FEATURE:
Groovelines
The Beatles – Can’t Buy Me Love
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THIS year is a big anniversary year…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles leave London airport in 1964 (left-right: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison)/PHOTO CREDIT: AP
for The Beatles. Their final-recorded album, Abbey Road, was released in September 1969. We are looking to its fifty-fifth anniversary. The band’s third studio album, A Hard Day’s Night, was released on 10th July, 1964. I am going to look at the album – and the film of the same name – closer to the sixtieth anniversary. Its first single, Can’t Buy Me Love, was released in the U.K. on 20th March, 1964. I wanted to mark its sixtieth anniversary through this Groovelines feature. Learning more about the song and its background. I am going to start off by referencing . The single was released four days earlier, 16th March, 1964, in the U.S. I am going to start with Beatles Bible and their article on one of The Beatles’ finest moments. A song that topped the chart in the U.S. and U.K. It is one of the band’s defining songs in my view:
“Paul McCartney: vocals, bass
John Lennon: acoustic rhythm guitar
George Harrison: lead guitar, rhythm guitar
Ringo Starr: drums
Norman Smith: hi-hat
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was The Beatles’ sixth British single, released with the b-side ‘You Can’t Do That’. It was written while the group were in Paris for a 19-date residency at the city’s Olympia Theatre.
Personally, I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggest that ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is about a prostitute, I draw the line. That’s going too far.
Paul McCartney, 1966
The song is believed to have been written at the Hotel George V in Paris. The Beatles had an upright piano moved into the corner of their suite, to enable them to work on songs for their forthcoming début film.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is my attempt to write a bluesy mode. The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won’t buy me what I really want. It was a very hooky song. Ella Fitzgerald later did a version of it which I was very honoured by.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Written by Paul McCartney, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ became the first of the group’s singles to feature just one singer. John Lennon may have felt his position as The Beatles’ leader was threatened by the move; following the release of the single, Lennon wrote the majority of songs on the A Hard Day’s Night album.
That’s Paul’s completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don’t know. I always considered it his song.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ featured twice in the A Hard Day’s Night film. The first was a scene in which they escape from the television studio to fool around in a field; the other involved the group running to and from a police station, with law officers in hot pursuit.
It was the first film for which I wrote the score, and I had the benefit of having a director who was a musician. We recorded the songs for the film just as we would ordinary recordings, and Dick [Lester] used a lot of songs we’d already recorded. ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, for example, which was used twice in the picture.
George Martin
Anthology
In the studio
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was mostly recorded on 29 January 1964 at EMI’s Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. It was completed in just four takes following the recording of ‘Sie Liebt Dich’ and ‘Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand’, which finished ahead of schedule.
As if forty-odd shows weren’t enough, Brian would also arrange all these other duties, like writing and recording sessions. While we were in Paris, we ended up re-recording ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’ in German: ‘Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand’ and ‘Sie Liebt Dich’ by Die Beatles. Our producer, George Martin, came over for the recording at the Pathé Marconi studio, and at the same time we put down the basic tracks for ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’.
Paul McCartney
The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present
George Martin suggested during preliminary rehearsals that they begin the song with the chorus. The decision was later described by writer Ian MacDonald as a change “so obvious that they would have made it themselves had they tried the tune out earlier”.
I thought that we really needed a tag for the song’s ending, and a tag for the beginning; a kind of intro. So I took the first two lines of the chorus and changed the ending, and said ‘Let’s just have these lines, and by altering the second phrase we can get back into the verse pretty quickly’. And they said, ‘That’s not a bad idea, we’ll do it that way’.
George Martin
Anthology
The first two takes of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, the second of which can be heard on Anthology 1, were recorded in the bluesy style in which the song was originally conceived. Paul McCartney taped a guide vocal which was later replaced at Abbey Road.
John Lennon and George Harrison’s backing vocals, in which they sang “Ooh, satisfied”, “Ooh, just can’t buy” in response to McCartney’s lead lines, were swiftly discarded. As was Harrison’s original guitar solo, though it can still be heard underneath the version he later overdubbed, due to microphone ‘bleed’.
We took the tapes from that back to England to do some work on them. I once read something that tries to analyse ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, talking about the double-track guitar – mine – and saying that it’s not very good because you can hear the original one. What happened was that we recorded first in Paris and re-recorded in England. Obviously they’d tried to overdub it, but in those days they only had two tracks, so you can hear the version we put on in London, and in the background you can hear a quieter one.
George Harrison
Anthology
The second solo was recorded on 25 February 1964 – George Harrison’s 21st birthday – the same day that McCartney taped his final lead vocals.
The mono mix also included a hi-hat overdub recorded by studio engineer Norman Smith. This was done on 10 March 1964, while The Beatles were filming A Hard Day’s Night.
It had the same level of excitement as previous Beatles singles and was quickly slated to be an A-side, but first there was a technical problem to be overcome, discovered when the tape was brought back and played at our studios. Perhaps because it had been spooled incorrectly, the tape had a ripple in it, resulting in the intermittent loss of treble on Ringo’s hi-hat cymbal. There was tremendous time pressure to get the track mixed and delivered to the pressing plant, and due to touring commitments the Beatles themselves were unavailable, so George [Martin] and Norman took it upon themselves to make a little adjustment.
As I eagerly headed into the engineer’s seat for the first time, Norman headed down into the studio to overdub a hastily set-up hi-hat onto a few bars of the song while I recorded him, simultaneously doing a two-track to two-track dub. Thanks to Norman’s considerable skills as a drummer, the repair was made quickly and seamlessly.
