[30] Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 19.
[31] Engelhardt, Beatles Undercover , 389-90.
[32] Tate, Pop Chat interview, BBC, July 30, 1963. Beatles, Interview, Klas Burling, August 23, 1963. For the hotel location, also Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 2. Paul, in an interview with Klas Burling on August 23, 1963, said: “So we went to the hotel . . . and we just decided that we have to write a song very quickly. So we sat down, no ideas came for a bit. But eventually we got an idea. ‘She Loves You’ came, you know. It was just lucky.”
[33] Beatles, Interview, Klas Burling Radio Interviews, late October 1963. “And I originally got an idea of doing one of those answering songs, where a couple of us sing about ‘she loves you,’ and the other one sorta says the ‘yes, yes’ bit. Y’know, ‘yeah yeah’. . . . But we decided that was a crummy idea anyway, as it was. But that — at least we had the idea to write a song called ‘She Loves You’ then.” Paul also said that he had Bobby Rydell’s recent “Forget Him” in mind when the song was written. Miles, Many Years From Now , 149.
[34] Miles, Many Years From Now , 150.
[35] Paul, in Anthology , 96. Gambaccini, Paul McCartney In His Own Words (a 1973 interview), 19. Lewisohn, “The Paul McCartney Interview,” 10. McCartney interview in JAMMING!, in two parts: No. 13 (June 1982); no. 14 (June 1983), as cited in Dowlding, Beatlesongs, 44. For George Martin’s comments on the chord, see Davies, The Beatles , 280.
[36] Tate, Pop Chat interview, BBC, July 30, 1963.
[37] See also Miles, Many Years from Now , 149.
[38] Ray Coleman, interview with the Beatles, in Melody Maker , Oct. 17, 1964 (Sandercombe, The Beatles: Press Reports , 94).
[39] Tate, Pop Chat interview, BBC, July 30, 1963.
[40] Beatles, Interview, Klas Burling Radio Interviews, late October 1963.
[41] Smith, Off the Record (ca 1988), 201.
[42] Hennessey, “Lennon: the Greatest Natural Songwriter,” 12. See also Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[43] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 150.
[44] Gambaccini, Paul McCartney In His Own Words , a 1973 interview, 19.
[45] Lost Lennon Tapes, Aug. 1, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 179. For Paul, see Beatles, Interview, Klas Burling Radio Interviews, late October 1963, quoted above.
[46] Miles, Many Years From Now , 150.
[47] Beatles, Interview, Klas Burling Radio Interviews, August 23, 1963.
[48] Miles, Many Years From Now (1995), 150.
[49] Lost Lennon Tapes, July 18, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 214. See also Hennessey, “Who Wrote What” (1971), Record Mirror .
[50] Miles, Many Years From Now , 150.
[51] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 182.
[52] Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 4.
[53] Paul, quoted in James, “Lennon & McCartney (Songwriters) Ltd.” (1963).
[54] This version was released in Anthology 1 .
[55] Hennessey, “Lennon: the Greatest Natural Songwriter,” 12.
[56] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[57] Aldridge, Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 215. Similar: Lost Lennon Tapes, June 20, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 182: “That was me. That was actually my first song.”
[58] Roberts, “How to Write a Hit,” 11.
[59] Paul has not commented on the writing of the song, to the best of my knowledge.
[60] Miles, Many Years from Now , 181.
[61] Harry, “Fourmost.” Engelhardt, Beatles Undercover , 170-72.
[62] Lewisohn, Tune In , extended, 516.
[63] Shea and Rodriguez, Fab Four FAQ , 362.
[64] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror . Similar: Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 182. Pete Best also ascribed it to Paul. Beatle! The Pete Best Story, 144.
[65] Roberts, “How to Write a Hit,” 11. Quoted at “Hello Little Girl,” above.
[66] Harry, “Cilla Black”; Engelhardt, Beatles Undercover , 56-57.
[67] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror ; Sheff, The Playboy Interviews ( 1980), 182, 204.
[68] Miles, Many Years From Now , 180.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. Harry, “Fourmost.
[71] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 182.
