The rock legend tells Billboard the origin stories -- some moving, some bawdy -- behind eight of The Beatles' record-breaking 20 No. 1 hits.
More than 50 years after the release of their debut single, "Love Me Do," principally written by a then-16-year-old Paul McCartney, The Beatles
remain the Billboard Hot 100's biggest act of all time. Even in 2015,
the band's accomplishments still stagger: 34 top 10 hits, 50 songs in
the top 40 and the most No. 1s in a calendar year (six in 1964 and five
in 1965) -- plus, McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are the only artists to take over the Hot 100's top five positions simultaneously. The deluxe reissue of The Beatles' 1
hits collection, released Nov. 6 and featuring the following eight
indelible classics, is expected to make a top 10 debut on the Billboard
200.
"I Want To Hold Your hand" (REACHED NO. 1 ON FEB. 1, 1964)
In late 1962, The Beatles began to blitz the United Kingdom with
effusively energetic songs, but America initially took a skeptical view
of their music, as well as their girlish haircuts. "The big story about
'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' " recalls McCartney, "I'd said to Brian
[Epstein, the band's manager], 'We don't want to go to America until we
have a No. 1 record.' A lot of British artists went there and came back
with the audience having been slightly underwhelmed by them. I said, 'We
don't want to be like that. If we go, we want to go on top.' "
After Epstein convinced Ed Sullivan to book The Beatles on his
top-viewed primetime CBS show, Capitol Records U.S. stopped ignoring the
band and agreed to put out "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the States, to
coincide with its American TV debut -- but then had to rush the release
in December 1963 after a Washington, D.C., DJ began to play an import
single ahead of schedule. "We were playing in Paris, an engagement at
the Olympia Theatre, a famous old theater Edith Piaf played at, and we
got a telegram -- as you did in those days -- saying, 'Congratulations,
No. 1 in U.S. charts.' We jumped on each other's backs. It was late at
night after a show, and we just partied. That was the record that
allowed us to come to America."
One of the band's five songs to occupy the Hot 100's top five slots
on April 4, 1964 (with "Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," "She
Loves You" and "Please Please Me"), "I Want to Hold Your Hand" ranks as
the chart's No. 45 single of all time.
"Love Me Do" (May 30, 1964)
With a two-chord structure and repetitive, singsong melody, "Love Me Do" from debut studio album Please Please Me
doesn't hint at the grandeur or emotional complexity of future Beatles
songs. "Our early stuff is more simple than our later stuff, and that's
one of the great things about The Beatles," says McCartney. "This was a
very simple song that fell into the category of 'fan songs.' All our
early songs contained 'me' or 'you.' We were completely direct and
shameless to the fans: 'Love Me Do'; 'Please Please Me'; 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' A lot of people are fond of 'Love Me Do' because it evokes a period -- and hey, it was No. 1, so it's OK by me."
On "Love Me Do," Starr plays only the tambourine, because producer
George Martin, accustomed to working with England's top session aces,
replaced the band's drummer with veteran studio musician Andy White.
"George wasn't dealing, ever, with guys like us, who hadn't been taught
music, and he thought Ringo wasn't professional enough, much to Ringo's
eternal sorrow. So Ringo was relegated to a tambourine. We hated it. We
didn't think Andy White was anywhere near as good as Ringo. But we had
to listen to the grown-up."
"Eight Days A Week" (March 13, 1965)
Recently, McCartney has been starting his concerts with "Eight Days a
Week," originally sung by Lennon. "When people review my shows, they
say, 'He opened with a Beatles classic, 'Eight Days a Week.' ' I
wouldn't put it as a 'classic.' Is it the cleverest song we've ever
written? No. Has it got a certain joie de vivre that The
Beatles embodied? Yes. The best thing about it was the title, really."
In many anecdotes, Starr uttered the phrase that became the song's
title; the actual story is that McCartney had lost his license for a
year due to a speeding ticket, so a driver was taking him to Lennon's
house. "Just as we reached John's, I said, 'You been busy?' Just small
talk. And he said, 'Busy? I've been working eight days a week.' I ran
into the house and said, 'Got a title!' And we wrote it in the next
hour."
With the swaying "Hold me, love me" chant in the pre-chorus, The
Beatles -- all still in their early 20s -- continued to turn innocent
desire into carnal wishes. "Our parents had been rather repressed, and
we were breaking out of that mold. Everyone was let off the leash.
Coming down from Liverpool to London, there were all sorts of swinging
chicks, and we were red-blooded young men. All that's on your mind at
that age is young women -- or it was, in our case."
"Help!" (Sept. 4, 1965)
After two years of breakneck recording and touring, Lennon was
unhappy in his marriage to his former college sweetheart and stuffed
with drugs. Tasked with writing a song for The Beatles' second film, he
began to erase the band's merry, dashing veneer with "Help!" "I turned
up at John's house for a writing session," recalls McCartney, "and saw
the opportunity to add a descant [melody in the second verse]. We
finished it quite quickly; we went downstairs and sang it to John's wife
at the time, Cynthia, and a journalist he was friendly with called
Maureen Cleave. We were very pleased with ourselves."
Lennon later said, "I was fat and depressed, and I was crying out for
help," though he also masked his misery with the song's chirpy tempo.
Adds McCartney, "He didn't say, 'I'm now fat and I'm feeling miserable.'
