FEATURE:
Groovelines
The Beatles – Love Me Do
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I am going to write about this song again…
PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Hammond/V&A Images/Getty Images
in October, as it turns sixty then. On 5th October, 1962, The Beatles’ debut single, Love Me Do, was released. Although it was not a number one in the U.K. in 1962 (it got to seventeen), it did reach number one in the U.S. when it came out there in 1964. I will explore the significance of Love Me Do that anniversary feature. Today, I want to give more of an overview of it. For that, I am going to turn to Beatles Bible. Of course, as Love Me Do is one of the most important songs in music history, you could talk about for ages! I am going to be a bit briefer than that. It is interesting how it came together. Although the percussion is not a major part of the track, a Beatles track without Ringo Starr featuring prominently is hard to get your head around:
“Love Me Do’, The Beatles’ debut single, was released in the UK on 5 October 1962.
The song was an early Lennon-McCartney composition from 1958, although it wasn’t recorded by the group for another four years.
Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was 16, or even earlier. I think I had something to do with the middle.
John Lennon, 1972
Lennon spoke again of the song in an interview conducted shortly before his death.
‘Love Me Do’ is Paul’s song. He wrote it when he was a teenager. Let me think. I might have helped on the middle eight, but I couldn’t swear to it. I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way, way before we were songwriters.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Despite this, McCartney remembers ‘Love Me Do’ as a joint effort between the two of them, and that it came out of their early songwriting experiments.
‘Love Me Do’ was completely co-written. It might have been my original idea but some of them really were 50-50s, and I think that one was. It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea.
We loved doing it, it was a very interesting thing to try and learn to do, to become songwriters. I think why we eventually got so strong was we wrote so much through our formative period. ‘Love Me Do’ was our first hit, which ironically is one of the two songs that we control, because when we first signed to EMI they had a publishing company called Ardmore and Beechwood which took the two songs, ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘PS I Love You’, and in doing a deal somewhere along the way we were able to get them back.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Although The Beatles started out by performing cover versions, as Lennon and McCartney grew as songwriters they began introducing their own compositions into their live shows.
Introducing our own numbers started round Liverpool and Hamburg. ‘Love Me Do’, one of the first ones we wrote, Paul started when he must have been about 15. It was the first one we dared to do of our own. This was quite a traumatic thing because we were doing such great numbers of other people’s, of Ray Charles and [Little] Richard and all of them.
It was quite hard to come in singing ‘Love Me Do’. We thought our numbers were a bit wet. But we gradually broke that down and decided to try them.
John Lennon
Anthology
As well as being their debut single, the band also recorded ‘Love Me Do’ eight times for the BBC. A version from 10 July 1963, recorded for the Pop Go The Beatles programme, is available on Live At The BBC.
In 1976, Ringo Starr described how ‘Love Me Do’ was a turning point for the group:
For me that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can’t believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record!
Paul McCartney confirmed that the song was the point at which The Beatles knew they were becoming successful.
In Hamburg we clicked. At the Cavern we clicked. But if you want to know when we ‘knew’ we’d arrived, it was getting in the charts with ‘Love Me Do’. That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go”.
Chart success
The Beatles recorded ‘Love Me Do’ over three sessions. The first was at their EMI audition on 6 June 1962, featuring Pete Best on drums.
They returned to the song during the 4 September session, where it was considered for release along with ‘How Do You Do It’. The group tackled it again on 11 September, after which it was deemed good enough for release as a single.
Although Ringo Starr had played drums on 4 September, George Martin brought in a session drummer, Andy White, for the subsequent recording, and Starr was relegated to tambourine.
On my first visit in September we just ran through some tracks for George Martin. We even did ‘Please Please Me’. I remember that, because while we were recording it I was playing the bass drum with a maraca in one hand and a tambourine in the other. I think it’s because of that that George Martin used Andy White, the ‘professional’, when we went down a week later to record ‘Love Me Do’. The guy was previously booked, anyway, because of Pete Best. George didn’t want to take any more chances and I was caught in the middle.
