Credit: Alamy

Del Shannon and the Beatles battle for a Lennon-McCartney song

Mon 24 October 2022 18:30, UK

Del Shannon beamed into one of rock and roll’s oddest years like a comet with a huge hit.

The two-year span between 1959 and ’61 was among the most game-changing in the genre’s history. Elvis Presley went from nine number-one hits to the US Army, Chuck Berry went from a rock and roll founding father to jail, Little Richard played a farewell performance at the Apollo Theater and enrolled in theology studies, Jerry Lee Lewis was in serious trouble, and a fateful 1959 plane crash tragically took Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. ‘The Big Bopper’ Richardson.

Distinctly un-rock-and-roll crooners stepped in for new control of the now wide-open record charts. In a sudden sign of the times, ‘Theme From A Summer Place’ by Percy Faith was the biggest single of 1960. But everything got a major boost when a singer named Del Shannon got together with an electronics musician named Max Crook to write ‘Runaway’ with its broody lyrics and signature high-pitched electro-solo. The hit finally burst Shannon out of obscurity, and he told Billboard magazine years later: “I just said to myself, if this record isn’t a hit, I’m going back into the carpet business.”

With his number one hit showcasing a new recording approach and record buyers loving it, Shannon toured with another top five hit later that year in ‘Hats Off To Larry’. The next year he was touring England. He played the Empire Theatre in Liverpool on October 7th, 1962; the same Sunday night that the Beatles were performing just a five-minute car ride away at the Cavern Club for a launch celebration of their first EMI single, ‘Love Me Do’, which had come out two days earlier. A few months later, the Beatles were Shannon’s support act during his English tour, and in April, Del and the Beatles appeared on a bill together at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

“I did a lot of shows in England, and they’d come backstage and chat a bit,” Shannon recalled in a 1989 interview with Bob Costas. “They were the strangest guys, especially John … very open and very frank.”

Shannon had a top five UK hit in February 1963 with ‘Little Town Flirt’, but the pre-superstar Beatles passed him on the chart a couple of weeks later with their second single, ‘Please Please Me’. However, a different original Lennon-McCartney composition drew attention this night. “They had planned to perform ‘From Me To You’ coupled with ‘Thank You Girl’ in the second half, but took the last minute decision to lead with the more upbeat ‘Twist and Shout’ before segueing into ‘From Me To You,’ taking organisers by surprise in front of an ecstatic audience,” Royal Albert Hall archives note.

It was more than audience members reacting to ‘From Me To You’, the new tune the Beatles had a week before the concert. Del Shannon was taking note backstage. “I told John, I said … at the Albert Hall … I said ‘John, I’m going to cover ‘From Me To You’ because the English were always covering American artists.’ And he said, ‘That would be great, mate.’ But when he walked on stage, just before he got to the stage, he turned to me, and he said, ‘Don’t do that.’”

Lennon could be famously sarcastic and competitive depending on the moment, and Shannon sensed it was John’s raised hackles that prompted the refusal. “I don’t think he was kidding at all,” Shannon said. “I think (Beatles manager) Brian (Epstein) didn’t want anyone to cover their songs before they were released in America.”

While still trying to crack their way onto the US charts despite success at home, the Beatles released ‘From Me to You’ on the Vee-Jay label a month after the Albert Hall showcase. Like its predecessor, ‘Please Please Me’, the single went nowhere in America, and the Beatles remained heretofore unknown across the pond. Shannon knew a good thing, though.

As he told Lennon he would, Shannon recorded a version of ‘From Me To You’ and released it in the US on the Bigtop Records label in June, just one month after the Beatles’ version failed to chart. Bigtop tried to capitalise on the stalled Beatles’ version by cross-promoting it with the version by the well-known Del Shannon, who became the first artist to take a Lennon-McCartney song into the US top 100.

Peaking at only number 77, Shannon’s version certainly left the Beatles’ plans for a US arrival undamaged. In the meantime, he kept on releasing singles and performing. Shannon would put four more singles into the US top 40 through 1964, including a top ten hit with ‘Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun)’. He also enjoyed top five hits in the UK over that time, like ‘Two Kinds of Teardrops’.

Vee-Jay would finally mine success from the Beatles’ dormant ‘From Me To You’ single in the US. After Beatlemania erupted in early 1964, the label rushed out the one Beatles’ single; it had to capitalise on the booming success but probably put it out too fast in response. Vee-Jay slapped the song on the B-side of ‘Please Please Me’. which rose to number one in the US on its own. As a result, ‘From Me To You’ made it only as high as number 41 whereas it likely would’ve charted higher had the label issued it as its own A-side. The Beatles’ immortal success was unstoppably raging nonetheless.

While pop and rock trends moved quickly, Shannon continued to have some Liverpool connections, and he wasn’t done with ‘From Me To You’ either. He would appear again at the Empire Theatre in November 1963 and again in 1965. As late as 1982, Shannon used ‘From Me To You’ to close his live show at The Bottom Line in Greenwich Village in New York City.

Sadly, Shannon’s life and career were on their way to a tragic ending.

In 1990 he was booked to appear on a show in Fargo, North Dakota, on February 3rd to mark the 31st anniversary of the ill-fated plane crash that claimed Holly, Valens and Richardson. It would turn out to be Shannon’s last known live appearance. Five days later, back home in Southern California, he took his own life with a gunshot wound at the age of 55 after reportedly battling depression for years.

Del Shannon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.