He said, 'When I was younger, so much younger than today.' In other
words, he blustered his way through. We all felt the same way. But
looking back on it, John was always looking for help. He had [a
paranoia] that people died when he was around: His father left home when
John was 3, the uncle he lived with died later, then his mother died. I
think John's whole life was a cry for help."
"We Can Work It Out" (Jan. 8, 1966)
McCartney refers to "We Can Work It Out" as "a girlfriend song," and
like "Help!," the lyrics acknowledged that not everything in a Beatle's
life was perfect. According to lore, he wrote it about a fight he had
had with girlfriend Jane Asher. "I don't remember the circumstances, but
I'm clearly saying, 'Try and see it my way, because I'm obviously
right.' It may be arrogant, but it's what every man wants to say to
every girl. 'Please think of this from my point of view. It might make
things easier. It'd certainly make it easier for me.' "
In Ian MacDonald's book Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties,
the author points to "We Can Work It Out" as the moment when Lennon's
dominance of the band ended and McCartney became "ascendant not only as a
songwriter, but also as instrumentalist, arranger, producer and de
facto musical director of The Beatles." MacDonald also notes that the
song took 12 hours to record, which was an unprecedented length of time.
"It wasn't a complicated song," says McCartney. "Maybe I was fussing
over it because it was my song. You get an idea of how things should
sound, and if it doesn't quite sound like that, you keep pushing."
"Paperback Writer" (June 25, 1966)
"Love is a great thing to write a song about," says McCartney. " 'You
left me, I hate you.' 'I love you, please come to me.' 'Don't go
anywhere, because I'm coming.' It's what us humans are about." But after
a few years of writing love songs, he got restless. One result was
"Paperback Writer," a funny tale of ambition, frustration and a
desperation to please others, inspired by a Daily Mail article
he read about an aspiring novelist. McCartney wrote the lyrics in the
style of a form letter, and Lennon sagely advised him not to change it.
Two sounds dominate the recording, which spent three weeks at No. 1
on the Hot 100: McCartney's snappy, booming Rickenbacker bassline and
knotty, contrapuntal harmonies, inspired by The Beach Boys, that start the track and recur in a breakdown. "Before that, we had been influenced by artists like Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
or Phil Spector. But at this point, it was The Beach Boys. 'Paperback
Writer' is a nod to them, and to the idea that everyone wants to write a
novel. I liked the word 'paperback.' " And why are Lennon and Harrison
chanting "Frere Jacques" in the background vocals? "That's a good
question. No idea! We threw in all sorts of stuff. Why did we say
'Harold Wilson' and 'Edward Heath' [in the background vocals of 1966's
"Taxman"]? We were completely free about throwing in an interesting
idea."
"Penny Lane" (March 18, 1967)
The farther The Beatles traveled from Liverpool -- in physical and
emotional distance, money and fame -- the more they thought about the
city. Their combined sentiment culminated in "Penny Lane," a pre-Google
Maps aerial view of their hometown. McCartney even unsheathes a
Liverpudlian accent when he sings the word "customer."
"Penny Lane was a place in Liverpool that we were very nostalgic
for," he says. "It was a terminal where John and I got the bus to go to
each other's houses. And all the things in the song are true. We never
saw a banker in a plastic mac [raincoat] -- we made him up -- but there
was a barber, there was a bank. There was a fire station. Once there was
a nurse selling poppies -- a lot of people thought the lyric was
'selling puppies,' but we're saying 'poppies,' which is a Remembrance
Day thing for the British Legion. It was all true, basically."
It's also one of The Beatles' most baroque arrangements, with not a
guitar in sight -- their influences had receded past Robinson and landed
in the 18th century. "I heard Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and
asked George Martin what the high trumpet was. He said, 'It's a piccolo
trumpet,' so we got the best piccolo trumpet player in town, and I
wrote a piece for him at the recording session. I wanted to make a very
clean record. It was all very magical, really."
"Hey Jude" (Sept. 28, 1968)
There might not be a better-known origin tale in Beatles lore than
"Hey Jude," which McCartney wrote while thinking about John's son
Julian, then 5 years old -- but that's only part of the story. "I was on
the way to see him after John and Cynthia got divorced, and because I
was good friends with [Julian], it came into my mind: 'Hey, Jules, don't
make it bad,' " he recalls. "It's a song of hopefulness."
Later, McCartney changed "Jules" to "Jude." "I'd heard the name in a musical -- Carousel,
I think: 'Jude is dead' or something like that. I hadn't realized
'Jude' means 'Jew' [in German]. That caused some confusion, and a man
got quite angry with me over that." So angry that after McCartney and a
few friends painted "HEY JUDE" on the highly visible window of the Apple
Boutique on London's Baker Street in 1968, the passerby mistook the
phrase for anti-Semitic graffiti and smashed the glass with a soda
siphon.
Lennon suspected the song was about him and his relationship with Yoko Ono,
pointing to the lyrics -- especially "You have found her, now go and
get her" -- that address an adult, not a child. "The only thing about
Julian in the song is the first lines," says McCartney, declining to
elucidate the mystery of who else he's addressing in the song.
"Hey Jude" was not only The Beatles' longest song to date, it was the
first release on their Apple Records label. The single spent 19 weeks
on the Hot 100 -- longer than any other Beatles entry at the time -- and
nine of them at No. 1, making it the group's longest-leading hit and
the No. 10 Hot 100 single of all time. Even Lennon, who often said
unkind things about McCartney's songs, called the stirring ballad a
masterpiece.
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