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What was the first Beatles song to feature Paul McCartney on drums?

Tue 24 December 2024 15:00, UK

From his groundbreaking contributions to songwriting to his innovative approach to bass playing, Paul McCartney stands as a consummate musician. Without him, The Beatles could never have reached the heights they did, as he served as both a perfect creative and personal foil to John Lennon. Like his bandmates, McCartney wasn’t just a visionary; he also had the extraordinary talent and technical skill to bring his ideas to fruition—a rare gift that set him apart from most musicians.

This manifested in many ways, and of course, the most important was his musical ability. Famously, McCartney’s innovative lead lines on the bass supplied the band with their melodic and rhythmic glue, pulling the four-string out of the monotonous background of purely root notes and sitting in the drummer’s pocket to instead create energy and the band’s soul.

In light of this, his favourite player was Motown hero James Jamerson, whose own melodic flare pricked his ears. His work and the influence of Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson – who loved to take his basslines in left-field directions – inspired him to fuse soul warmth with unadulterated rock vivacity. As a result, McCartney’s best basslines remain astounding and a masterclass in imagination-marrying dexterity. It is no surprise that the likes of Geddy Lee cite him as a key figure in their own development.

Remarkably, the bass wasn’t the only place McCartney excelled musically. Whether it was his impassioned scream, which he learned from one of the style’s innovators, Little Richard, his guitar playing on ‘Blackbird’ and ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’, or his piano playing, as evidenced on ‘Hey Jude’, he really can do it all. He played many different instruments during his time with the Fab Four, and following their 1970 split, he continued to show his potency as a multi-instrumentalist.

McCartney even mastered the drums and played on several tracks by The Beatles. His interest in the instrument began in the late 1950s when he tried to convince his younger brother Mike to join a band, and he recommended that he pick up the drums. McCartney then started his real journey as a drummer when The Beatles were in Hamburg on one of their formative residences, cutting their teeth before they became world famous.

“You’d get behind the kit to try and show the drummer what you wanted,” McCartney explained to Drum in 2005. “That gradually grew to messing around on other people’s kits.”

As you might expect, it didn’t take long for McCartney to take to the tubs, and he became pretty handy. “You picked up the simplest beats very naturally,” he recalled. “I remember one evening when [fellow performer] Tony Sheridan’s drummer didn’t show up, so Tony said, ‘Come on, man, sit in!’”

The performance went off without a hitch, and the experience was a foundational one that boosted his confidence for when he came to drum for the Beatles later in the decade.

So, what was the first song by The Beatles with Paul McCartney on drums?

As the cracks started to show in The Beatles, on August 28th, 1968, their drummer, Ringo Starr, abruptly quit the band. As a microcosm of the growing tension, following McCartney reportedly micromanaging a drum fill during the recording of ‘Back in the USSR’ – the opening track of what became that year’s White Album – Starr took off to Sardinia.

While the two musicians soon made up after McCartney sent him a postcard telling him he was the best drummer in the world, the band continued recording without their drummer. McCartney recorded the final drum part that had caused Starr to leave. He also recorded Lennon’s composition ‘Dear Prudence’ in the ensuing sessions. Later, in early October, he played drums on ‘Martha My Dear’, essentially a solo recording.

However, prior to these three cuts, McCartney had already laid down his first drum track for The Beatles. On August 20th at London’s EMI studios, he recorded ‘Wild Honey Pie’, the strange experimental track that was a creative response to Lennon’s ‘Revolution 9’. Despite being his first behind the kit for the quartet, the song has long been deemed a forgettable filler on a sprawling double album filled with them.