Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey there, it's justin Richmond. Sixty years ago this week,
Speaker 1: the Beatles touched down in the US for the very
Speaker 1: first time and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. That
Speaker 1: appearance blew the minds of just about everybody who was
Speaker 1: there to witness it. A lot of the musicians we
Speaker 1: talked to on this very show cited as a moment
Speaker 1: that they realized they were going to do music for
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. Most recently we heard that
Speaker 1: from Mark Mothers bov Devo.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: To celebrate this momentous anniversary sixty years since the Beatles'
Speaker 1: appearance on Ed Sullivan, we're releasing the second season of
Speaker 1: McCartney A Life and Lyrics, another show that I worked
Speaker 1: on here at Pushkin Industries. I'm going to share the
Speaker 1: first episode from that season with you on Broken Record.
Speaker 1: It's about the song Love Me Do. Paul McCartney and
Speaker 1: Paul Muldoone sat down to discuss the origins of that
Speaker 1: song and also a bit about the origin of the Beatles,
Speaker 1: and also about that Ed Sullivan appearance. I hope you
Speaker 1: like the episode. If you do, subscribe to McCartney Life
Speaker 1: and Lyrics. We already have the second episode up on
Speaker 1: Band on the Run, and we'll be releasing more episodes
Speaker 1: a weekly through April. McCartney A life and Lyrics I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: We admired a singer at that time called Bruce Chanelle
Speaker 2: I think his name was, who had a song called
Speaker 2: Hey Baby where there was a harmonica roof. So we
Speaker 2: started doing Hey Baby. I sang it. John played the harmonica.
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the contributory factors for
Speaker 2: when we're going to write something that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: This harmonica thing's a good idea. John could play it well.
Speaker 2: We could write something that would feature you know, instruments
Speaker 2: come in sort of vogues. I mean you think of
Speaker 2: skiffle guitar was like a harmonics. What everyone got for
Speaker 2: Christmas is what everyone got, and that then spawned the
Speaker 2: sixties revolutions.
Speaker 3: I'm Paul will do and I've been fortunate to spend
Speaker 3: time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2: And will you look at me, I'm going on to it.
Speaker 2: I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 3: That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 3: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 3: of our conversations.
Speaker 2: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 2: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 3: This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 3: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 3: figures in popular music. In this episode, love Me.
Speaker 4: Too, BA, love Me Do you Know?
Speaker 2: I Love you?
Speaker 1: Balways be true soly.
Speaker 2: Love Me Do.
Speaker 3: For a group like the Beatles to come into existence,
Speaker 3: you need quite a few planets to align, but you
Speaker 3: also need prodigious talent, clever strategy, and instiable drive. In
Speaker 3: this episode, we trace the origins of one of the
Speaker 3: earliest Beatles songs. These days it's difficult to remember a
Speaker 3: time before the Beatles, but back when Paul McCartney and
Speaker 3: John Lennon wrote Love Me Doo, there were merely school
Speaker 3: boys trying to make a hit.
Speaker 2: In the afternoons, I sometimes had a rather kind of
Speaker 2: light class that I could get out of, and so
Speaker 2: I would say I had a dentist's appointment or something,
Speaker 2: and they didn't check too heavily, so I would be
Speaker 2: able to get on the bus go back home. And
Speaker 2: arrange to meet John, who ran about that time was
Speaker 2: going to the art college next door in my school,
Speaker 2: So we'd meet up at my house is now National
Speaker 2: Trust established twenty fourth in the road, and we would
Speaker 2: meet there because that was the most convenient place, and
Speaker 2: my mom and dad wouldn't be there, so we would
Speaker 2: go there and start just knocking around, showing it other
Speaker 2: stuff that we'd written already, and then writing new stuff together.
Speaker 2: And that's involved a couple of songs that have never
Speaker 2: been published or never been heard, songs like just Fun
Speaker 2: was one of them, and they were very rough little things,
Speaker 2: but you know it was.
Speaker 5: The start, right now? You still have copies of those?
Speaker 5: Are there still copies of it?
