What was the first cover song The Beatles ever recorded?
The Beatles cut their teeth with covers. Like all good local musicians, the members had been doing the rounds, playing around Liverpool in all the small venues, pubs and clubs, playing crowd-pleaser sets of crowd-pleaser songs.
It’s the way artists did it; taking a song they liked and interpreting it into their own sound as a way to learn and improve and eventually figure out their own artistic voice. Without the years spent playing classic rock and roll covers, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wouldn’t have forged their own voice that would define their early albums and be honed from then on. Ringo Starr never would have found his groove, and George Harrison never would have become such a rocker.
Covers are essential, not just for learning the ropes but also drawing people in, as back then, in the early 1960s, record labels would rather a band be good at covering hits than have their own songwriting style down. A good cover seemed to promise consistency and skill to them, so a lot of the type, any form of early demo or audition would take the shape of a new band singing an old song.
In terms of The Beatles’ first recorded cover, it’s a hazy answer. In the earliest days, when the band first got the money together for any slim time in a studio, they’d do a cover. However, the first ones all came under a different name as the prior iteration of the band, The Quarrymen, recorded hits like Buddy Holly’s ‘That’ll Be The Day’ and Ray Charles’ ‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So’. They all feature on the Beatles Anthology tapes, but they don’t technically count here as they weren’t recorded by The Beatles.
Instead, The Beatles’ first real recording session came later down the line when their time in Hamburg not only gave them a growing following, but also gave them a new name when they switched to the one the whole world knows now. That period also gave them the opportunity to hit the studio again.
So, what was the first cover recorded by The Beatles?
Technically, the first cover is ‘My Bonnie’, which is also the single that first caught Brian Epstein’s attention. However, I want to rule that one out too, given that none of the Beatles sing the lead vocal.
After thinking the recording session in Hamburg was for them, they’d been surprised to find out that actually they were only there to support Tony Sheridan. “It was a bit disappointing because we’d been hoping to get a record deal as ourselves,” George Harrison said, but they did what they were told and played backing for the artist, adding some vocals, but these recordings never really felt like their own.
However, during that session, they did get one solo shot. ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ was the song they chose to do, and it’s an old one, first released in the 1920s. Since then, it has become a true standard reworked by artists of all different eras and genres. It had been part of the band’s live set for a long time, so when a slim period of time came up to record without Sheridan, they had to go for something they knew well.
John Lennon took on lead vocals, and they fumbled through it. In the recording, it’s like you can hear the nerves or the cluelessness of the band learning how to even work in a studio during their first proper professional sessions. It doesn’t exactly feel reflective of the band, but it’s a start.
It was clearly a start that meant a lot to them. In 1969, when things were beginning to collapse, John Lennon impromptu started jamming on this cover during a session recording ‘Sun King’ and ‘Mean Mr Mustard’. Reminiscing on the early days from the end of them, they always remembered where it all came from.
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