The Beatles song Paul McCartney had no idea what he was doing: “We had to rely on grown-ups”
No rulebook truly explains how to write a hit song. If such a thing existed, there would be no reason for artists to be around anymore, and the suits of the world would have glorified androids up onstage trying to sell whatever shallow attempt at a hit they can muster up on their own. And even for someone as seasoned in songwriting as Paul McCartney, even he confessed to not having the first inkling of what to do when writing what is now considered a classic Beatles song.
Because looking at where the Fab Four started, they didn’t seem destined to write songs by any stretch. Although their first demos included the original ‘In Spite of All the Danger’, a lot of their greatest work from their salad days involved them interpreting different pieces of rock and roll into their set, like covering Buddy Holly’s ‘That’ll Be The Day’ or giving Macca the Little Richard songs to belt out.
Around the time that John Lennon started showing McCartney songs that he had written, though, the language behind their music had started to change. The whole premise behind someone like Buddy Holly was that he wrote his own songs, and if they wanted a cut of their royalties, Lennon and McCartney would need to have their names on some of their classics if they had a hope of making any money off of it.
So that meant that the Cavern Club would be home to some of their first original performances as well. While tunes like Lennon’s ‘Hello Little Girl’ and McCartney’s ‘Like Dreamers Do’ are certainly cute for what they were, they weren’t going to be what clenched them a record contract, like when they played their Decca audition and got passed off for another group.
Although they did catch the ear of George Martin at EMI Studios, what they were playing didn’t exactly knock him out, either. ‘Love Me Do’ was the single that got them noticed, but what Martin saw in them was potential rather than a sure-fire songwriting team.
It’s not like McCartney could say that he had a handle on the medium when writing ‘Love Me Do’, either, saying, “We didn’t know how to do this. We didn’t know how to make a record. We had to rely on grown-ups, so it did give us this lovely innocence that now seems really very sweet. I’m so glad we had an innocent period.”
Despite having one basic verse that runs through the entire song, ‘Love Me Do’ does at least have the hallmarks of a great Beatles song, like Lennon’s bluesy harmonica and those signature two-part harmonies that would become a staple of their career once they started to gain traction off of albums like A Hard Day’s Night.
No one could have predicted these guys rewriting the book on what rock and roll was supposed to be based on ‘Love Me Do’ alone, but what they lacked in expertise they made up for in absolute charm. It was dead simple, but for as green as they were, they knew that keeping things fairly straight is enough to get one’s foot in the door.
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