The Beatles (18 page)

The early arrangement of the song, he thought was weak although “certain of the kids” at the Cavern liked it. When the Beatles came to audition for Decca on January 1st, 1962 it was one of three Lennon-McCartney songs that they included in a 15-song set (the others were ‘Hello Little Girl' and ‘Love Of The Loved').

By the time of their EMI audition nine months later, none of these songs were offered, all of them having been replaced by better material. Shortly afterwards they were offered to other artists, ‘Like Dreamers Do' to The Applejacks, a Birmingham six-piece group with a female bassist, who reached number 20 with it in July 1964.

HELLO LITTLE GIRL

John frequently referred to ‘Hello Little Girl' as his earliest composition. Written in 1958, it became the first of his songs to be performed by the Quarry Men.

He credited its origin to the Cole Porter song ‘It's De-Lovely', with its chorus of ‘It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely', which was first sung by Bob Hope in the 1936 stage musical
Red, Hot and Blue
and was recorded in Britain by Carroll Gibbons and The Savoy Hotel Orpheans in 1938.

“That song always fascinated me for some reason or another,” John said. “It was possibly connected to my mother. She used to sing that one. It's all very Freudian. So I made ‘Hello Little Girl' out of it. It was supposed to be a Buddy Holly-style song.”

There is no similarity between the two songs other than the device of repeating the title as a chorus. It may have been more the
playful spirit of the song and, as with ‘ Please Please me', the association with his mother's musical interests. The imprint of Buddy Holly is more easily detectable. In its earliest incarnation the middle eight was apparently swiped wholesale from ‘Maybe Baby'.

Just as Paul's early songs always bore the hallmark of optimism, John's bore the hallmark of pessimism. Paul assumed acceptance and love where John braced himself for rejection. In ‘Hello Little Girl' he attempts to attract a girl's attention but she remains unaware of him. He sends her flowers but she is unmoved. He ends up lonely about to ‘lose my mind'.

Recorded for the Decca audition in January 1962 ‘Hello Little Girl' was already off their set list by the time they signed for EMI later in the year. “It was then offered to Gerry and the Pacemakers,” remembers Tony Bramwell. “It was considered as the follow up to ‘How Do You Do It?'. They recorded a demo of it (included on
Gerry and the Pacemakers; The Best of the EMI Years
, 1992) but by that time Mitch Murray had come up with ‘I Like It'.”

The song was then offered to The Fourmost, another Liverpool group managed by Brian Epstein. After a Sunday concert in Blackpool where the two groups had appeared, John invited The Fourmost to his house to see the lyrics. The following morning they were sent a demo tape. “We had to record on the Wednesday and so we only had two days to record it,” said bass guitarist Billy Hatton. “As a matter of fact, when we were recording, we were just learning the song as we went along.”

The record was a hit after its release on August 23 and reached number 7 in the British charts. It was released in America on September 16.

YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO

A languid country-flavoured song written by George and recorded on June 3, 1964. Ringo had been taken ill that morning, on the verge of a tour, and so the studio time booked to record a fourteenth and final song for the
A Hard Day's Night
album had to be used to rehearse substitute drummer Jimmy Nicol. As a result only three new demos were recorded that day – Paul's ‘It's For You' (later given to Cilla Black), John's ‘No Reply' and this new song from George.

Being the youngest Beatle, George always had a hard time getting his ideas to be taken seriously. This was only the second song of his to be taped by the group (the first being ‘Don't Bother Me') but it was never developed and, due to misfiling, it was lost for the next three decades. If it had been worked on by the group, it would surely have been a contender for
Beatles For Sale.

Although it is undoubtedly a formula song with no deep revelation at the core it's interesting to note that George was just twelve weeks into his courtship of Pattie Boyd. Could he have written a song at the time about wanting to be with his girl ‘every hour of the day' without having her in mind?

