In the early months of 1964, American record distributors were in a rush to cash in on the phenomenal success of the hits I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You. They reached deep into The Beatles catalog and released their first UK singles from 1962 and 1963. In this article we take a trip back to the very early days of the Beatles recording history.
Love Me Do
On June 6 1962 The Beatles entered Abbey Road studios for the first time to record a few songs as a way of auditioning. After playing a version of the Latin crooner Besame Mucho, which left the studio personnel unimpressed, they moved on to original songs. When they played Love Me Do, sound engineer Norman Smith took notice and immediately sent out for George Martin. Although the producer was all criticism about the band’s lack of recording experience, he later said: “I picked up on ‘Love Me Do’ mainly because of the harmonica sound. I loved raw harmonica and used to issue the records of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.”
John Lennon, who played the harmonica on Love Me Do, became interested in the instrument after he heard Bruce Channel’s hit ‘Hey Baby’ earlier that year. The song featured a harmonica solo by Nashville session musician Delbert McClinton. At a mutual gig Lennon had the opportunity to meet McClinton, who recalled: “John was very interested in harmonica. He wanted me to show him whatever I could. He wanted to know how to play. Before our time together was over, he had his own harmonica ready in his pocket.”
While the harmonica added a distinctive character to the song, it also introduced a coordination challenge for John Lennon. Paul McCartney remembers that very first recording session: “I’m singing harmony then it gets to the ‘pleeeaase.’ STOP. John goes, ‘Love me . . .’ and then puts his harmonica to his mouth: ’wah, wah, waahh.’ George Martin went, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, there’s a crossover there. Someone else has got to sing Love Me Do because you can’t go ‘Love me waahhh.’ Now you’re going to have a song called ‘Love Me Waahhh’! So, Paul, will you sing ‘Love Me Do’!’ God, I got the screaming heebegeebies. I mean he suddenly changed this whole arrangement that we’d been doing forever. We were doing it live, there was no real overdubbing, so I was suddenly given this massive moment, on our first record, no backing, where everything stopped, the spotlight was on me. And I can still hear the shake in my voice when I listen to that record! I was terrified. John did sing it better than me, he had a lower voice and was a little more bluesy at singing that line.”
Three months later, on September 4 1962, The Beatles were back at Abbey Road for their first official recording session to put on tape their debut single. This was also their first recording experience with a new drummer. In the intervening months between the two recording sessions Ringo Starr replaced drummer Pete Best. The session was photographed by New Record Mirror photographer Dezo Hoffmann. The historic set of photographs is famous for George Harrison’s black eye, a memento from a recent skirmish at the Cavern Club.
The recording equipment at Abbey Road in 1962 consisted of a twin-track recorder, necessitating the following procedure: the band recorded the rhythm track playing live, the sound engineer bounced the track, thus freeing up a track to overdub vocals and additional instruments. Engineer Norman Smith: “What I tried to do was to create a live sound that captured what they would do on stage. I felt that if I didn’t do this, then I would lose the excitement. To me, it was important to create their live sound as it happened, and I did set them up in the studio exactly the way that they would perform on stage.”
The Beatles made 15 attempts at recording Love Me Do on that session, but none was satisfactory. When they showed up for the next session a week later, they were surprised to see a drum set already installed in the studio, manned by professional studio drummer Andy White. Producer Ron Richards, who was in charge of that recording session, recalls: “We weren’t happy with the drum sound on the original `Love Me Do’, so I booked Andy White for the remake. I used him a lot at the time – he was very good.” Ringo was devastated, having been demoted to playing the tambourine on the same mic that recorded his replacement. Both versions of Love Me Do survive to this day, and the best way to tell them apart is that tambourine. The one without the tambourine is from September 4, the one with is September 11.
While George Martin was a in favor of choosing a song written by ‘credible’ songwriters on the Tin Pan Alley circuit, the band insisted on releasing a single featuring their original material. They won their case, and Love Me Do became their first single in Britain. It rose to no. 17, an unexpected achievement for a fresh Liverpool band singing their own song. When it was released in the US in 1964, the success of their earlier hits I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You propelled Love Me Do to the top of the charts in May that year.
Here is the version with Andy White on drums and Ringo on tambourine:
P.S. I Love You
Love Me Do’s B-side both in the UK and 18 months later in the US was a song primarily written by Paul. The band briefly considered it for an A-side, a notion that producer Ron Richards quickly dismissed, informing the lads that a song with the same name was written in 1934 by Gordon Jenkins and Johnny Mercer. Paul said of P.S. I Love You: “It’s just an idea for a song really, a theme song based on a letter, like the ‘Paperback Writer’ idea. It was pretty much mine. I don’t think John had much of a hand in it. There are certain themes that are easier than others to hang a song on, and a letter is one of them.” John added: “That’s Paul’s song. He was trying to write a ‘Soldier Boy’ like the Shirelles. He wrote that in Germany or when we were going to and from Hamburg.”
