I have always called it an audition, which is how the Beatles approached it, but Mark Lewisohn in volume one of his masterly history of the Beatles (The Beatles Tune In, 2013) says that EMI had already signed the Beatles. Behind the scenes, their publishing company (Ardmore and Beechwood) had heard the tapes of the Beatles’ failed Decca audition and liked the sound of their original compositions, such as ‘Like Dreamers Do’, and wanted to acquire publishing rights, so George Martin was being leaned on to sign them up.
Despite all this, listening to them in the studio, George would presumably still have decided he personally did not want to work with them, if he had considered they were rubbish.
For the test recording, which is what we shall call it, Brian Epstein suggested a play list including seven original numbers, five of which feature Paul as the main singer, so we must presume he wrote them: ‘PS I Love You’, ‘Love Me Do’, ‘Like Dreamers Do’, ‘Love of the Loved’ and ‘Pinwheel Twist’. There were also two to be sung by John: ‘Ask Me Why’ and ‘Hello Little Girl’. The rest were all well-known standard pop numbers of the day–or in some cases, yesterday. At the top of the page, Brian suggested a medley of three as their opening offering–none of which were written by them.
During the session, they recorded four songs in all: the first number on Brian’s list, ‘Besame Mucho’, and three of their original compositions: ‘Love Me Do’, ‘P.S. I Love You’ and ‘Ask Me Why’.
Brian Epstein’s (BE) suggested list of what the Beatles might play to impress George Martin, 6 June 1962.
George Martin was interested, but not wildly impressed, being particularly worried about Pete Best’s drumming. When he asked, after they had finished the session, whether there was anything they didn’t like, George Harrison replied in his dead-pan, guttural tones, ‘Your tie.’ Fortunately, George Martin laughed, as did the other engineers.
After a wait which, to the Beatles, afraid they would not be given a second chance, had seemed to drag on for an eternity, they were called back to the EMI recording studios three months later, on 4 September. George had a black eye that day, having been punched in the Cavern by some girl’s jealous boyfriend. Ringo had by this time joined them on drums. They did ‘Love Me Do’ again and also recorded a song George Martin was very keen on, ‘How Do You Do It?’ written by Mitch Murray. Martin was convinced it was going to be a number one hit (which it was the following year, recorded by Gerry and the Pacemakers.)
They performed ‘How Do You Do It?’ as requested, but recorded it without too much enthusiasm, still preferring their own, home-made songs for their debut. Paul has said that he was embarrassed by ‘How Do You Do It?’ and feared he would be mocked in Liverpool if that became their first record.
George Martin had them back again a week later and this time agreed to have another go at ‘Love Me Do’–but he had hired a session musician, Andy White, to play on drums–a fairly normal procedure in recording studios, but a massive disappointment for Ringo.
They were all nervous, and fiddled with their headphones, which they had never used before. Paul was particularly worried when George Martin decided that he, Paul, should sing the solo vocal line ‘Love, love me do’ on his own, rather than John, which was how they had always done it on stage. John for years had managed to play his harmonica after he had sung the line, but Martin felt he was garbling the last word, so it was coming out as ‘Love love me waahhhh…’ He therefore suggested that Paul should sing that line instead, on his own, which worried Paul as he knew that his voice was not as deep as John’s. Listening carefully to it now, you can detect Paul’s nerves, forcing his voice lower.
Parlophone’s first press handout for the Beatles, October 1962, for ‘Love Me Do’.
‘Love Me Do’ was released on 5 October 1962, with another of their own songs, ‘PS I Love You’ on the other side. ‘Love Me Do’ crept quietly into the charts. It was rumoured that Brian Epstein gave it a push by buying ten thousand copies for his own record store, though probably it was no more than 2,000–but it only ever got as far as number 17. However, this was good for a debut. In the USA, Capitol Records initially did not release it–nor did they fancy ‘Please Please Me’, the Beatles’ second single, released in January 1963.
Please Please Me, their first album, was recorded in a single day, 11 February 1963, at the Abbey Road Studios.* The big achievement with this first tranche of songs was to have done it–to have got the tracks recorded and released. The other, more interesting element is that they had got away with recording so many of their own compositions, despite being a brand-new band, unknown outside Merseyside.
On that first album, all they did was repeat their stage performances, recording most of them in a single take. There was no double tracking in those days. And if you made a mistake, you had to do the whole thing again.
Technical tricks and facilities were few, but George Martin, being an experienced producer with the benefit of an education in classical music, worked hard to get the sound he required, dictating what he did and did not like, instructing them on what he wanted–such as using a different drummer, or having Paul take over a solo–and suggesting arrangements.
EMI exhort the trade to take orders for their first LP, Please Please Me, in May 1963.
What he did not do–and never did, even later on–was mess around with their words. There is no evidence, and none of them has any recollection, of George Martin ever being unhappy with their lyrics–certainly not to the extent of making them change words or work on lines. Perhaps he didn’t really care; lyrics to pop songs were considered trivial and inconsequential. Perhaps Martin was satisfied that John and Paul seemed to know what they were doing when it came to their lyrics–and to have fairly strong opinions–so he was content to let them get on with it.