IF YOU'VE GOT TROUBLE

John and Paul never gave Ringo their best songs but neither did they only give him their worst. However, ‘If You've Got Trouble' must rate as the worst one they ever expected him to sing. Melodically, it's uninspiring. Lyrically, it's embarrassing. It's hard to believe that the team that had just written ‘Ticket To Ride' and ‘ You've Got To Hide Your Love Away' could come up with this. Recorded in one take, it sounds as though it was also composed in one take.

The theme of the song could be roughly summarised as ‘If you think you've got problems - you should see mine!' The vitriol in the song sounds like John. Did it start out as a barbed attack on Cynthia, telling her to quit complaining about his abilities as a husband and a father and to be grateful for the luxuries afforded by the Beatles' new stardom?

An interview that year in the
Saturday Evening Post
conducted by Al Aronowitz suggests such a context for the song; “Their friends say that she (Cynthia) was in awe of John when they first met and she still is; a feeling, in fact, which has grown as his stardom rockets him further into the entertainment heavens, troubling her with the occasional thought that she might be left behind. When the Beatles are on tour, she often is left behind. ‘Well, she certainly doesn't seem to mind spending the money I'm making,” John says.”

Intended for the
Help!
album, it was left to die after this session.

THAT MEANS A LOT

Written primarily by Paul, this was another song intended for
Help!
but which the Beatles were never able to record in what they considered to be a definitive version. In sessions on February 20th and March 30th, 1965 they attempted the song 24 times before finally abandoning it.

The song takes the point of view of a third party looking in on a relationship, a device first used in ‘She Loves You'. The shift in viewpoint opened up the possibility of writing in voices other than their own and expressing attitudes that were not necessarily their own.

“We found that we just couldn't sing it,” summarised John some time later. “In fact, we made such a hash of it that we thought we'd better give it to someone who could do it well.” That someone was P.J. Proby, an American singer who'd been invited to Britain by Brian Epstein in April 1964 to take part in a Beatles TV special, and who had become friendly with the group. Proby recorded ‘That Means A Lot' and it made number 30 in the British charts in October 1965.

 

12-BAR ORIGINAL

Recorded between ‘What Goes On' and ‘I'm Looking Through You' in November 1965, was this song meant for
Rubber Soul?
Two takes were recorded, one was mixed, but neither was ever released.

It is one of the least typical Beatles' tracks and appears to be an attempt to mimic the Memphis soul sound. The obvious template is Booker T. & The MG's – keyboard player Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson, bass player ‘Duck' Dunn and guitarist Steve Cropper – the Stax Records session musicians who played behind such soul greats as Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and Eddie Floyd. They had enjoyed a string of instrumental hits under their own name beginning with ‘Green Onions' in 1962. ‘ 12-Bar Original', which is credited to all four Beatles, sounds like a pastiche of ‘Green Onions' and its follow-up ‘Jellybread' minus the distinctive keyboard playing.

The track was recorded at a point when the Beatles were striving for recognition as musicians and was also at a juncture in British pop when the heavier sounds of the Animals, Yardbirds, Kinks and Pretty Things were taking over from Tin Pan Alley.

JUNK

Paul wrote ‘Junk' while in India and first recorded it in May 1968 when all four Beatles met up at George's home on Claremont Drive, Esher, Surrey. It's this version, an acoustic demo with unfinished lyrics, that appears on
Anthology.
Paul hoped to complete it for inclusion on
Abbey Road
but instead recorded it for his first solo album,
McCartney
, which was released in April 1970.

The demo is nothing more than a rough sketch. An unfinished verse is repeated twice, he is still thinking up words for the chorus and the gaps are filled with humming and giggling.

It's impossible to determine the story because Paul's way of composing at the time was to fit interesting words to a tune he had hit upon, in this case words to do with a scrap yard and a junk shop. In the press release that went out with his solo album his only comment was; “Originally written in India, at Maharishi's camp, and completed bit by bit in London.”

NOT GUILTY

Recorded during the White Album sessions in August 1968 George had already spent two months in the studio with only one of his songs – ‘ While My Guitar Gently Weeps' – having been picked up by the group. Over 100 takes and rehearsals of this song were produced between August 7 and August 12 but for some reason it wasn't included in the final line-up.

