“It was a pretty poor song”: the track John Lennon and Paul McCartney both called a failure
Every great Beatles song always came from that constant tension between John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Even though they were joined at the hip musically and made some of the greatest songs that anyone had ever created, there was always that white-hot competitive streak whenever they saw their partner doing something a little bit better than what they had come up with. That sense of one-upsmanship was the reason why they pushed boundaries so often, but both of them could put their hands up and acknowledge when they made an outright dud in their catalogue.
Then again, McCartney was always proud to say that he and Lennon never had a full-on dry session. Even if something wasn’t working on a particular day, they always came out of it with a song under their belt whenever they were finished. And while some of them pushed more boundaries than others, each of them could tell when they had made something that was going to stand the test of time a lot better than whatever record they were hearing on the radio back in Liverpool.
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ clearly had the magic when they first laid the tune down on the piano, and even when they were gigging throughout the world, the fact that they had time to come up with ‘She Loves You’ in a hotel room almost isn’t fair to the rest of the rock and roll world. They were clearly on another level, but when you’re asked to pump out that much music, there are bound to be tunes that don’t fit the bill that well.
As if writing for their own albums and singles wasn’t enough, Brian Epstein’s insistence that they work on music for other artists meant that ‘The Nerk Twins’ had to work overtime on a lot of their greatest tunes. Sometimes it would be great, like when they gave Billy Kramer and the Dakotas a song like ‘Bad to Me’, but when you look at the first few records, you could tell that the band needed a little bit of a break when going through With the Beatles.
They had already been paraded around like mad throughout the country, so when they came up with the tune ‘Hold Me Tight’, Lennon didn’t even pretend that the song was one of their finest efforts, saying, “That was Paul’s. Maybe I stuck some bits in there… I really don’t remember. It was a pretty poor song and I was never really interested in it either way.” It’s not necessarily fair to put it down as a terrible song, but even McCartney had to admit that they could have done a lot better than this when working on their early records.
Considering that ‘All My Loving’ and ‘All I’ve Got To Do’ were on the same album, McCartney admitted that the tune was nothing but filler when they started putting the final tracks down, saying, “’Hold Me Tight’ was a failed attempt at a single which then became acceptable album filler.” But you have to remember where the band was at this point of their career to understand why this made the final cut.
Beatlemania was becoming a phenomenon everywhere, and since they only had a few days in the studio, there were bound to be a few songs that didn’t pass quality inspection. They already were working on tunes like ‘Little Child’ and even giving ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ to Ringo Starr after gifting it to The Rolling Stones, so there was nothing wrong with digging up ‘Hold Me Tight’ from the Please Please Me sessions, especially since the album was already being filled out with covers to get it out to the public.
So while the song was an all-out failure compared to everything else they had done, it’s not like the band were looking to turn it into the next big single by any means. They had been looking to make enough material for an album, and since With The Beatles is more of the same from the Please Please Me sessions, they needed to take what they could get whenever they were scrounging for new tunes.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.