The song was recorded on September 4 1962, the session with drummer Andy White. Ron Richards remembers: “Ringo was sitting next to me in the control box, not saying anything, so I said ‘Go and play the maracas’ and off he went to do it. He stood next to Andy, and the drum microphone picked up his sound.”
When released in the US in April 1964, the song climbed to no.10 in Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, not bad for a B-side.
Please Please Me
When the Beatles took the US charts in a storm in the first weeks on 1964, their American label needed more product, quick. Finally realizing that the Fab Four’s recording output in the past 18 months was suitable for American audiences after all, they re-released their early British singles. The first to follow was Please Please Me, one of the earliest songs the band rehearsed at Abbey Road Studios.
John Lennon wrote the song, reminiscing childhood memories when his mother Julia sang to him a 1932 Bing Crosby tune called ‘Please’, written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. The song included these lyrics that stuck in John’s head:
Please
Lend your little ear to my pleas
Lend a ray of cheer to my pleas
Tell me that you love me too
The dual use of the sound of the word please turned into Please Please Me.
John later talked about the song’s musical influence: “It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song. I wrote it in the bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue, which was my auntie’s place. I remember the day and the pink coverlet on the bed and I heard Roy Orbison doing ‘Only The Lonely’ or something.”
The band rehearsed the song at Abbey Road on September 4 1962, when they played it for Ron Richards. This was Ringo’s first recording with the band, and he did not leave a great impression on the producer, as he recalled: “When we were rehearsing ‘Please Please Me’ I was actually playing the kit and in one hand I had the tambourine and in the other hand I had a maraca, so I was trying to do all the percussion and play the drums at the same time ‘cause we were just a four-piece band.” George Harrison was also a target for the producer’s criticism: “George was playing the opening phrase over and over and over throughout the song. I said, ‘For Christ’s sake, George, just play it in the gaps!’”
The song had to withstand one more recording session full of remarks and improvement suggestions. On September 11 1962 the Beatles were back at Abbey Road for the single recording of Love Me Do. They managed to squeeze in ten takes of Please Please Me, none of them deemed worthy for release. George Martin recalls: “At that stage ‘Please Please Me’ was a very dreary song. It was like a Roy Orbison number, very slow, bluesy vocals. It was obvious to me that it badly needed pepping up. I told them to bring it in next time and we’d have another go at it.” Martin added additional improvements to the arrangement, suggesting that they add more punch and immediacy to the beginning and ending of the song.
[The Beatles and George Martin receive a silver award for Please Please Me]
Paul McCartney also recalls that session: “We sang it and George Martin said, ‘Can we change the tempo?’ We said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Make it a bit faster. Let me try it.’ And he did. We thought, ‘Oh, that’s all right, yes.’ Actually, we were a bit embarrassed that he had found a better tempo than we had.” The band took the criticism to heart and kept working on the song. Lennon added an exciting Harmonica part at the beginning, and they almost doubled the speed of the song, changing it from a crooner to a danceable twist.
They were back at Abbey Road two months later, ready to record Please Please Me as their next single. This time no outside drummer was waiting in the studio and a happy Ringo Starr played the song perfectly. George Martin realized the importance of the harmonica part and added it in an overdub because it was difficult for John to sing, play harmonica and play guitar simultaneously. When the final take was done, Martin told them through the PA system from his position at the control room: “Gentlemen, you’ve just made your first number-one record.”
He knew was he was saying. Although there was still no standard singles chart in the UK, the song topped the individual charts of Melody Maker, New Musical Express, and Disc magazines in the early months of 1963. When it was released a year later in the US, it made it to No. 3 on both Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100.
From Me to You
For the B-side of the Please Please Me single in the US, Vee-Jay decided to release one of the Beatles’ best performing UK singles of all time. From Me To You was first released in the US in 1963 and failed to chart. When released again in January 1964, it climbed to no. 43. Definitely a missed opportunity in the American market for a single that remained at the top of the UK chart for seven weeks. From Me To You was the first Beatles single to top the official UK singles chart and the one that signaled the outbreak of Beatlemania across the British Isles.
