Beatles, October 5, 1962: the first 45 laps comes out, “Love me do”

Love me do (McCartney-Lennon)

McCartney: voice, bass • Lennon: voice, mouth harmonica, acoustic rhythmic guitar • Harrison:

Acoustic rhythmic guitar • Starr: battery (version 1), tamburino (version 2) •••

Andy White: Battery (Version 2)

Recording June 6, 4 and 11 September 1962

Producers Ron Richards, George Martin • Phonic Norman Smith

UK October 5, 1962 (single; side B: Ps I love you)

It is one of the first songs made up of Paul McCartney, one morning of 1958 in which he married the school (the Liverpool Institute).

Lennon: “Paul wrote the main structure when he was sixteen, perhaps even before. I think I had something to do with the Middle Eight” (1972). “It is a song by Paul. He wrote it when he was teen.

Instead Paul remembers her as a common effort.

McCartney: “It may be born from my idea, but ‘Love me do’ was composed together, fifty and fifty. Lennon and McCartney who sit down to compose without neither of them having anything precisely in mind. We had fun: it was an interesting matter, try to become composers. In my opinion, the reason why we then became so strong is that in our training period we wrote very much. It was our first success, and – irony of fate – is one of the only two of our songs that we have editorial control; This is because when we signed the contract with Emi Loro they had a company of musical editions, the Ardmore and Beechwood, who took the two songs; Then along the road, in the context of I don’t know what other agreement, we managed to take them back. “

According to Pete Best, “Love me do” He was conceived during the third stay in Hamburg of the Beatles (April-May 1962). He came to light, says Best, with the title “Love, Love Me Do”, which was later abbreviated. It is possible that Best did not understand that it was an old song that for the first time we felt the insertion into the group’s repertoire.

In the first record publications of the Beatles, the authors were credited as McCartney-Lennon. The familiar formula Lennon-McCartney became usual only to the publication of the group’s fourth single, “She Loves You”.

The Beatles arrived in Abbey Road in the early afternoon of September 4 and in Studio 3, under the guidance of Ron Richards, they tried six pieces of six pieces, among which the two who would record would then be chosen. One was “How do you do it”, a composition by Mitch Murray and Barry Mason. Martin, who had chosen it, had taken care of having a demo in Liverpool so that the boys could familiarize himself with the song (the demo was sung by Barry Mason, accompanied by Dave Clark Five).

George Martin: “At the time the common practice was that the producers went to musical publishers to look for the songs for their artists. It was an activity to which I devoted a lot of time, and what I wanted was to find a success for the Beatles. I was convinced that ‘How do you do it’ was a hit. It was not the most beautiful song I had ever heard, but I thought he had that ingredient necessary for pleasure to many people “.

McCartney: “He knew it would be a success, and for this he gave us the demo. We reasoned about it, asking us: ‘What should we do? He asks us to do this, he is our manufacturer, so we have to do it, we must learn it’. We did it, but we don’t like the result, so we returned from George and we said to him: ‘Well, it will also be a guaranteed success, but we do not want to make songs like this, Reputation of this type.

Mark Lewisohn’s meticulous reconstruction made justice of another myth, namely Martin had asked the Beatles to engrave “How do you do it” As a second single, accepting only after many insistence that the choice would fall on a song of their composition, “please please me”. It was not like that: the Beatles insisted to record “Love me do” already on September 4th. At the end of the rehearsals, around 5.30 pm, George Martin invited the Beatles and Neil Aspinall to dinner: “I took them to an Italian, Alpine, Marylebone High Street Pose. Spaghetti for everyone: I paid, nineteen peeled per head”.

Upon returning to the studio, the group diligently provided its execution of “How do you do it”, but without putting a lot of energy.

George Martin: “John sang the part soloist. He didn’t like it, but a good recording came out “(of which he came produced an acetate). ‘How do you do it’ has gone to history to be the only song not of their composition that the beatles have recorded without someone else He had done it before them (they will record it, at the debut, Gerry & The Pacemakers, a Another group of the team of artists from Epstein, who will bring it to the spring of 1963 At number one, showing that George Martin was right). Execution of the Beatles, then emerged in numerous bootlegs, was included in “Anthology I”, inexplicably In a modified and published version compared to the original.

After recording “How do you do it” the Beatles dedicated themselves to “Love me do“; It was a long and tiring procedure. Norman Smith said he had the impression that Paul was not satisfied with how Ringo had played it. At the end of the session, Martin and Smith made the mixs and acetates of “Love Me Do”.

On 11 September the Beatles returned to Abbey Road. It was necessary to redo the recording of “Love me do” Because Martin was not satisfied with Ringo’s performance. Ron Richards, who in the absence of Martin directed the production that day, had summoned Andy White, a professional musician – then already thirty -two years old – who was often used for study work and which for that performance was paid just over five pounds.