Speaker 2: You know? I do? I say, or did have an
Speaker 2: old school exercise book. It's a nice little blue book,
Speaker 2: a hard pack, and in that I wrote just fun,
Speaker 2: Just Fun. They said that our love was just fun
Speaker 2: the day that our friendship begun. There's no blue moon
Speaker 2: that I can see. There's never been in history, because
Speaker 2: our love was just fun, kind of country picnic. And
Speaker 2: then Too Bad about Sorrow's was sort of too bad
Speaker 2: about Sartrose Wo wow wow ooh do do do do
Speaker 2: I think? It's a little too opy thing. This was
Speaker 2: the start. And then I'd written in angel voices.
Speaker 3: In that little blue notebook where the two school boys
Speaker 3: had scribbled their very first lyrics, there was evidence Lennon
Speaker 3: and McCartney envisioned themselves following in the footsteps of other
Speaker 3: songwriting giants.
Speaker 2: And at the top of the page, I've written another
Speaker 2: Lennon McCartney original.
Speaker 5: So you already had a sense, even though you were
Speaker 5: what sixteen, a little older perhaps that you would have
Speaker 5: a future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you? I mean, I think it was more
Speaker 2: a sort of wish than a sense. It was more,
Speaker 2: you know, this thing, if you visualize it, it might
Speaker 2: come true. And you know, when you think of Lena McCartney,
Speaker 2: was because we'd heard of Gilbert Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein,
Speaker 2: Elena McCarney. It's good, there's two of us, and we
Speaker 2: could we can make up one of those type names
Speaker 2: liber and Stoller, Coffin and King. But these were magic
Speaker 2: names to us. We didn't realize Coffin and King was
Speaker 2: Carol King.
Speaker 5: I didn't realize it was a girl, and an amazingly
Speaker 5: young woman.
Speaker 2: I was very young, yes, yeah, but you know it
Speaker 2: was thrilling to know that there were these people out
Speaker 2: there and this is what we wanted to be and
Speaker 2: love me do game around that period, One after nine
Speaker 2: or nine robbed me doing one after nine or nine
Speaker 2: actually got published and actually got recorded. My baby did
Speaker 2: another one half the nine or nine.
Speaker 1: I didn't move about it.
Speaker 2: The others didn't get recorded. And the school exercise book.
Speaker 2: I found it probably about ten fifteen years ago, put
Speaker 2: it in my bookcase and I've since lost it. I
Speaker 2: don't know where it is. I think it might show
Speaker 2: up somewhere, but it's the first ever Lenna McCartney manuscript. Anyway. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: oh dear is right, but you know you have to
Speaker 2: let these things go right.
Speaker 4: Maybe Another duo which had a profound influence on young
Speaker 4: Lennon and McCartney was the Everly Brothers.
Speaker 2: There are certain people that you can credit for pretty
Speaker 2: much everything we did, because I think that's I think
Speaker 2: that's true of everyone. I think everyone's got a hero
Speaker 2: that forms them like this. Oh did I exist a
Speaker 2: little like so? As John and I were two male
Speaker 2: vocalists who sang in harmony, our biggest influence was the
Speaker 2: Evely Brothers, who we loved adored to this day. I
Speaker 2: just think they the greatest, And it was different. You'd
Speaker 2: have barbershop quartets. You'd heard the Beverly Sisters, the Three Girls,
Speaker 2: you'd heard all that, but just two guys, good lucking guys.
Speaker 2: This is good.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're not albu.
Speaker 2: So. Yeah. We loved them and idolized them and wanted
Speaker 2: to be like them, like.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like when people later would see the Beatles on
Speaker 2: The Ed Sullivan Show and.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen like Live from New York, The Sullivan Joe.
Speaker 2: I mean trillion people who say that I knew that's
Speaker 2: what I wanted to be.
Speaker 6: Last on our show in New York, the Beatles played
Speaker 6: to the greatest TV audience it's ever been assembled in
Speaker 6: the history of American TV.
