My source – Please Please Me CD – mono version
The sound of October 1962. Is this when the 60s started? Not for me as a six ear old. The 60s didn’t at this time, nor for a few years to come, mean anything special. The didn’t immediately register with me, but it did make some impression because not long after when Beatlemania took off I knew it well enough to sing it with friends.
According to MacDonald this album version is the one that features Alan White on drums, with a disgruntled Ringo relegated to tambourine. I can’t listen and say that’s definitely not Ringo.
Notable for opening with Lennon’s harmonica employing a riff he learned from Delbert McClinton, who had played something (supposedly) similar on Bruce Channel’s Hey Baby.
It doesn’t sound that alike to me. But legend is that Delbert showed John how. That aside Delbert McClinton is a fine musician. I saw him at The Garage in Islington about 20 years ago and he was fabulous. Piling a massive amount of energy into his performance, he was akin to a Texan Springsteen.
Delbert McClinton – Down In Mexico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vVRVdBl2jk
As an acknowledged Beatles denier, agnostic rather than atheist, nonetheless the early songs are so ingrained in my memory banks as to make this worth my read. (And while i would never buy the McDonald book, this feels like reading it 2nd hand through trustworthy ears…) Didn’t know the Delbert connection, but it is obvious in hindsight, as the song/the riff is barely disguised tex-mex in style. Delbert’s latest album is a belter, as are most of his, if you can get past the hideous title. Prick of the Litter.
Here is a more overtly tex-mex cover of the song, by Flaco Jimenez and Buck Owens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W89exAF0_s0
The drummer on LMD was Andy White. Alan came into the story much later. Good luck with the project
Ian MacDonald calls this song a ‘stimulating breeze through an enervated pop scene’, but was it really that revolutionary? I don’t know whether people are just choosing to believe it because it’s The Beatles, or if I’m being harsh by comparing it to all the songs that came afterwards. Surely people started paying attention to The Beatles with the likes of ‘She Loves You’ and ‘From Me To You’ etc?
Not revolutionary, no, but ‘a stimulating breeze’ is rather a good description of how it must have seemed at the time. Take a look at the chart of 27 December when it peaked at 17. Plenty of good stuff, sure, but lots of names like, for example, Del Shannon, Frank Ifield, Brenda Lee, Chris Montez, Joe Brown, Joe Loss, who very quickly must have seemed like they were from a different era.
Del Shannon went on to make two very good LPs in the late `60`s that were compared to `Pet Sounds`. They are very good but as good as `Pet Sounds`? Nah, but the guy was making very good current music for the times.
The albums? `The Further Adventures of Charles Westover (1968)` and `Home And Away` which he recorded in 1967 but was only released in 2006.
So maybe Del did think The HJHs were `from a different era` but he joined the revolution even though hardly anyone noticed.
Was Del not the first to chart an HJH song in the US with his cover of “From Me To You”?
It’s an extremely average plodder giving little inclination of what was to come. The next record was already streets ahead of this.
It’s a nod to the simple 3 chord songs of the previous decade. It’s mildly elevated by the delayed and brief chord change, the descending vocal harmonies and the harmonica. With LMD, they demonstrated they could easily churn out the mainstream song structures of the day. The Revolution starts soon afterwards.
I was 12 and I think it passed me by when it came out – my memory was that Please Please Me hit me between the eyes, and then I learned about this. I actually much prefer the B side, PS I Love You. It was only 20 years or so later that I learned there were two versions – note the orignal hit was the Ringo version, but no one knows why that was issued in preference to the more familiar Andy White one.
It’s a couple of excited youngsters making a first effort at writing a hit. George Martin had threatened them with Mitch Murray’s How Do You Do It? if they didn’t come up with something better. Naturally, they looked at material they already had. Paul had written Love Me Do when he was just sixteen. John contributed the middle eight. I’m pretty sure the songwriting credits on their first album originally read McCartney-Lennon. After all, P.S I Love You, the B side, is Paul’s too.
They must have been thrilled it peaked at number seventeen in the Hit Parade.
Yes, McCartney-Lennon was the credit. As most now know, they did record HDYDI? and actually improved the song in their arrangement, but crucially wanted to release their own song. The big reveal to me in Lewisohn’s book is the role Epstein had in realising the potential in writing their own songs and encouraging them.
I seem to remember that, a few years ago, Paul wanted to change the credit to McCartney-Lennon on some numbers, notably Yesterday. Yoko said no. Oddly, he didn’t offer to add Harrison Starkey to others, such as Eleanor Rigby, but it obviously still matters to him.
Quite a few years back, that was.
When Mac was quite rightly smarting at the simultaneous canonisation of JW Lennon and the vilification of him.
He has at times seemed very defensive and somewhat unsure of his abilities. Particularly when some of his less well-received albums have been panned.
He seems more relaxed and confident and less anxious these days.
The first ‘old’ record I ever bought.
Ever since, I’ve never looked forward, and I can’t thank “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You” enough.
It’s got a galumphing beat (did they manacle Ringo’s feet to the drum and cymbal pedals?); a ho hum, rather pedestrian bassline; a melody that is so basic it drills into the head; lyrics so banal, it’s only the quality of the harmonising voices that stops it being a school yard whine.
I suppose the harmonica abruptly pours the equivalence of a bit of rough feedback over the whiny mess, but that hardly makes up for its taunting, wheedling tone. What I would enjoy hearing is a remix where the opening harmonica is played loudly over all the rest of the song, Lennon smirking to himself as the others look on in furrowed annoyance.
Then it just fades out, because there’s nowhere for it to go than round the same interminable verse again. If they’d had the courage and audacity to just stop after the “Someone like you” line (a different stanza with a slight change in bass) when the drum at least offers a conclusive beat, I’d have more respect for it.
I think it’s hard to judge this song with what we know came to follow. The Beatles are still a closed book to me through over familiarity and my instinctive dislike of the blind hero-worship by many. I will follow these threads closely as it may open my eyes. “Love Me Do”? I suppose you had to be there. I don’t know enough of the era but it does seem to be a plodder compared to the rock ‘n’ roll that had come before. The harmonica is the first sign that “they” had an ability to think differently and take risks. My interest will be around George Martins influence. Is he Pep Guardiola to Lennon and McCartney’s Messi and Iniesta or is he Conte to L & M’s Moses and Cahill? Did he need them or did they need him?
Bit of both I suspect. Some contemporary reviews called Sgt Pepper “George Martin’s best album”, but then as Macca remarked, “he couldn’t have made this album with Gerry & the Pacemakers”