[72] Miles, Many Years from Now , 181.
[73] This recording was eventually released on The Best of Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas (1991).
[74] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[75] Lost Lennon Tapes, Sept. 16, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181.
[76] Miles, Many Years From Now , 152.
[77] Lost Lennon Tapes, Feb. 6, 1989, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 203. See also Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[78] Miles, Many Years From Now , 148.
[79] Ibid., 148.
[80] “Paul and Linda McCartney Interview,” Playboy , 104. Similar: Lewisohn, “The Paul McCartney Interview,” 10. Hilburn, “From ‘Yesterday’ to Today.” Miles, Many Years From Now , 148.
[81] Wyndham, “Paul McCartney As Songwriter.” Gambaccini, “The Rolling Stone Interview,” see also Gambaccini, Paul McCartney In His Own Words , 17.
[82] Lost Lennon Tapes, Sept. 16, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181.
[83] Harrison I Me Mine (1980), 84. See also Harrison, radio interview with Johnny Moran, March 11, 1970, as summarized in Winn, That Magic Feeling , 376; Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 129; Harrison, date unknown, in Badman, The Beatles Off the Record , 72; The Beatles, interview, Dunedin, June 26, 1964; McCartney, Lewisohn interview (1988), 12; McCartney, in Anthology , 96. There is a composing tape of the song, Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 69.
[84] Harrison, “By George” (1964).
[85] Bill Harry, “George Harrison, Songwriter.”
[86] Miles, Many Years From Now (1995), 153.
[87] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What.” Similar: Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181 (1980).
[88] Anthology , 22.
[89] Ibid., 68. See also Lewisohn interview, 8; Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 2; Du Noyer, Conversations , 15. For John, see on “Hello Little Girl.”
[90] Anthology , 112.
[91] Miles, Many Years from Now (1995), 83. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181.
[92] Lewisohn, “The Paul McCartney Interview” (1988), 10. Miles, Many Years from Now (1995), 83.
[93] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181.
[94] Or the Stones’ manager, Andrew Oldham, according to one interview with John. Badman, Beatles Off the Record , 66, giving the date of the interview as Nov. 1974.
[95] “Paul and Linda McCartney Interview,” Playboy (1984), 104.
[96] Lost Lennon Tapes, Aug. 1, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181-82.
[97] Ibid. See also Paul in Anthology , 101. John in the Anthology video, said that he and Paul “virtually finished [the song] off in front of them [the Stones].”
[98] Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 75.
[99] “Paul and Linda McCartney Interview,” Playboy , 104.
[100] Miles, Many Years From Now , 153.
[101] Anthology , 101.
[102] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[103] Lost Lennon Tapes, Aug. 1, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 181-82.
[104] Lennon 1972 (Anthology , 96). “Paul and Linda McCartney Interview,” Playboy (1984 ), 107.
[105] Aldridge, Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 245. Similar: Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. Lennon in 1972, Anthology , 96. His memories are vaguer in 1980: “That’s me trying to do something. I don’t remember. [Laughs ].” Sheff, The Playboy Interviews (1980), 203.
[106] McCartney 2000, in Anthology , 96.
5
“He’d bring them in, we’d check ‘em” —
A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
A Hard Day’s Night presents a striking contr
ast to the Beatles’ earlier albums, as it contains all original songs. In fact, the major release that immediately preceded it, the Long Tall Sally EP, might have led Beatle observers to expect a predominance of covers. (And in fact, they still had a vast repertoire of covers they could have drawn on.) Instead, the Beatles released an entire album of newly-written original songs. So this album represents a watershed in the group’s creative development.
On the authorship of the Lennon-McCartney songs on this album, Paul said, in a very early interview:
John wrote some which when we got back to England I finished off with him. He sort of half wrote them, and then when I — when we both got back, you know, we talked about them, and finished them off. . . . We normally help each other. Maybe if John writes a song, I sort of say, well, that’s no good, and that’s very good, and that’s no good, and we talk about the song together and work it out, y’know. [1]
This attests to both original authorship of many songs on the album, and collaborative work on them.