Speaker 2: When I saw you foreheaded monster on the Telly and
Speaker 2: you I've got to be part of this. Our current
Speaker 2: manager of Beatles Apple Records, says that Bruce Springsteen says
Speaker 2: that David Lehnerman says that they all formed on that night,
Speaker 2: formed this this future for themselves, and there we were
Speaker 2: in Liverpool form in this future and the same kind
Speaker 2: of deal.
Speaker 3: The day when you say goodbye and McCartney were working
Speaker 3: in the wake of all these great songwriting dues who
Speaker 3: wrote songs for others to sing, and singers like the
Speaker 3: Everly Brothers who sang other people's songs. But there were
Speaker 3: also people like Buddy Holly who could do it all.
Speaker 2: You know, you know me, baby, dude, you tell me
Speaker 2: baby that songday.
Speaker 6: You will loudly bad what you say goodbye.
Speaker 2: Buddy Holly to us was amazing for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2: He sang and played guitar. Elvis just sang and Scotty
Speaker 2: Moore played guitar. He normally played guitar, he played the solos. Normally,
Speaker 2: if you played guitar, there was another guy in the
Speaker 2: group was a lead guitar played the sols. But Buddy
Speaker 2: sang played the guitar and played the sols. He also
Speaker 2: wrote the stuff. So this was like all inclusive, one
Speaker 2: man band, and we really thought that was great. So
Speaker 2: this is what we have to do.
Speaker 3: Buddy Holly inspired the youngsters to explore their full musical potential,
Speaker 3: and he also helped John Lennon overcome his embarrassment about
Speaker 3: wearing glasses.
Speaker 2: He also wore these big horn room glasses, as did
Speaker 2: John and ifever there would be a girl coming up.
Speaker 2: John with witness glasses off and put them in his
Speaker 2: pocket and squint as she went by, and I see
Speaker 2: you look pretty good. The glasses are good. But one
Speaker 2: buddy came along, the glasses stayed on. It was like
Speaker 2: Harry Potter with all the kids.
Speaker 3: Like Buddy Holly had more than just the musical chops
Speaker 3: and the suave image that John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Speaker 3: covet it for themselves. The name of his group, Buddy
Speaker 3: Holly and the Crickets, had a certain entomological ring to it.
Speaker 2: The name the Crickets. You know, we wanted something with
Speaker 2: a dual meaning, and it turned out they didn't know
Speaker 2: how the dual meaning the crickets. They didn't know about
Speaker 2: the game cricket. Oh, I say, And they just thought
Speaker 2: it was grasshoppers, right, So we said to them. Ice
Speaker 2: met them years later, fantastic man, the Beatles, We loved crickets,
Speaker 2: chopy little things and the great game of cricket. A
Speaker 2: brilliant name for a group. And they went, you know,
Speaker 2: oh no, we just heard a grasshopper in the studio wall.
Speaker 5: You know, did you do you remember setting around thinking
Speaker 5: the buddy Holly and the Crickets. The Beatles will be
Speaker 5: a great name for us.
Speaker 2: My memory of it was that we were striving to
Speaker 2: find something with a dual meaning because of the Crickets.
Speaker 2: This is the idea. Now the origin of it is
Speaker 2: clouded in mystery.
Speaker 3: You know, I missed you.
Speaker 2: It was just a club split up. I missed you.
Speaker 2: Because there are all sorts of theories about this, says
Speaker 2: The Wild Ones with Marlon Brando, and at one point
Speaker 2: Lee Marvin says, he Johnny, Johnny or Johnny. I think
Speaker 2: he's cool.
Speaker 6: Come on, Johnny, we all missed you.
Speaker 2: Miss him. Yeah, Johnny, we love you, you know, coming back
Speaker 2: to the gang or something like that. Johnny, we love you.
Speaker 2: The Beatles love you.
Speaker 6: Miss Yeah, Beatles mischief all the Beatles, mister.
Speaker 2: It turns out the Malls, the girls in the Motorcycle
Speaker 2: Gang were called Beatles, says The Beatles love you, Johnny
Speaker 2: for all times. And I know John and Stuart his
Speaker 2: art school friends, Stuart Suckliffe loved that film as we
Speaker 2: all did. I think they had seen it. I think
Speaker 2: we just loved it and hadn't seen it anyway. So
Speaker 2: that's one of the.
