LOVE ME DO’s LONG CLIMB TO THE TOP

On the evening of Monday 3 September 1962 The Beatles were playing in the industrial north of England, at The Queens Hall in Widnes. The following morning John, Paul, George and Ringo flew to London; the former drummer with Rory Storm and the Hurricane had only been with the other three for two weeks, having replaced Pete Best. From Heathrow Airport the band were driven to north west London, to EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, where, smartly dressed in shirts and ties, they were to record what was planned to be their first single for the Parlophone label.

They recorded, ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘How Do You Do It?’, a song written by Mitch Murray that was also briefly in contention for release. A week later, having played the Cavern Club and other gigs in and around Liverpool The Beatles were back at Abbey Road to re-record ‘Love Me Do’. This time George Martin had brought in Andy White, a session drummer: Ringo played tambourine.

The three-hour session on Tuesday 11 September proved a success and as well as ‘Love Me Do’ they recorded ‘P.S I Love You’; just under a month later on 5 October, The Beatles’ first single was released. This version of ‘Love Me Do’ was the version from 4 September, featuring Ringo on drums and it ended up making No.17 on the UK charts.

Capitol Records of Canada issued the same version in February 1963, but it failed to excite too many buyers. According to Paul White, the Capitol Records Canada executive in charge of the selling the Beatles it was an inauspicious start. “For my efforts, Love Me Do sold 170 copies, I tried for another record, ‘Please Please Me,’ and that sold about 280. The third record, ‘From Me to You,’ sold 300, and then ‘She Loves You’ was released and went berserk. Love Me Do’ ended up selling close to 100,000 copies”

Following The Beatles’ success on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 the Capitol Canada single made the Billboard chart at No.81 on 11 April 1964. In the aftermath of the success of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ in early 1964, Tollie, a subsidiary of Vee Jay, the company that issued the first American singles by The Beatles after Capitol, EMI’s subsidiary declined to release them, put out ‘Love Me do on 27 April 1964.

A week later the Billboard chart listed both the Capitol Canada and Tollie singles jointly at No.31; a month later ‘Love Me Do’ spent its solitary week at the top of the Billboard best seller list. Ironically this was the recording with Andy White on drums as Tollie had dubbed their single from the first version on the album, Introducing The Beatles, which had been issued in January 1964.

It’s this one week at No.1 which qualifies ‘Love Me Do’ for The Beatles 1 album and the video that appears on the forthcoming release is taken from a performance at the Little Theatre, Southport for a BBC-TV documentary, The Mersey Sound. While ‘Love Me Do’ wasn’t broadcast in its entirety, additional footage has been added to create a new clip that is featured on the new DVD and Blu-ray releases; it’s the one that has Ringo playing drums.

It’s The Beatles, as you’ve never seen them before…

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