn, Tune In , 11. Du Noyer, Conversations , 33.
[2] Elson, McCartney — Songwriter , 24.
[3] Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Chronicle , 42.
[4] Lewisohn, Tune In , 629. “Swanee River” has been lost.
[5] Lennon in 1963, see Shepherd and Dean, “Behind the Spotlight,” The Beatles Book Monthly 24 (July 1965): 24. See also Paul’s comments in Anthology , 59.
[6] Beatles, Press Conference, Adelaide, Australia, June 12, 1964. See also Epstein, A Cellarful of Noise , 40-42; Anthology , 66. When “My Bonnie” was first released, the Beatles were much more enthusiastic about it, Lewisohn, Tune In , 493.
[7] Paul to Mr. Low, in Davies, The Beatles , 63.
[8] Lewisohn, Tune In , 447. Ray Charles and Gene Vincent had recorded it earlier.
[9] January 1962, Polydor no. 21914, according to Stormo, “Lennon's first published song.” “A copy of the EP was officially given to the ‘Bibliothèque nationale de France’ on January 26th, 1962, and the receival date was stamped on the record’s back.” Some sources give April 1962 as the release date.
[10] According to Harrison in 1963, Smith, “Close-up on a Beatle: George Harrison.” Pete Best, in 1985, remembered the Shadows’ 1961 hit “Frightened City” as the source. Beatle! The Pete Best Story, 104-5. Or the Shadows tune was the November 1960 single “Man of Mystery,” Lewisohn, Tune In , 381.
[11] George remembered “someone” asking; Pete Best said it was Storm.
[12] According to Best.
[13] Smith, “Close-up on a Beatle: George Harrison.” Best remembered that George started playing and John joined in.
[14] Forte, “George Harrison,” 107.
[15] Beatles, Radio Interview, October 28, 1962.
[16] According to John, as quoted in Lewisohn, Tune In , 449.
[17] Lewisohn, Tune In , 237, 440, 449.
[18] For the Decca sessions, see Unterberger, Unreleased Beatles , 18-25; Lewisohn, Tune In , 539-42.
[19] Interview with Raoul Pantin, Trinidad Express , May 4, 1971, as quoted in Lewisohn, Tune In , extended, 2:1344. Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 47.
[20] For example, on January 20, 1982, on the BBC Desert Island Discs program, Paul picked Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” as one of his ten favorite songs. See also “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” below.
[21] Anthology , 22. Another pick for Paul’s Desert Island Discs.
[22] Best, Beatle! The Pete Best Story , 144. According to Best, “Eppy and Mike Smith chose a mixture of songs that they calculated would have the Decca bigwigs standing on their heads.” The emphasis on standards was “I remember, . . . mainly at Brian’s insistence.”
[23] Anthology , 67.
[24] Ibid., 68.
3
“I knew at that moment that this was going to be a good collaboration” —
PLEASE PLEASE ME
W ith the Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do,” and their first album, Please Please Me , the real Beatles canon begins. Remarkably, given that for many years the Beatles were a “cover” band, the early singles and albums are dominated by songs John and Paul wrote, and this creativity impressed the decisionmakers at EMI and helped the Beatles obtain their first recording contract.
As early as the first albums and singles, all the patterns of Lennon-McCartney songwriting were present. Thoroughgoing collaboration (as in the case of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “She Loves You”) is more common now than in any other period. “Finishing” collaboration (in which one writer substantially began a song, and the other helped finish it, as in “I Saw Her Standing There”) is perhaps the most common type of collaboration now, and throughout the Beatles’ career. There is some collaboration with non-Beatles, also a persistent pattern, though this kind of collaboration is usually confined to outsiders filling in holes in a song’s lyrics. In addition, some songs, such as “All My Loving” or “All I’ve Got to Do,” were written entirely separately, by Paul or John alone.
“Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You” single, October 5, 1962
“Love Me Do” doesn’t seem much of a song now, compared to later Beatle masterpieces, but it electrified the young Sting, who first heard it in a changing room at a swimming pool:
We were drying ourselves off and, as was our custom, flicking towels at each other’s genitals. It was at this point that we heard the first bars of ‘Love Me Do’ from a transistor radio in the corner. The effect was immediate. There was something in the sparseness of the sound that immediat
ely put a stop to the horseplay. John’s lonely harmonica and Paul’s bass played ‘two to the bar,’ and then the vocal harmony moved in modal fifths up to minor thirds and back again to a solo voice on the refrain. Not that I could articulate any of this at the time, but I recognized something significant, even revolutionary, in the spare economy of the sound, and the interesting thing is, so did everyone else. [1]
Love Me Do — (McCartney-Lennon)
(lead vocals: Paul and John) (recorded on September 4 and 11, 1962)
Paul wrote the main part of “Love Me Do,” in 1958, when he was sixteen, [2] in the parlor of the McCartney home, 20 Forthlin Road. [3] Like many early Beatle songs, it was written in the Buddy Holly style of three or four simple chords. [4] According to Paul, “Love Me Do” “was us trying to do the blues.” [5]
Paul then brought the song to John, and they worked on it extensively together, with John contributing especially to the middle part. [6] So it’s an example of a common pattern in Lennon-McCartney songwriting, in fact, probably the most common pattern — collaboration, extensive or limited, after one person started a song.
As primitive as this song is, compared to later Beatle accomplishments, it marked a culmination for the early Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership. Lennon remembered that it was the first Lennon-McCartney song they dared perform live (a new, traumatic experience). [7] Paul later called it “‘our greatest philosophical song.” [8]
Despite this song being originally written by Paul, John sang the lead for the crucial “Love me do” line until George Martin asked John to play the harmonica part, which required Paul to sing it. [9]
The evidence for the authorship of this song is somewhat contradictory. John’s statements ascribe the song mostly to Paul, Paul’s to collaboration. In 1971, Lennon stated that Paul wrote the “main structure,” of this song when he (Paul) was sixteen, though he thought he (John) had something to do with the “middle.” [10] The following year, he wrote that “Paul started [it] when he must have been about fifteen” but then they collaborated on it, and it became “one of the first ones we wrote.” [11] By 1980, John ascribed the song almost completely to Paul (it was “Paul’s song”) and was less sure that he had contributed anything — he “might” have contributed to the middle section. [12] (Incidentally, John’s use of “middle eight” did not mean a short transitional passage, eight measures, between two major sections of the song, as the name suggests, and as its synonym, “bridge,” also suggests. For the Beatles, middle eight meant a middle, contrasting section, often fairly long. [13] )
In Paul’s earliest comment on the song, in 1965, he reflects his own main authorship: “I wrote a couple of songs. One was ‘Love Me Do.’” [14] However, after this, he generally described the song as a pure 50-50 collaboration. In 1966, also very early, he remembered collaboration: “We started off first with songs like ‘Love Me Do,’ with easy, stupid rhymes that didn’t mean very much.” [15] Paul also described collaboration in 1969: “Yeah, we used to sag off every school day, go back to my house and the two of us would write: ‘Love Me Do,’ ‘Too Bad About Sorrows.’ [‘Just Fun’]. . . .” [16] In 1987, he said, “I know that I sat there and we wrote ‘Love Me Do’.” [17] Two years later, he was asked about early collaboration with Lennon, and said, “The first thing we got, again it wasn’t that good, but it was recordable, was ‘Love Me Do.’” [18]
“‘Love Me Do’ was completely co-written,” he said in 1995. “Some of them were really 50-50s, and I think that one was.” He also floated the possibility that the song may have been started “without either of us having a particularly original idea.” [19] However, here he admitted the possibility that the song might have been his “original idea,” but only as a possibility. [20]
In 2000, Paul remembered collaboration on this, and said that “‘Love Me Do’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There,’ . . . got the basis of a [songwriting] partnership going.” However, then he added, “One of us would come up with an idea and then it would see-saw. So there was a mild competitiveness in that we were ricocheting our ideas.” [21] So here, Paul emphasizes that, even though this was collaboration, one of the writers would have the original idea. [22]
Ironically, Paul, in 1995, claimed more of a John influence on this song than John did in 1980. John seemed certain that the main song was Paul’s, while Paul emphasized collaboration.
I think the earliest interviews of John and Paul give clear evidence that this was a song Paul came up with first, then it was finished with extensive collaboration.
The Beatles performed it at the EMI audition on June 6, 1962, with Pete Best on drums; this is available on Anthology 1 . [23] The single version was recorded on September 4 (with Ringo on drums), and can be found on Past Masters 1 . The album version was recorded on September 11 (with session player Andy White on drums, while Ringo played tambourine).