Speaker 3: Theories today it's easy to forget how the creation of
Speaker 3: the Beatles required thousands of small choices. Songs which are
Speaker 3: now canonized were once simple phrases. Two boys having fun
Speaker 3: when no parents were home, one of them with a
Speaker 3: notebook in hand, the other playing a harmonica.
Speaker 2: At one of those writing sessions, twenty fourth in road,
Speaker 2: a little garden path past my dad's lavender hedge. You know,
Speaker 2: we would write, let me do and John come up
Speaker 2: with this little harmonica roof. It's so simple. I mean
Speaker 2: you look at it here.
Speaker 5: Yes, there's nothing to it.
Speaker 2: It's a will have a wisp little song, lovely.
Speaker 3: So what do you think made it become such a
Speaker 3: potent part.
Speaker 2: I think our image and our energy as the four
Speaker 2: Beatles was what was potent. And it had a very
Speaker 2: fresh sound. That's the sort of thing that people noticed.
Speaker 2: And we had a very fresh image. Nobody looked like us.
Speaker 2: And we've been working at it a long time in Liverpool.
Speaker 2: Originally as really a bunch of rockers, you know, the
Speaker 2: cliffs and everything gone over to Hamburg as the rockers
Speaker 2: had got a little bit leatherified there, and then it
Speaker 2: moved from leather to suits at the request of Brian Epstein.
Speaker 3: Brian Epstein, an entrepreneurial young man from a family of
Speaker 3: successful retailers in Liverpool, had stumbled upon the Beatles at
Speaker 3: a nineteen sixty one lunchtime concert. He had no experience
Speaker 3: managing artists, but he did have lots of confidence, so
Speaker 3: in short order he signed the contract to manage the
Speaker 3: band and told them to get suited up.
Speaker 2: And so we all went over to Beno Dawn who
Speaker 2: was in the wirrald back and head a Taylor. We'd
Speaker 2: never been to a tailor really, you know, so certainly
Speaker 2: not on maps. We all went over and got suits.
Speaker 2: So we had this image. We had all the experience
Speaker 2: musical experience of Hamburg, of playing a lot your ten
Speaker 2: thousand hours, mister Gladwell's right, ten thousand hours. So when
Speaker 2: we kind of then came on the scene and was
Speaker 2: seen on television, we had a freshness, complete simplicity. Let
Speaker 2: me do It's got a slightly sort of bluozy thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not a blues but it's got a simplicity,
Speaker 2: like a little sort of down home on the porch
Speaker 2: with a couple of guitars on harmonica.
Speaker 3: At the heart of these simple lyrics is a familiar story,
Speaker 3: a young man yearning for a woman to love Salmack.
Speaker 2: It's a funny thing. You try and recreate that stuff now,
Speaker 2: and it's almost impossible. Why Because you were sixteen. That's
Speaker 2: why you were looking at the world, and the world
Speaker 2: was good and there was this marvelous rock and roll
Speaker 2: future unfolding itself, and you were about to become part
Speaker 2: of it. So your longings for a girl, which was
Speaker 2: impossible to achieve, you know, he had that little, perfect
Speaker 2: high school sweetheart, you know. So there was this great
Speaker 2: longing for your career is you didn't know what you
Speaker 2: were going to do, and it was a dread of
Speaker 2: all dreads. I was about to go to teacher's training college.
Speaker 2: I was trying to put that off forever. I did
Speaker 2: not want to go into that mold. So there was
Speaker 2: all these different kinds of longings. John and I's mothers
Speaker 2: had both died, which was this amazing bond between us.
Speaker 2: We both understood the anguish of that, and at that
Speaker 2: age it's largely unspoken. You just said, oh, your mother died, Yes,
Speaker 2: so did I. We knew I knew the circumstances of
Speaker 2: his mother, says he knew the circustance in mind, and
Speaker 2: we would talk about it a little bit, but being
Speaker 2: young boys, you didn't talk about it much. All this
Speaker 2: was rolled up into this package, this longing, and it's
Speaker 2: spilled out, which is the best way to write lovely love.