I was devastated that George Martin had his doubts about me. I came down ready to roll and heard, ‘We’ve got a professional drummer.’ He has apologised several times since, has old George, but it was devastating – I hated the bugger for years; I still don’t let him off the hook!
Ringo Starr
Anthology
The presence of the tambourine is the easiest way to distinguish the two recordings. Initial copies of the single had Starr on drums, though the Andy White version became the preferred version from the release of the Beatles Hits EP on 6 September 1963. To consolidate the decision EMI destroyed the master tapes of the 4 September recording.
It is White’s version which appears on the Please Please Me album, though Starr’s drumming can be heard on Past Masters. The recording featuring Pete Best appeared on Anthology 1 in 1995.
George got his way and Ringo didn’t drum on the first single. He only played tambourine.
I don’t think Ringo ever got over that. He had to go back up to Liverpool and everyone asked, ‘How did it go in the Smoke?’ We’d say, ‘B-side’s good,’ but Ringo couldn’t admit to liking the a-side, not being on it.
Paul McCartney
Anthology
The relegation of Starr wasn’t the only change made by George Martin to the song.
George Martin said, ‘Can anyone play harmonica? It would be rather nice. Couldn’t think of some sort of bluesy thing, could you, John?’ John played a chromatic harmonica, not a Sonny Boy Williamson blues harmonica, more Max Geldray from the Goon Show…
The lyrics crossed over the harmonica solo so I suddenly got thrown the big open line, ‘Love me do’, where everything stopped. Until that session John had always done it; I didn’t even know how to sing it. I’d never done it before. George Martin just said, ‘You take that line, John take the harmonica, you cross over, we’ll do it live’…
I can still hear the nervousness in my voice! We were downstairs in number two studio and I remember looking up to the big window afterwards and George Martin was saying, ‘Jolly good.’
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Chart success
The ‘Love Me Do’ single reached number 17 in the UK charts, with sales mainly concentrated in and around Liverpool.
Love Me Do single - United KingdomLove Me Do single artwork - USALove Me Do single artwork - Norway
There were enough fans of The Beatles around because we were playing all over the Wirral, Cheshire, Manchester and Liverpool. We were quite popular, so the sales were real.
First hearing ‘Love Me Do’ on the radio sent me shivery all over. It was the best buzz of all time. We knew it was going to be on Radio Luxembourg at something like 7.30 on Thursday night. I was in my house in Speke and we all listened in. That was great, but after having got to 17, I don’t recall what happened to it. It probably went away and died, but what it meant was that the next time we went to EMI, they were more friendly: ‘Oh, hello lads. Come in.’
George Harrison
Anthology
There were persistent rumours that Brian Epstein had bulk-bought around 10,000 copies to increase its chart ranking, but these remain unproven.
The best thing was it came into the charts in two days and everybody thought it was a fiddle, because our manager’s stores sent in these returns and everybody down south though, ‘Ah-ha, he’s buying them himself or he’s just fiddling the charts.’ But he wasn’t.
John Lennon, 1963
Anthology”.
There is something thrilling and wonderfully raw about Love Me Do. Although not considered the band’s best song, its significance cannot be understated. I can only imagine the hysteria that was in the air in the U.K. when The Beatles released their debut single. Despite its low chart position, it lit a fuse and introduced the world’s greatest band to the masses. The band’s follow-up U.K. single, Please Please Me, reached number two. Word of mouth and radio play meant that they were a sensation in no time at all. This interesting article discusses the legacy and importance of the amazing Love Me Do:
“The Beatles performed "Love Me Do" on British television four other times in 1962. Another appearance on "People And Places" was taped on October 29th and broadcast on November 2nd, this time featuring John Lennon sitting without an instrument as a lead singer would do while the other Beatles stood (Ringo included). Then on December 3rd, they mimed the song on the live program "Discs A Gogo," as well as another mimed live performance the following day, December 4th, on the London-area children's show "Tuesday Rendevzous." Finally, on December 17th, they returned once again for another live performance on "People And Places," their third appearance on this program within a two month period.