P.S. I Love You — (McCartney-Lennon)
(lead vocal: Paul) (recorded on September 4 and 11, 1962)
According to John, Paul wrote this song in Hamburg, or on the way to Hamburg (which would be spring or summer, 1962, as they were in Hamburg April 13 to May 31). [24] Paul’s girlfriend at the time, Dorothy “Dot” Rhone, later said that Paul told her that he had written the song for her. [25] It apparently was finished with some polishing from Lennon.
According to one report, Paul and John wrote this when EMI requested new material after they were offered an audition on May 9, 1962. [26] According to Miles, Paul wrote “P.S. I Love You” “not long before the recording test” on June 6. [27] They played it at the June 6 auditions, but that recording has been lost.
The evidence, reflecting both Paul’s writing the song and subsequent collaboration, is not too difficult. John vaguely remembered that the other Beatles contributed to it. “Paul. But I think we helped him a bit.” [28] In 1980, his memories are more vague: “That’s Paul’s song. . . . I might have contributed something. I can’t remember anything in particular. It was mainly his song.” [29]
Paul claimed the song in 1995, though he left open the possibility that John made a slight contribution to it: “I don’t think John had much of a hand in it.” [30] While “Please Please Me” was more John, he said in 2000, “‘PS I Love You’ was more me.” [31] That language “more me” again suggests that John might have made a contribution.
So it was substantially Paul’s song, but there was probably some finishing collaboration with John. [32]
“Please Please Me / Ask Me Why” single, January 11, 1963
Please Please Me — (Lennon-McCartney)
(lead vocals: John, Paul) (recorded on November 26, 1962)
John wrote this in his bedroom at Menlove Avenue, Woolton, his Aunt Mimi’s house. “I remember the day and the pink eiderdown, the bed,” he said in 1980. [33] He wrote it as a slow song, consciously modeling it on Roy Orbison songs such as “Only the Lonely.” The lyrics were also influenced by Bing Crosby’s 1932 hit, “Please.”
After John’s substantial start on this song, he and Paul continued on it together. Two fifteen-year-old girls accompanied John and Paul home from a Cavern performance on June 9, 1962, and watched as the two Beatles developed “Please Please Me” on the piano. They were “mostly working on the chord changes, with a lot of joking and messing about,” said one girl. According to Lewisohn, the teens “dozed under the piano while Lennon-McCartney explored chords above their heads.” [34] Apparently musical elements of the song were not finalized when John brought it in, and they were developed in collaboration.
The Beatles played the song to George Martin, but he thought it was dragging, and was tempted to pass on it. He suggested they speed it up. The band at first resisted the idea, but eventually re-arranged it as a more uptempo song. After they finished recording it, George Martin congratulated them on having produced their first number one hit. He was right. [35] Paul said that this was the first time Martin “really ever showed that he could see beyond what we were offering him.” [
36] The Beatles were indeed very fortunate in the producer they found themselves teamed up with. A former producer of Spike Milligan / Goon Show recordings, he understood the Beatles’ off-the-wall humor. As is shown by the Please Please Me album, he was able to bring the Beatles’ power as a rock group to stunning life in the studio. A musician with classical musical training, he later successfully translated the Beatles’ ideas into classical instrumentations. His contribution to selected Beatle songs was so substantial that it raises the question of whether he deserves co-writing credits on some songs.
The evidence for the authorship of “Please Please Me” is slightly contradictory, as John sometimes claimed 100% songwriting credit for the song. In John’s earliest comments, in January 1963, however, he reflected both his original writing of the song, and the collaboration. “I tried to make it as simple as possible. Some of the stuff I’ve written has been a bit way out.” However, then he switches to “we”: “But we did this one strictly for the hit parade.” [37] The following year, Lennon again ascribed this to collaboration: “We did . . . ‘Please Please Me.” [38] Paul’s earliest comment on the song, in 1963, also recorded collaboration: “We wrote ‘Please Please Me’ but that hasn’t exhausted our supply of compositions.” [39] In another early statement, in 1965, Paul stated that Lennon wrote it “almost on his own” [40] — “almost” shows that there was some slight collaboration.
By 1971, John claimed “Please Please Me” as entirely his own: “I wrote all of this one. I was trying to do a Roy Orbison,” [41] and after this he continued to claim it as his song. [42] In late interviews, Paul also affirmed John’s primary authorship. In 1989 he said: “John had this quite slow song called ‘Please Please Me’.” [43] However, his latest statement, in 2000, while restating John’s main authorship, allowed for the possibility that he (Paul) made some minor contribution: “‘Please Please Me’ was more John than me; I didn’t have such a hand in it.” [44]