Andy White: “I had already heard of the Beatles; I was married to Lyn Cornell of the Vernon Girls (a vocal group of sixteen elements active in Liverpool). They were kind and friendly against me”.

Although evidently disappointed, Ringo did not argue: “He was sitting close to me in the control room” says Richards. “Ringo is a delicious, always available person.”

But also careful to point out.

Starr: “The first time I went to Abbey Road, in September, we listened to George Martin a little songs. When we recorded ‘Love me do’ I played the grill with the foot, I had a drum in one hand and one maraca in the other. I think it is for this reason that Martin used Andy White, ‘the professional’, when the week after we returned there to record ‘Love me do’. The guy had already summoned him, however, after hearing Pete Best play. George did not want to take other risks, and I found myself in the middle. I had come ready to make a fool and I heard me: ‘We called a professional drummer’. Poor old George apologized for a lot of times, later, but for me it was a great regret. I hated him for years, for this – I never let him pass on, and even now I put it back! “.

McCartney: “I believe that Ringo has never passed angry. Back in Liverpool, everyone asked us: ‘So, how did he go to London?’ And we: ‘Well, the facade B is good!’. Ringo could not admit that he also liked the facade A, because in that he was not there”.

The remake of “Love me do” He was hurried enough quickly, always with White on the battery: a tambourine was put in his hand in Ringo (still today, the fastest way of identifying which version of “Love me do” You are listening to is the presence of the drum: if there is, it is the version of September 11, if it is not there it is that of September 4).

In reality, however, George Martin’s most incisive intervention on “Love me do” It does not concern the battery, but the part of the solo voice.

McCartney: “George Martin said: ‘Can anyone play the harmonica with mouth? It would be fine. You can make you think of something blues, John?'”.

Lennon had a mouth -harmony with him; He wants the legend that he had stolen it in a shop of Arnhem musical instruments, a Dutch town, during one of the travels to Hamburg (“sooner or later I will end up in prison, and in the cell I will keep myself company with the harmonica”). But if John played the harmonica had his mouth occupied and could not sing the attack of the text: it should be borne in mind that the recordings, at the time, were practically all live. Martin commissioned Paul to sing that sentence.

Macdonald: “George Martin had modified the vocal line of the soloist who intersected the intervention of the harmonica by mouth, entrusting it to McCartney instead of Lennon; this is because, due to an overlap between the last word and the first note of the harmonica, John sang ‘Love me Wahh!’, Which was judged poorly commercial”.

McCartney: “John had always sung it, I didn’t even know how to sing it, I had never done it before. Still today, by suffering it, I feel the nervousness in my voice”.

The 45 laps of “Love Me Do”, published on October 5, arrived in seventeenth place in the British ranking, thanks to sales concentrated almost exclusively in Liverpool and surroundings. It has often been written that Brian Epstein bought a few thousand copies of the disc for his shop, facilitating – or even causing entry into the rankings. Epstein has always denied (and what else could he have done?).

Harrison: “The Beatles had enough fans: we played everywhere in Wirral, Cheshire, Manchester and Liverpool. Sales were true. Listen for the first time ‘Love me do’ On the radio he made me shiver, it was the greatest emotion experienced up to that moment. We knew it would be broadcast by Radio Luxembourg like at half past seven in the afternoon of a Thursday. We were in my house, in Speke, and it was great. ”

Lennon: “Everyone thought there was the trick. ‘Ah-ha, it is their manager who bought the discs to make up the rankings. But it was not so”.

Starr: “It was that, the most important thing of all. The first plastic piece. It was a great satisfaction, you cannot understand how much. We were on a record!”.

Macdonald: “In America a disoriented Capitol Records refused to publish the album. Finally published by Tollie in 1964, he scalked ‘My Guy’ by Mary Wells from the top of the ranking of the best -selling singles in the first week of June of that year “.

Alan Livingston (then president of Capitol): “I had commissioned one of our producer, Dave Dexter, to evaluate the opportunity to publish the records that the English Emi offered us in the United States. I had read in the newspapers of the success of a group named Beatles, and I asked Dexter: ‘We should publish them?’

One of the nine versions of “Love me do” performed by the live Beatles for the BBC, the one recorded on 10 July 1963 and broadcast on 23 July 1963 in the radio program “Pop Go the Beatles” was included in the double “Live at the BBC”.

As mentioned, the version of “Love me do” Ringled by the Beatles with Pete Best on June 6, 1962, slower and longer than the rear versions, it is included in “Anthology I”.

The complete text of this card is available on “The Bianco (Più) Bianco dei Beatles”, published by Giunti.