The most interesting aspect of these early lyrics, rereading them now, is not their subject matter–romantic boy–girl love, or miserable romantic boy–girl love–but the lack of sexual content.
When the Beatles made their breakthrough, they were generally thought to be attractive–why else would girls be screaming at them? Parents, however, feared that they might be a corrupting influence with their long hair and loud music. Many parents went so far as to consider them dangerous, which now seems laughable. If you study the actual lyrics now, they are almost entirely wholesome, healthy, benign. Compared to Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard (or Mick Jagger, when he arrived on the scene a year later), all of whom deliberately emphasized the sexual element in their songs and stage performances, aiming to be raunchy, the Beatles seem positively chaste.
Professor Colin Campbell, in his exhaustive 1980 concordance of the lyrics, established that the word ‘sex’ or ‘sexy’ appears only once in the entire Beatles canon (‘Sexy Sadie’, and even then it is not about sex at all, as we shall see). Only once, in all those lyrics. I was surprised. It is true there is a smutty double entendre in ‘Penny Lane’, but you have to be from Liverpool to spot it.
In addition to being clean, in the sexual sense, Beatles lyrics are awfully well-mannered. The word ‘please’ features in seven of their early songs: ‘Love Me Do’, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘Don’t Bother Me’, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘You Can’t Do That’, ‘If I Fell’, ‘When I Get Home’. How polite is that?
Early poster, with the spelling of Parlophone and Beatles still a bit of a puzzle.
National tour in 1963 with Billy J. Kramer.
Love Me Do
With ‘Love Me Do’, the Beatles were at last out, in the shops, on the streets, in the air, on the jukeboxes, though not many people at the time could possibly have imagined that so much would develop from such a simple, basic song. Even though I have traced no manuscript, it is still worth printing all the words, hang the expense, including all the repetitions, just to see how basic they were.
Sheet music for their first record, ‘Love Me Do’, October 1962. Ardmore and Beechwood were EMI’s publishing company, who first wanted to sign them.
Note carefully George’s black eye.
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa-ho love me do.
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa-ho, love me do.
Someone to love, somebody new.
Someone to love, someone like you.
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa-ho, love me do.
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa-ho, love me do.
Yes, love me do.
Whoa-oh, love me do.
Yes, love me do
The late Professor Wilfrid Mellors, an eminent musicologist who wrote one of the earliest academic studies of Beatles music (Twilight of the Gods, 1973), described the words of ‘Love Me Do’ as ‘vacuous–but life affirming’.
I once dared to criticize the lyrics to John–around the time of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, when everyone with an Olevel was busily analysing every Beatles lyric–and he defended them. He maintained that the words of ‘Love Me Do’ were just as good, just as true and meaningful as ‘I Am the Walrus’: ‘They’re all just words.’ As for the record itself, he thought at the time it was ‘wet, compared with Little Richard’.
‘Love Me do’ was one of the earliest songs that Paul ever wrote back in 1958, aged fifteen or sixteen, at home in Forthlin Road. He played it to John, who is said to have contributed a middle verse, but this is so flimsy and meagre–consisting of ‘Someone to love, somebody new, someone to love, someone like you’–that it scarcely registers as a development. The basic four lines are in fact repeated four times, which does seem self-indulgent. They were very young–and pop lyrics of the time were simple and repetitive.
The best thing about the lyrics is the title ‘Love Me Do’–which was originally ‘Love, Love Me Do’ after the first line, but was simplified when they came to issue the record. The construction ‘Love me do’ is rather archaic and stilted English, as if it has been somehow reversed and really it should be ‘Do you love me’, which would be more natural and colloquial.
What probably attracted them was not the unusual grammar but that hidden in the first line is a double meaning. The first ‘love’ can be seen as a proper noun, the way you might address someone as ‘Darling’ or ‘Dear’ instead of using their name, while the second is the verb. So that’s quite clever. However, George Martin was apparently not very impressed by any of the lyrics.
The unique selling point–well, fairly unusual selling point, both then and now–was not the words but John’s harmonica, which is what distinguishes the song and gives it its own flavour. His harmonica playing is raw, basic, unflashy, with none of the warbling or tremulous vibratos used by harmonica maestros of the time such as Max Geldray–who featured in The Goon Show–and Larry Adler.
The feeling conjured by the song is one of honesty, simplicity, naturalness as opposed to the slickness, smoothness and syrupiness of Cliff Richard and the Shadows, then enormously popular in the UK, with their exaggerated echoes.
In the line ‘somebody new’ John pronounces it as ‘noo’ in the American fashion, trying to be bluesy. I am quite surprised George Martin allowed that, as it is the only word where he is clearly aping the Yanks. But then most British singers of the fifties, such as Dickie Valentine and Frankie Vaughan, and Cliff in the sixties, affected a mid-Atlantic accent, convinced that was the way to acceptance.