A number of the Beatles’ albums were connected to movies: aside from A Hard Day’s Night, we have Help! , Magical Mystery Tour , Yellow Submarine and Let It Be . The Hard Day’s Night movie, however, based on the Beatles’ manic daily life after they hit stardom, was probably the best.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand / This Boy” single, November 29, 1963
I Want to Hold Your Hand — (collaboration)
(lead vocals: John, Paul) (recorded on October 17, 1963)
John and Paul wrote this together from the ground up. On October 16, 1963 they were in the basement, the music room, in the house of Paul’s new girlfriend, Jane Asher, [2] and evidently, the pressure was on for them to write a new single. So they started pounding on the piano together. Then they got the “catch line,” “I want to hold your hand” — “and so we started working on it from there,” said Paul in an early interview. “We got our pens and paper out, and we just wrote the lyrics down. And uhh, eventually you know, we had some sort of a song.” [3] John remembered Paul coming up with a striking chord, and he immediately recognized it as right: “That’s it! Do that again!” [4] They recorded the song the next day. [5]
Both Paul and John remembered collaboration on this song. In 1970, John said, “I like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ we wrote that together — it’s a beautiful melody.” [6] Later he used it as an example of how they would spend “hours and hours and hours” writing together. [7]
Paul agreed, saying that he and John used to write “facing each other, eyeball to eyeball, exactly like looking in the mirror. That’s how songs like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ were written.” [8]
In a 1964 interview, Paul and John told a bizarre story of wandering into an abandoned house that happened to have a piano and an organ in the basement and writing the song there. [9] In fact, this was a joke cover story to hide the fact that Paul was having a relationship with Jane Asher. Paul and the eighteen-year-old Jane had met on April 18, 1963, and soon became close. He moved into the Asher house, 57 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, London, in November, and would live there for some three years. Jane and her family apparently opened up a new world of urban sophistication to Paul that he’d never known before.
This Boy — (collaboration, John emphasis)
(lead vocals: John, Paul, George) (recorded on October 17, 1963)
Paul and John had remarkably different memories of writing this song, and typically Paul remembers collaboration and John remembers individual authorship. According to Paul, the band arrived at a hotel room at one in the afternoon and had a couple hours free. So John and Paul decided to write a song. They sat on twin beds and wrote this from the ground up (per Paul). He remembered the details of the room, the beds, “the G-Plan furniture, the British hotel with olive green and orange everywhere.” They eventually arranged the song in three part harmony (singing a duet, then adding a part for George), which was a departure for them — Paul said that they took Phil Spector’s “To Know Him Is to Love Him” (which the Beatles had played at the Decca audition) as their model. [10] John, however, sang the middle section solo.
While Paul had strong visual memories of collaboration, John claimed the song for himself, starting in 1971. Ten years later, he said it was “my attempt at writing one of those black B-side records that have nice three-part-harmony and sort of Smokey Robinson songs.” [11] He offered it as an example of his interest in melody: “When I go back in my own songs — . . . early attempts at melodies — ‘This Boy’ or any sort of early Beatle stuff, of course I was writing melodic “muzak” (in quotes) with the best of them.” [12]
I accept Paul’s witness to collaboration — his vivid memories of the place of writing are convincing, and in addition, a song sung as a duet is often a sign of collaboration. Furthermore, most early Beatles songs were written with some degree of collaboration. However, John may have dominated the songwriting session, or begun the song, and the fact that he sings the middle might be evidence for this.
“A World Without Love / If I Were You” single — Peter and Gordon, February 28, 1964
A World Without Love — (McCartney)
(recorded on January 21, 1964)
This is a very early song by Paul, written when he was sixteen, at his home in Forthlin Road. [13] One day he introduced it to the Beatles with a jaunty introduction, “Listen to this song, fellers.” However, when he sang the first line, “Please lock me away,” they collapsed in laughter. [14] Though Ringo liked the song, Paul decided it wasn’t Beatleworthy. He first offered it to Billy J. Kramer, who rejected it, but Peter Asher, Jane Asher’s brother, leader of the duo Peter and Gordon, liked it. [15] “Oh sure,” Paul said to him. “We don’t want it.” [16]
After Peter kept urging Paul to finish the song, he added a bridge, [17] and perhaps significantly, he didn’t change the first line. The single was quite successful, reaching number one in the U.K. and U.S. (which is one more warning that “the songs the Beatles gave away” were not uniformly second rate.)
