Love Me Do

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"Love Me Do"
"Love Me Do" cover
Single by The Beatles
B-side(s) "P.S. I Love You"
Released 5 October 1962
27 April 1964 (USA)
Format 7" (1962, 1982)
CD, Digipak (1992)
Recorded Abbey Road Studios:
6 June; 4, 11 September 1962
Genre Beat
Length 2:22
Label Parlophone R4949
Tollie 9008
Writer(s) Lennon/McCartney
Producer(s) George Martin
The Beatles singles chronology
-- "Love Me Do"
(1962) 		"Please Please Me"
(1963)

Love Me Do is the 1962 debut single by The Beatles. It was written by both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It was also included on the first Beatles album, Please Please Me.

Contents

[edit] Writing

John and Paul wrote the song around 1958. John recalled in 1972, "Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was 16, or even earlier. I think I had something to do with the middle." Paul remembers both writers contributing equally to the song. He remembers, "Love Me Do was completely co-written. It might have been my original idea but some of them really were 50-50s, and I think that one was. It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea. We loved doing it, it was a very interesting thing to try and learn to do, to become songwriters. I think why we eventually got so strong was we wrote so much through our formative period. Love Me Do was our first hit, which ironically is one of the two songs that we control, because when we first signed to EMI they had a publishing company called Ardmore and Beechwood which took the two songs, Love Me Do and PS I Love You, and in doing a deal somewhere along the way we were able to get them back." Even though the band was performing mostly cover songs at the time, they began to introduce their own songs into the live set. John recalled, "Introducing our own numbers started round Liverpool and Hamburg. Love Me Do, one of the first ones we wrote, Paul started when he must have been about 15. It was the first one we dared to do of our own. This was quite a traumatic thing because we were doing such great numbers of other people's, of Ray Charles and [Little] Richard and all of them. It was quite hard to come in singing Love Me Do. We thought our numbers were a bit wet. But we gradually broke that down and decided to try them." The Beatles recorded the song ten times for BBC radio, one of which, from Pop Goes The Beatles recorded July 10, 1963 was included on the 1994 album Live at the BBC. Ringo once described the song as a real turning point for the band. In 1976, he said "For me that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can't believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record!" Paul has also said that he knew Love Me Do would make them successful. He recalled, "In Hamburg we clicked. At the Cavern we clicked. But if you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with Love Me Do. That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go."

[edit] Recording

The Beatles recorded Love Me Do on different occasions at different sessions. The first version is from June 6, 1962 and features Pete Best on drums. On September 4, they attempted it again, this time with Ringo Starr on drums. It was then intended to be released as a single with How Do You Do It?. The next version comes from September 11. On this version, Andy White plays drums, with Ringo on tambourine. George Martin, who was not at the time pleased with Ringo, had a session player, Andy White play on the track. Ringo was not told of this ahead of time, however, and he was forced to play tambourine on the track. Ringo recalled, "On my first visit in September we just ran through some tracks for George Martin. We even did Please Please Me. I remember that, because while we were recording it I was playing the bass drum with a maraca in one hand and a tambourine in the other. I think it's because of that that George Martin used Andy White, the 'professional', when we went down a week later to record Love Me Do. The guy was previously booked, anyway, because of Pete Best. George didn't want to take any more chances and I was caught in the middle. I was devastated that George Martin had his doubts about me. I came down ready to roll and heard, 'We've got a professional drummer.' He has apologised several times since, has old George, but it was devastating - I hated the bugger for years; I still don't let him off the hook!" The biggest difference between the Andy White version and the Ringo Starr version of Love Me Do is the presence of tambourine. In Ringo's version, there is no tambourine and in Andy White's there is. Early copies of the Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You single include Ringo's version, though most contain White's version. The Andy White version was included on the 1963 EP The Beatles Hits, and since then has bgecome the preferred version of the track. Because of this decision, EMI destroyed the master tape for the September 4 session. Andy White's version was included on the 1963 album Please Please Me. Ringo's version was only available on early pressings of the single until 1988, when one of the early singles, used because the master tape did not exist anymore, was the source for the version included on the 1988 compilation Past Masters Volume 1. Pete Best's verion was included on Anthology 1. Paul recalled, "George got his way and Ringo didn't drum on the first single. He only played tambourine. I don't think Ringo ever got over that. He had to go back up to Liverpool and everyone asked, 'How did it go in the Smoke?' We'd say, 'B-side's good,' but Ringo couldn't admit to liking the a-side, not being on it." Putting Ringo on the tambourine wasn't the only change George Martin made to the song. Paul remembered in his authorized biography, Many Years From Now, "George Martin said, 'Can anyone play harmonica? It would be rather nice. Couldn't think of some sort of bluesy thing, could you, John?' John played a chromatic harmonica, not a Sonny Boy Williamson blues harmonica, more Max Geldray from the Goon Show... The lyrics crossed over the harmonica solo so I suddenly got thrown the big open line, 'Love me do', where everything stopped. Until that session John had always done it; I didn't even know how to sing it. I'd never done it before. George Martin just said, 'You take that line, John take the harmonica, you cross over, we'll do it live'... I can still hear the nervousness in my voice! We were downstairs in number two studio and I remember looking up to the big window afterwards and George Martin was saying, 'Jolly good.'"

[edit] Recording Sessions

  • June 6, 1962: The first Beatles session ever at Abbey Road Studios. →


[edit] Single Release

Love Me Do was released as a single in the UK on October 5, 1962, backed by P.S. I Love You. It reached number seventeen in the charts, with sales mostly in or around Liverpool. George Harrison recalls, "There were enough fans of The Beatles around because we were playing all over the Wirral, Cheshire, Manchester and Liverpool. We were quite popular, so the sales were real. First hearing Love Me Do on the radio sent me shivery all over. It was the best buzz of all time. We knew it was going to be on Radio Luxembourg at something like 7.30 on Thursday night. I was in my house in Speke and we all listened in. That was great, but after having got to 17, I don't recall what happened to it. It probably went away and died, but what it meant was that the next time we went to EMI, they were more friendly: 'Oh, hello lads. Come in.'" Rumor circulated that Brian Epstein had bought 10,000 copies just to improve sales, but John denied this, saying, "The best thing was it came into the charts in two days and everybody thought it was a fiddle, because our manager's stores sent in these returns and everybody down south though, 'Ah-ha, he's buying them himself or he's just fiddling the charts.' But he wasn't."

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The Beatles

[edit] Guest Musicians

[edit] Production

[edit] Available Versions

[edit] The Beatles

[edit] Paul McCartney

  • Soundcheck in Rio De Janeiro, April 20, 1990, (Bootlegs)
  • Soundcheck in Rio De Janeiro, 1993, (Bootlegs)

[edit] Ringo Starr

[edit] Available On

[edit] Cover Versions

[edit] Source

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