PS I Love You
The B side of ‘Love Me Do’ was written by Paul in Hamburg in 1961–62 and supposedly addressed to Dot Rhone, his girlfriend at the time, a sweet young girl from Liverpool, who along with Cynthia, John’s girlfriend, came out to visit Paul in Hamburg. But Paul has since denied that he had any particular girl in mind. It was just that a letter was a popular theme for a pop song. The words are basic, no development, a sweet song with no story, no angst, but Paul sings it nicely, enunciating carefully, very English and clear. (Printed here without the repeats, to save space.)
I have found a manuscript version, of a sort, but it is a bit of a mystery. It looks as if it was written down by someone at the time and subsequently corrected by Paul. So only one line is in Paul’s hand: ‘these few words ’til we’re together’. Was it transcribed by someone who was present in the studio during the recording? I contacted Andy White, the drummer who was brought in to replace Ringo, who is now retired and living in the USA. I thought perhaps the words might have been written out by him, as he was new to the group and their songs, but when I sent him a scan he said the handwriting was not his: ‘I was only in the studio for three hours, ten a.m. to one p.m. During this time we recorded three songs: “Love Me Do”, “PS I Love You” and “Please Please Me”. All our time was taken up learning the songs. There was no written music or lyrics.’
‘PS I Love You’–in the hand of a Swedish fan, with corrections by Paul.
The handwriting looks a bit girlish, and the spelling of Beatles at the top appears to be Beetles, a mistake people were still making at the time. It might have been someone from their fan club (which had been formed in Liverpool as early as 1961) or perhaps a foreign fan who had copied out the lyrics, mishearing one of the lines, and then got Paul to correct it. In that case it probably dates from 1963, when the Beatles made their first foreign tour–to Sweden–and a Swedish fan, having copied out the words by listening to the record, then showed them to Paul.
As I write this letter,
Send my love to you,
Remember that I’ll always,
Be in love with you.
Treasure these few words ’til we’re together,
Keep all my love forever,
PS, I love you.
You, you, you.
I’ll be coming home again to you, love,
And ’til the day I do, love,
PS, I love you.
You, you, you.
I love you.
Please Please Me
Their second single got to number 1 in most charts, and so did better than ‘Love Me Do’. It was written by John at Aunt Mimi’s house. ‘I remember the day I wrote it and the pink eiderdown over the bed.’ He was playing around with the word ‘please’, as used in a thirties song by Bing Crosby, which had the line ‘please, lend your ears to my pleas’. Music-wise, as he admitted later, he was trying to come up with a song like Roy Orbison’s ‘Only the Lonely’. Except it didn’t turn out like either of these songs–which is often the case. The original inspiration, for a novel, a poem or a song, can totally evaporate and become hidden from sight, if not from the mind of the creator.
The singer is complaining that his girl is not pleasing him the way he is pleasing her. If there was a deliberate sexual connotation, then that would rather ruin my assertion that Beatles lyrics are fairly sexless, but if it is there, it was quite well hidden. We are much quicker these days to detect sexual meanings. All he seems to be saying is that he is being nice to her but she is not being nice to him.
After the lovey-doveyness of ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘PS I Love You’, there is an element of unhappiness and moaning–all of it rather self-centred, blaming the girl, which might not be acceptable in this feminist age. He says she is making him blue, rhyming ‘blue’ with ‘you’, which is pretty weak–as John must have realized, but he didn’t care, not at the time; it’s just a pop song. The only interesting phrase in the lyrics is ‘there’s always rain in my heart’. But this was borrowed from the Buddy Holly song ‘Raining in My Heart’.
The crescendo when they get to ‘Come on, come on, come on, come on’ makes it an exciting song. OK, that is clearly sexual–an early exception that proves the general rule. I t
hink in their minds they were trying to differentiate themselves from the totally limp and soppy lyrics of Cliff Richard and the Shadows, who were their deadly rivals in the charts back in 1962–63, with ‘The Young Ones’, ‘Bachelor Boy’ and ‘Summer Holiday’.
Ask Me Why
A return to romantic love–he begins by telling her ‘I love you’–but it’s a hurried, rather jumbled song which John knocked off quickly. It was used to fill the B side of the ‘Please Please Me’ single. It has some slack rhymes, and he falls back on feeling blue again, but there is a trace of real angst, which is unusual in such an apparently perky pop song. ‘My happiness still makes me cry, And in time you’ll understand the reason why… I can’t believe it’s happened to me. I can’t conceive of any more misery.’
He doesn’t tell us what happened. Or whether he means that he would be miserable if he wasn’t with her–or that he’s miserable because he is with her? And was he thinking of Cynthia, whom he had fallen madly in love with–judging by his early letters to her–when he first met her at art college in 1958?
I Saw Her Standing There
The first track on their first LP, Please Please Me, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ was written by Paul at the end of 1961 or early 1962, supposedly inspired by a girlfriend, Iris Caldwell, sister of Rory Storm, whose group Ringo had drummed for. Iris was a trained dancer and obviously impressed Paul with her movements–but Paul has denied he had any particular girl in mind. And if Michael McCartney is correct, and early versions began with ‘She/He saw her standing there’, then it would suggest there was no one girl–just girls in general. Most of their fans in and around Liverpool were girls of that age. Paul may have wanted to write a song they could all identify with–and dance to.
The Beatles Lyrics Page 4