Since the song was their first national British hit, it became part of their permanent set list throughout the rest of 1962, both in their home performances and during their Hamburg visits at the end of the year. It also became a prerequisite for their national tours with Helen Shapiro, Tommy Roe/Chris Montez and then Roy Orbison throughout 1963. The last concert appearance of the song appears to have been on June 30th, 1964 at the ABC Cinema in Norfolk. British television saw the song performed in a Beatles medley on the show “Around The Beatles,” which was recorded at IBC studios on April 19th, 1964 for lip-syncing purposes, but broadcast on May 6th and then again on June 8th, 1964. This appears to be the only (albeit partial) performance of “Love Me Do” in 1964, seeing as their catalog of hit songs had progressed quite far by that time.
Paul McCartney also sporadically performed the song, in the above mentioned configuration “P.S. Love Me Do,” during his "World Tour," which ran from July 26th, 1989 (London, England) to July 29th, 1990 (Chicago, Illinois). He then finally decided to include the original version of "Love Me Do" in his set list during his "One On One" tour, which ran from April 13th, 2016 (Fresno, California) to December 16th, 2017 (Aukland, New Zealand). He did the same for his "Freshen Up" tour, which began on September 17th, 2018 (Quebec City, Canada) and ended on July 13th, 2019 (Los Angeles, California).
Paul also performed the song on June 9th, 2018 at the Philharmonic Pub in Liverpool for a special segment on "The Late Late Show with James Corden." A truncated version of this performance was aired on CBS television on June 21st of that year, followed by a prime-time special entitled "When Corden Met McCartney, Live From Liverpool," which was broadcast of August 20th.
Oddly enough, since Ringo had also recorded "Love Me Do" for his album "Vertical Man," he also performed it live with his "All Starr Band" from 1998 through 2000.
Conclusion
“Love Me Do,” understandably, was a pivotal point in The Beatles' career, as well as a milestone that affected them collectively and individually. George Harrison, for instance, felt his father's wrath when he was awoken by George’s screaming when the song was played late at night on Radio Luxembourg. Ringo, after being thoroughly disillusioned by the record industry, felt vindicated when the initial pressing of the record in Britain contained the version with him on the drums. All pressings thereafter contained the Andy White version. For the song's composers, it had an even greater impact. McCartney recalls that the song was evidence to him and John that they had “arrived,” and that it gave The Beatles “somewhere to go.”
The excitement of having a popular national hit song was a dream come true for the band. To be counted among their musical heroes currently on the radio waves, such as The Everly Brothers, Smokey Robinson, and The Shirelles, was an indescribable experience for them. Brain Epstein would call them with the precise times that the song would be played on the radio so they could stop what they were doing and listen. They would even celebrate every time the song moved up on the British charts.
It's impact in America was immediate, even without any promotion behind it. The Beatles never performed the song in any American concert or television appearances. They didn't need to.
They may have felt that they had pressed on so much further in their career by mid 1964 that they didn’t sense a need to promote their first British single in the states. The irresistible harmonica hook, the all-too-familiar harmonies, and the captivating melody line were enough to stick in the minds of American youth and skyrocket the song to the top of the US charts. "Love Me Do" has to this day become one of the most identifiable trademark recordings in The Beatles catalog”.
A monumentally important song in the history of popular music, The Beatles’ Love Me Do is sixty in October. A song which contains some exceptional harmonica work from John Lennon and great harmonies, its simple message has meant it resonates and hits people to this day. We will be playing this song for decades and generations more. Even if The Beatles’ debut single did not light the charts up in the U.K. upon its release, nowadays, it is very much considered…
A classic.