Geoff Emerick
Here, There and Everywhere
Chart success
By the time ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was released, The Beatles were a bona fide worldwide phenomenon. The song topped the charts of almost every country in which it was released.
Issued in the USA slightly earlier than in Britain, it sold over two million copies in its first week, and was awarded a gold disc on the day of its US release, 16 March 1964.
It set four records on the Billboard Hot 100. The first was the biggest jump to the top spot, up from number 27. The Beatles also held the entire top five positions on the 4 April 1964 chart – ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was accompanied by ‘Twist And Shout’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘Please Please Me’. Such an achievement has never been equalled.
The single did really well for us, getting to number one n the UK and US at the same time. And then, funnily enough, it was knocked off the number one spot in the UK by ‘A World Without Love’, a song I wrote for Jane Asher’s brother Peter.
Paul McCartney
The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ gave The Beatles a record-breaking three consecutive number one singles, the previous ones being ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’. Furthermore, during the song’s second week at the top, from 11 April, the group had 14 songs on the Hot 100 simultaneously.
In Britain the single was released on 20 March 1964. It broke fewer records, but was still a phenomenal smash hit. ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ had advance orders of over one million, and became the group’s fourth UK number one single”.
There is not as much written about Can’t Buy Me Love as there should be. From the first album where John Lennon and Paul McCartney were learning more on original moment, 1964 was a year when Beatlemania was in full swing. It was the start of a huge time for them. When the album and film of A Hard Day’s Night came out, it was at a time when they were near the peak of their fame. I think that Can’t Buy Me Love is one of their best songs. Ultimate Classic Rock discussed, in 2021, how Can’t Buy Me Love changed everything for Paul McCartney:
“The Beatles took Paris by storm as they played 18 days of concerts in January 1964 at the Olympia Theater.
They stayed at the iconic George V hotel, now a Four Seasons property and the gold standard of luxury in the city since its construction in 1928. The accommodating staff granted a request for a piano in the Beatles' suite, where Paul McCartney began to experiment with some blues phrasing. The result was the first draft of a future hit called "Can't Buy Me Love."
They were on a roll. The Beatles landed their first chart-topping song in America at the end of December 1963 and were on their third in the U.K. with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Now, demand for the latest material from McCartney's hit songwriting partnership with John Lennon was at a fever pitch.
At the same time, EMI was determined to make the Beatles happen in as many territories as possible. That's how the Fab Four found themselves in the EMI Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris to record German-language versions of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
When the session wrapped up early, they decided to record the song McCartney had been working on in the hotel, the first version of "Can't Buy Me Love." This marked the first time that a song was written solely by McCartney, despite the continuing Lennon/McCartney credit. "That's Paul's completely," Lennon told David Sheff in All We Are Saying. "Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song."
Did its apparent catchiness and the band's decision to record "Can't Buy Me Love," rather than other tracks they'd been working on, spark a sense of friendly rivalry in Lennon? Whatever the case, Lennon went on a creative tear, writing nine of the 13 songs that would comprise 1964's Hard Day's Night album.
Lennon had re-assumed his role as group leader, but McCartney was clearly in ascension: This was also the first single on which only one member of the group sang the lead vocals.
In fact, there were a series of firsts. "Can't Buy Me Love" marked the first time McCartney tried to write with a 12-bar blues riff. It was their first song recorded outside the U.K. This was also one of the first pop songs to start with the chorus, after producer and fifth Beatle George Martin decided the song needed a quick boost.
Finally, "Can't Buy Me Love" is one of the first songs, but not the last, on which Ringo Starr isn't the only drummer. Studio engineer Norman Smith added the hi-hat cymbal work, after a tape snafu caused the original recording to lose the necessary treble. The Beatles were busy filming the accompanying Hard Day's Night movie, and couldn't get Starr back into the studio.
Paired with Lennon's "You Can't Do That," "Can't Buy Me Love" was certified with a gold plaque on the day of its March 16, 1964 release in the U.S. The song sold a two million copies in the first week alone, while quickly shooting to No. 1 after arriving on March 20 in the U.K. At that point, the Beatles had a whopping 14 singles in the Hot 100 – including the entire Top 5.
As for its meaning, McCartney said he was open to others' interpretations of "Can't Buy Me Love" – but only to a point. "When someone suggests that 'Can't Buy Me Love' is about a prostitute, I draw the line," McCartney told American journalists in a 1966 news conference. "That's going too far."
McCartney soon found himself in America for the first time, basking in the glow of a huge hit while tooling around Miami in a shiny new sports car – and he couldn't help but offer an impish addendum.
"I remember meeting this rather nice girl and taking her out for dinner in this MG in the cool Florida night, palm trees swaying," McCartney later told Barry Miles. "You kidding? A Liverpool boy with this tanned beauty in my MG going out to dinner. It should have been 'Can Buy Me Love,' actually".
I love how it was writing and the romance it projects. When The Beatles were in Paris and staying at the five-star George V Hotel, there was an upright piano moved into one of the suites so that Lennon and McCartney could write. Feeling the pressure to keep the pace up and following in the recent U.S. number one, I Want to Hold Your Hand, the two came up with this masterpiece. With some adaption and changes from producer George Martin, they had this amazing single that ended the first side of A Hard Day’s Night. In my mind, this song scored the most memorable scene from the A Hard Day’s Night. When the guys broke free and were running around a field jumping and larking about. The sense of escape and joyfulness from the song! One of the most popular of The Beatles’ track, it was released on 16th March, 1964 in the U.S. and four days later in the U.K. Compelling to celebrate its approaching sixtieth anniversary, I hope that you have learned more about this incredible song -if you knew relatively little beforehand. Released in a year when The Beatles went stratospheric, it was a clear sign that the band were changing…
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