The song didn't surface until 1979 when a re-recorded version was used on the album
George Harrison.
Structurally the song remained the same, with the exception of the addition of the lines; ‘not guilty for being on your street/ Getting underneath your feet'.

Around this time George explained the song as being about the problems that were beginning to affect him as a part of the Beatles in 1968: “Paul, John, Apple, Rishikesh, Indian friends etc.” Written when he was starting to be regarded as the freaky, mystical Beatle he seems to be saying, “Don't blame me for getting you involved with freak culture. Hey, I'm not asking for too much. I just want to do my job and get a bit of respect.”

It's hard not to see such lines as, ‘I'm not trying to be smart/ I only want what I can get' as a bitter comment on his inability to increase his presence within the group and become regarded as a songwriting equal to John and Paul.

Maybe that's why it didn't get on the album.

WHAT'S THE NEW MARY JANE

“This was a thing I wrote half with our electronic genius Alex,” said John in 1969. “It was called ‘What A Shame Mary Jane Had A Pain At The Party' and it was meant for
The Beatles
album.”

Written in India when the Greek-born John Alexis Mardas paid a visit, it was demoed at George's Esher home in May 1968. At this stage it was a little over two and a half minutes long and as the Beatles improvised towards the end of the track one of them shouted, “Ooh. What's the news?…What are you saying? What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party. What's the new Mary Jane… Oh, my God! Mary! Mary!” This gave rise to the unusual title.

The studio version, recorded by John and George with help from Yoko and Mal Evans, went on for over six minutes with a two-minute ‘freak out' before the final verse. The lyric remained the same as demoed in May except for the line ‘He cooking such groovy spaghetti' which came out, whether by accident or creative play, as ‘He groovy such cooking spaghetti'.

The syntax of the lyric is unorthodox. There is a deliberate use of wrong tenses and wrong words which suggest that John may have been imitating the way that Indians often speak English when it is their second language. The story told is either deliberate or a coded putdown of someone in Maharishi's circle. Significantly, John had been recording ‘Sexy Sadie' the day before.

At the end of the recording John can be heard saying, “Let's hear it before we get taken away”. A year later he planned to have it released as a B side to ‘ You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)' as a Plastic Ono Band single but it was pulled at the last minute. “It was real madness,” said John describing the track in 1969. “I'd like to do it again.”

STEP INSIDE LOVE

Cilla Black, real name Priscilla White, was a Liverpool typist signed by Brian Epstein and given a contract with Parlophone. Her first single, released in February 1963, was ‘Love Of The Loved', an old Quarry Men song written by Paul and used by the Beatles at their Decca Records audition. Paul turned up for the recording.

In 1964 he wrote ‘It's For You' for her and then in 1968, after hearing that she was to front her own BBC TV series, he offered to write the theme song for her. Entertainment shows of the time were traditionally book-ended by big band numbers but Cilla wanted to change that.

“Paul understood what I felt,” she said. “He said to me: ‘I know what they're doing. They're sending you these Billy Cotton Band-type of numbers and that's not you. You're the kind of person that should invite people into your house. You should have a song that that starts off very quietly and then builds up.'”

Paul did a demo of ‘Step Inside Love' at his home in Cavendish Avenue and double tracked it with his own voice. “All he had given us was one verse and a chorus with him playing on guitar,” remembers director and producer Michael Hurll. “We played it that way for the first couple of weeks and then decided that we needed a second
verse. Paul came over to the BBC Theatre in Shepherd's Bush and sat with me and Cilla and worked on a second verse. It started off with the line ‘You look tired love' because Cilla was tired after a lot of rehearsing and most of what he wrote related to what was going on that day.”

The version of the song included on
Anthology
was captured in September 1968 while the Beatles were waiting to record ‘I Will'. Paul begins with the chorus and slips straight into the second verse which he forgets, singing ‘kiss me goodnight' instead of ‘love me tonight', leaving a line out and concluding with the last line of what should have been the third verse.