Both Paul and John agreed that this was a McCartney song. In 1965, he gave it as the first example of a song he had written entirely on his own. [18] Thirty years later, he said, “It was an early song of mine that we didn’t use for the Beatles.” [19] John, asked about the song in 1980, said that Paul had the song even before the Beatles. [20]
In 1964, Paul twice referred to it as a co-written song, but he was probably just making a nod to the “Lennon-McCartney” label. [21]
Peter and Gordon went on to a successful recording career in the U.K. and U.S., and Peter later managed artists such as Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor in the states. [22]
If I Were You (Peter Asher, Gordon Waller)
“Can’t Buy Me Love / You Can’t Do That” single, March 16, 1964
Can’t Buy Me Love — (McCartney-Lennon)
(lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on January 29, 1964 in France, and February 25, 1964 in London)
“Can’t Buy Me Love” was written while the Beatles were in Paris in January 1964. [23] It’s a McCartney song, but Lennon helped finish it. There are pictures of them composing or rehearsing in the George V hotel, Paul and John on piano, George with guitar. [24] Journalists Billy Shepherd and Johnny Dean reported seeing the Beatles “huddled round a piano in the plushly-magnificent Hotel George Cinq in Paris . . . with Paul and John furiously working on last-minute songs for recording and for a film.” [25]
Both Paul and John agree that this was mainly a Paul song. However, they produce contradictory testimony on whether it was a collaboration or not. Paul claimed it in 1965: “What did I write on my own? Oh, . . . ‘Can’t Buy Me Love.” [26] Thirty years later, he said, “‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is my attempt to write a bluesy mode.” [27] However, his earliest statement, apparently in 1964, mentions collaboration. “This was written really when we were in Paris. We had to have a new record ready for recording in England and we were going to record a song in Paris as well, so we wrote ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ there an
d we recorded the first track of it in Paris and we finished it off in London. It’s a two-country effort.” [28]
John’s statements definitely attributed the song mainly to Paul, but also reflected some collaboration. “John and Paul, but mainly Paul,” he said in 1971. [29] After thus pointing to definite collaboration, he referred to it in 1980 as “Paul’s completely.” After such a resounding attribution, he goes on to undercut himself by stating that he might have helped with the middle of the song. But then he retreats from that idea! “But I don’t know. I always considered it his song.” [30] Repeatedly, in dealing with the Beatle songwriting interviews, we’re brought face to face with the fragility of memory.
An early statement by George Harrison also reflects collaboration: “They [Lennon and McCartney] did ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ in Paris.” [31]
I conclude that this is a Paul song, finished with collaboration. It is another example of how a song can be firmly “owned” by one or the other writers, but can be finished up in a songwriting session, with music or word editing from the other member of the team.
You Can’t Do That — (Lennon)
(lead vocals: John) (recorded on February 25, 1964)
George said the song was written in Miami Beach, Florida, from February 14 to 21, 1964. [32] John claimed this song in the early seventies, saying that he was trying to trying to emulate rhythm and blues star Wilson Pickett. [33] Miles, presumably reflecting Paul McCartney, also ascribed it to John. [34]
Pickett is best known for “In the Midnight Hour” (1965); his album It’s Too Late had been released in 1963. [35]
“Ain’t She Sweet / Take Out Some Insurance on Me, Baby” single, Germany, April 1964
Ain’t She Sweet (COVER) (Jack Yellen, Milton Ager)
(lead vocals: John)
This is one of the 1962 Hamburg recordings, which was finally released now as Polydor sought to capitalize on every possible scrap of Beatles recordings. It is the first professionally recorded Beatles performance with vocals, but otherwise has little interest, except for completists. The recording was also released as a single in the U.K. on May 29, 1964.
Who Wrote the Beatle Songs Page 8