Speaker 3: Some of this longing for their mothers, for love. For
Speaker 3: artistry was fairly abstract, but they also had more concrete ambitions.
Speaker 3: They had met other songwriting teams who turned out hits
Speaker 3: and made good money.
Speaker 2: John and I looked at thought, the right we could
Speaker 2: do that? What a good idea. If we get hits,
Speaker 2: that will then get money and it may not buy
Speaker 2: us love, but it will buy us a car. I
Speaker 2: must admit, you know, we were young guys without any money,
Speaker 2: coming from Liverpool with dreams, and once we realized that
Speaker 2: to write a hit song would get you some money,
Speaker 2: it was very attractive, very attractive thought. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: just the money. It was then the joy of pulling
Speaker 2: our song out of a hat, being able to play
Speaker 2: it with our band, which needed songs, so we were
Speaker 2: sort of feeding the machine. Take one No.
Speaker 3: Later, when the Fab four removed from writing in the
Speaker 3: parlor room to writing in the studio, they learned to
Speaker 3: crank out hits at an impressive piece.
Speaker 2: Take four one. Our recording hours, Well what now classical
Speaker 2: people do? It's it's the norm for recording. You normally
Speaker 2: go in ten o'clock, you get yourself together, you start
Speaker 2: at ten thirty. You then will work three hours. You
Speaker 2: don't have it our right in. You work two thirty
Speaker 2: to five thirty, and that's it. And in those two
Speaker 2: periods of three hours, it was expected that we would
Speaker 2: be able to finish two songs. So so we did.
Speaker 2: And that's that was the output and the great the
Speaker 2: flow of just having to come up with two complete things.
Speaker 2: But the great thing about this was you were finished
Speaker 2: by five thirty.
Speaker 6: When a harmonica like the Beatles playing not a toy
Speaker 6: but a genuine huner marine band harmonica, just like those
Speaker 6: play by the Beatles.
Speaker 3: Maybe what allowed the Beatles to come together was the
Speaker 3: force of their belonging. Maybe it was the long studio days,
Speaker 3: the churning out of albums, the carefully crafted image. Whatever
Speaker 3: the case, they went from looking at other artists dreaming
Speaker 3: of becoming them, to being the artists others would dream
Speaker 3: of becoming.
Speaker 6: Way along with the with your own genuine owner Marine
Speaker 6: band harmonica from Klim.
Speaker 3: When what the Beatles would become was beyond what any
Speaker 3: of its members could have dreamt off when they were
Speaker 3: sixteen and playing harmonica in their living rooms.
Speaker 2: There were all sorts of things. As I say that
Speaker 2: you instinctively knew, don't try too hard, don't work too
Speaker 2: hard at reaching for it, because the more you reach,
Speaker 2: the more it will receive. Just kid on that you
Speaker 2: don't even want it right, something will happen where everyone
Speaker 2: else around us be worrying, no more other than I
Speaker 2: was going to oh my god, ah my god. We
Speaker 2: always related back to this accident we'd had on the
Speaker 2: motorway going from running up to Liverpool, where we'd skid
Speaker 2: it off in the snow down the bank with our
Speaker 2: van and at the bottom of the van were this,
Speaker 2: how the hell are we ever going to get home?
Speaker 2: It's snowing, we're freezing, and someone in the group, so
Speaker 2: something will happen, And it was like that became a mantra,
Speaker 2: and you know, as I say, it's actually a very
Speaker 2: good one. It's this, it's not reaching for it, it's
Speaker 2: letting it go. Love me, love me, love me? Do
Speaker 2: you know I love you?
Speaker 5: Ah me?
Speaker 1: Through sound Please.
Speaker 6: Love Me, Love.
Speaker 3: Love Me Doe from the beatles nineteen sixty three album
Speaker 3: Please Please Me. In the next episode, McCartney starts over
Speaker 3: with a ragtag band on the run.
Speaker 2: I just thought we would just start something that feels
Speaker 2: good and we'll build it up like the Beatles, did you.
Speaker 5: Sau.
Speaker 3: McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 3: NPL and Pushkin Industries.