Unlike Love Me Do and Please Please Me, the Beatles’ previous two singles in the UK, From Me To You was a brand new song. It was written at the end of February 1963 on a tour bus taking the Beatles and additional artists supporting the teen pop idol Helen Shapiro. The singer, famous for her hit ‘Walkin’ Back to Happiness’ which she recorded two years earlier at the tender age of 14, remembered the band playing it for her that night: “They asked me if I would come and listen to two songs that they had. Paul sat at the piano and John stood next to me and they sang ‘From Me To You’ and ’Thank You Girl’. They said they sort of knew their favorite but hadn’t finally decided, so they wanted me to tell them which one I thought would make the best A side. As it happened, I liked ‘From Me To You’ and they said, ‘Great. That’s the one we like.”’
The name of the song was inspired by a fan-letters column in New Musical Express magazine that John and Paul were reading on that bus, titled ‘From You To Us’. John talked about one of the group’s signatures shticks: “The ‘woo woo’ was taken from the Isley Brothers’ ‘Twist and Shout,’ which we stuck into everything – ‘From Me to You’, ‘She Loves You.’” Paul recalls the significance of the song in their songwriting history: “We wrote From Me To You on the bus, it was great, that middle eight was a very big departure for us. Say you’re in C then go to A minor, fairly ordinary, C, change it to G. And then F, pretty ordinary, but then it goes ‘I’ve got arms that long to hold you’ and that’s a G Minor. Going to G Minor and a C takes you to a whole new world. It was exciting. Our songwriting lifted a little with that song.”
Only five days later, on March 5 1963, The Beatles recorded the song at Abbey Road. They were planning to start the song with a short guitar solo, but when George Martin heard them rehearsing it he suggested the harmonica and vocals instead. Malcolm Davies, who worked as disc cutter at Abbey Road, remembers: “Artists never came to the cuts in those days but John popped up to see me because he wanted to borrow my harmonica, thinking it might make a better sound. He brought it back a little later saying that it tasted like a sack of potatoes!”
From Me To You was released in the UK on April 11 1963 and quickly climbed to the top of the chart, the first of many Beatles songs to do so. Paul McCartney recalls his excitement at that time: “The first time I thought we’d really made it, was when I was lying in bed one morning, and I heard a milkman whistling ‘From Me to You’. Actually, I’m sure that I once heard a bird whistling it as well. I swear I did!”
A week after the UK release of From Me To You, the Beatles performed the song at the Royal Albert Hall in an event that included American singer Del Shannon. He was impressed by the song and covered it two months later. While his version was only a minor hit in the US, it is significant for being the first Lennon-McCartney song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Twist and Shout
We end with one of the best vocal performances ever committed to tape and the closing song from The Beatles’ debut album. It is also the only non-original song in this review. Twist and Shout was the last song the band attempted in one of music history’s best documented recording sessions. On February 11 1963, The Beatles showed up at Abbey Road at 10 in the morning to record sufficient material for a full album. At 10 PM that night they were at the end of the third session, with 10 songs in the pocket. Second engineer Richard Langham remembers: “Sessions never normally over-ran past 10:00 PM. At 10:05, you’d meet half the musicians on the platform of St. John’s Wood station, going home.”
But The Beatles needed one more song, and one last take is all they had energy for. Engineer Norman Smith: “By this time all their throats were tired and sore — it was 12 hours since we had started working. John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time, the Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room. John sucked a couple more Zubes, had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went.” The Beatles picked Twist and Shout, a song they heard performed by The Isley Brothers. This was John Lennon’s moment to shine. George Martin: “John absolutely screamed it. God alone knows what he did to his larynx each time he performed it, because he made a sound rather like tearing flesh. That had to be right on the first take, because I knew perfectly well that if we had to do it a second time it would never be as good.”
Years later Paul was all compliments to his mate’s stellar performance that day: “There’s power in John’s voice there that certainly hasn’t been equaled since, and I know exactly why: it’s because he worked his bollocks off that day. We left Twist And Shout until the very last thing because we knew there was one take.” There actually was a second take at the request of George Martin, but John’s voice was gone. That first take was a take for the ages. It left George Martin at awe about the Fab Four’s ability in the studio: “I don’t know how they do it. We’ve been recording all day but the longer we go on the better they get.”
Twist and Shout climbed up to No. 2 on Billboard’s singles chart at the beginning of April 1964. That week The Beatles accomplished a historical achievement, occupying the top five spots in the chart. The song was prevented from reaching No. 1 due to the group’s follow-up single, Can’t Buy Me Love. But that is a story for a future article in this series.
Sources:
A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles’ Song Paperback, by Steve Turner
Leave a Reply