“I just love that song”: The 1957 American classic that convinced Paul McCartney to become a musician
Music can make a cold man weep, widen a child’s eyes to a bright new world, and it can also be a literal cure. None of these balms were lost on Paul McCartney.
“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears – it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity,” NYU neurology professor Oliver Sacks claims.
The implications of that are deeply profound, and many studies have shown that it is often the music we discover in our youth that continues to resonate throughout our lives. When it comes to Macca, the magical musician has never lost sight of a masterpiece that came into his life in 1957 when he was little more than a lad lucky enough to have a piano in his parents’ living room. It would take years, however, for him to realise just how much it would shape his life.
You don’t need to be a neurologist to know that music can change us. What evolves with age is our appreciation of the depth and reach of that transformation. Paul McCartney had grown up in a house with a proud love for jazz, so he was endeared to music in his earliest days. But it took a funfair in Liverpool and an Elvis Presley classic for him to realise that it could offer a whole host more than a pleasant background buzz.
The song that shaped Paul McCartney
“I tell you why I have the loveliest memory of ‘All Shook Up’,” he told Laura Gross, recalling the moment rock ‘n’ roll reached a new level of resonance for him. “I had a mate of mine, who I still know, he’s called Ian James, and he was my best mate. So we used to wander round like these fairgrounds, you know, hoping, thinking the girls would come flooding to us, ’cause they never took any notice of us,” he recalled.
So, in a tale as old as time, Macca and his mate sulked; the sort of can-kicking sulk that stings with a poignant purity in your teens, rattling your soul like a cold sea breeze. Wallowing in a ‘this world is against us’ mire, which McCartney refers to as “teenage blues”, the pair decided to retreat from the funfair and head back to Ian James’ place in Dingle. “And we went in there, and he had ‘All Shook Up’, Elvis. He said, just put that on.”
Like a sage, James somehow knew that the new rasping Elvis song would help waft away their woe. In fact, it is one of the few songs that Elvis himself prised purely from the grasp of youth’s moody grip, with The King once explaining, “I’ve never even had an idea for a song. Just once, maybe. I went to bed one night, had quite a dream, and woke up all shook up. I phoned a pal and told him about it. By morning, he had a new song, ‘All Shook Up’.”
The track exorcised the King’s trepidation, and it did the same for two young wanderers, lost in the mire of adolescence in Liverpool.
“After we put that on, I swear, the blues had gone, the headache had gone, we were like new people.”
Paul McCartney
The most successful musician in history continued, “And, so, you know, I just love that song so much for being able to do that.” It was on this day that he realised music was more than satisfying melodies; it had the potential to make an impact in myriad ways, and he endeavoured to do the same for others.
He was set to become a musician by hook or by crook. And the fickle fingers of fate would once again stir ‘All Shook Up’ into the tea leaves of his future.
Eventually, on the very same day that he met John Lennon on July 6th, 1957, Quarrymen member Len Garry claims that the band recorded a cobbled-together version of the song, prognosticating the cloud-shifting future that the two young frontmen would impart. Sadly, this historic tape was erased, but its impact could hardly be more meaningful. How many bouts of the blues would The Beatles go on to shift? How many cultural shake-ups would they shape?
Fittingly, ‘All Shook Up’ would be the song that truly made Britain take note of rock ‘n’ roll. It became the King’s first number one on this side of the pond and would remain on that pedestal for seven weeks. Roaring with a simple pop and fizz, the song’s title even seemed to hint at how the hip-swivelling new genre was set to take over the minds and bodies of youth.
The humble Fab Four were perhaps most deeply moved out of everyone. And now, an audience desperate for more were fortuitous primed for them to take the reins and land their own first number one just a little over 2,000 days later, with the aptly titled ‘From Me to You’ echoing the manner in which inspiration flowed like a gift. The Beatles’ song would also spend a lucky seven weeks at the top of the charts.
