The Beatles recorded their first single in three different versions with three different drummers. 'Love Me Do' was one of the earliest compositions by the legendary songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lennon said: "'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."
McCartney defers: "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 'P.S. I Love You', and in doing a deal somewhere along the way we were able to get them back."
The band had recorded a version of the song during their audition with original drummer Pete Best. The rest of the band decided to replace Best with Ringo Starr very soon after that. Starr recalls: "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!"
'Love Me Do' rose to number seventeen in 1962 on the UK national chart, based mostly on local sales in Liverpool. When it was released in the US two years later during the height of Beatlemania, it went to number one. It also went to number eight in Canada and number one in Australia. Re-released in the UK in 1982, it hit number four. George Harrison remembers: "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.'"
Lennon would admit: "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."
McCartney considers: "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."
http://www.thebeatles.com/
On June 6, 1962 the band had an audition at EMI studios with Pete Best on drums. This version was first released on 'Anthology 1'.
Love me do with Pete Best by HughesGifford
On September 4, 1962 they did another version at EMI with their new drummer Ringo Starr. This version was used on the earliest releases of the single and can be found on 'Rarities' and 'Past Masters, Volume One'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jltwPrSdF18
On September 11, 1962, the Beatles did another version with session drummer Andy White on drums and Ringo on tambourine. This version appears on their debut album 'Please Please Me'.
live
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please,
Love me do.
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please,
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.
Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please,
Love me do
No comments:
Post a Comment