Speaker 1: Pushkin.
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 riff. 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 a harmonica. You know,
Speaker 2: instruments come in sort of vogues. I mean you think
Speaker 2: of skiffle. Guitar was like a harmmonic. It's what everyone
Speaker 2: got for Christmas, is what everyone got, and that then
Speaker 2: spawned the sixties revolutions.
Speaker 3: And Paul won't 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 my Martney, a life in lyrics, a master class,
Speaker 3: a memoir, and an improvised journey with one of the
Speaker 3: most iconic figures in popular music. In this episode, love
Speaker 3: Me Too, BA love Me?
Speaker 1: Do you Know? I Love you? Blways be true so lovely.
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, they 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 Establishment 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 each other
Speaker 2: stuff that we'd written already, and then writing new stuff together.
Speaker 2: And this'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 the.
Speaker 4: Start, right now? You still have copies of those?
Speaker 3: Are there still copies of it?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I do?
Speaker 2: I say, or did have an old school exercise book.
Speaker 2: It's a nice little blue book, hardback, and in that
Speaker 2: I wrote just fun, Just fun. They said that our
Speaker 2: love was just fun the day that our friendship begun.
Speaker 2: There's no blueboon that I can see. There's never been
Speaker 2: in history, because our love was just fun, kind of
Speaker 2: country pond. And then Too Bad about Sorrows was sort
Speaker 2: of too bad about Sartrouse. Wow, Wow wow?
Speaker 3: Ooh?
Speaker 2: Do do I think it's a little too opy thing?
Speaker 2: This was 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'd written another
Speaker 2: Lennon McCartney original.
Speaker 3: So you already had a sense, even though you were
Speaker 3: what sixteen, a little older perhaps that you would have
Speaker 3: 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, Rogers and Hanstein.
Speaker 2: Lena McCartney as good as two of us, and we
Speaker 2: can make it one of I was type names Lib
Speaker 2: and Star, Goffin and King, but these were magic names
Speaker 2: to us. We didn't realize Coffin King was Carol King.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it was a girl and.
Speaker 4: An amazingly 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.
Speaker 3: One Affter nine or nine.
Speaker 5: I didn't move.
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, Tome.
Speaker 2: I don't know where it is. I think it might
Speaker 2: show up somewhere, but it's the first ever so Lenna
Speaker 2: McCarney manuscript. Anyway. Yeah, well, oh dear is right, But
Speaker 2: you know you have to let these things go right,
Speaker 2: maybe down one on one after.
Speaker 3: Another. Duo which had a profound influence on young Lennon
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 5: Bell like this, Astia, How did I exist?
Speaker 1: Alista?
Speaker 2: So so as John and I were two male vocalists
Speaker 2: who sang in harmony. Our biggest influence was the Evely Brothers,
Speaker 2: who we loved adored to this day. I just think
Speaker 2: they the greatest, and it was different. You'd have barbershop quartets.
Speaker 2: You'd heard the Beverly Sisters, the Three girls. You'd heard
Speaker 2: all that, but just two guys, good lucking guys. This
Speaker 2: is good.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, you're got about.
Speaker 2: So yeah. We loved them and idolized them and wanted
Speaker 2: to be like them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like when people later would see the Beatles on
Speaker 2: the Ed Sullivan Show.
Speaker 1: But even ladies and gentlemen like Live from New York.
Speaker 2: Then, I mean trillion people who say that I knew
Speaker 2: that's what I wanted to be la.
Speaker 5: On our show in New York, the Beatles played to
Speaker 5: the greatest TV audience it's ever been assembled in the
Speaker 5: 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 1: When you say goodbye.
Speaker 3: Lennon and McCartney were working in the wake of all
Speaker 3: these great songwriting dues who wrote songs for others to sing,
Speaker 3: and singers like the Everly Brothers who sang other people's songs,
Speaker 3: but there were also people like Buddy Holly who could
Speaker 3: do it all.
Speaker 5: You know, you know me, baby dude, you tell me
Speaker 5: maybe that's soday.
Speaker 1: Well you real loudly bad? Would you sing?
Speaker 4: 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 no only played guitar, he played
Speaker 2: the solos. Normally, if you played guitar, there was another
Speaker 2: guy in the group was the lead guitar played the solos.
Speaker 2: But Buddy sang and played the guitar and played the solos.
Speaker 2: He also wrote the stuff, so this was like all inclusive,
Speaker 2: one man band, and we really thought that was great.
Speaker 2: So 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 John.
Speaker 2: And if ever 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 you look
Speaker 2: pretty good. The glasses but when Buddy get them along,
Speaker 2: the glasses stayed on. It was like Harry Potter with
Speaker 2: 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, they just thought it
Speaker 2: was grasshoppers. So we said to them. I met them
Speaker 2: years later, said, fantastic man, the Beatles. We loved crickets,
Speaker 2: chirpy 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 4: You know, did you do you remember setting around thinking
Speaker 4: Buddy Holly and the Crickets the Beatles will be a
Speaker 4: 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 actual origin of it
Speaker 2: is 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. Come on, Johnny, we all missed you. Miss Johnny.
Speaker 2: We love you, you know, coming back to the gang or
Speaker 2: something like that. Johnny, we love you. The Beatles love you, Beatles,
Speaker 2: Mister Beatles. Mister. It turns out the Malls, the girls
Speaker 2: in the Motorcycle Gang were called Beatles, says The Beatles.
Speaker 3: Love you, Johnny for all times.
Speaker 2: And I know John and Stuart his art school friends,
Speaker 2: Stuart Suckliffe loved that film, as we all did. I
Speaker 2: think they had seen it. I think we just loved
Speaker 2: it and hadn't seen it anyway, So that's one of the theories.
Speaker 3: Today it's easy to forget how the creation of the
Speaker 3: Beatles required thousands of small choices. Songs which are now
Speaker 3: canonized were once simple phrases. Two boys having fun when
Speaker 3: no parents were home. One of them with a notebook
Speaker 3: in hand, the other playing a harmonica.
Speaker 2: At one of those writing sessions, twenty fourth Inn Road,
Speaker 2: a little garden path past my dad's lavender hedge. You know,
Speaker 2: we would write, let me doing John come up with
Speaker 2: this little harmonica roof. It's so simple. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: there's nothing to it. It's a will have a wisp
Speaker 2: little song lovely.
Speaker 3: So what do you think made it become such a
Speaker 3: potent powerful.
Speaker 2: I think our image and our energy as the four Beatles,
Speaker 2: was what was potent. And it had a very fresh sound.
Speaker 2: That's the sort of thing that people noticed. And we
Speaker 2: had a very fresh image. Nobody looked like us. And
Speaker 2: we'd been working at it a long time in Liverpool,
Speaker 2: originally as really a bunch of rocers, 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: Yeah, 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 went over and got suits. So
Speaker 2: we had this image. We had all the experienced musical
Speaker 2: experience of Hamburg, of playing a lot your ten thousand hours,
Speaker 2: mister Gladwell's ten thousand hours. So when we kind of
Speaker 2: then came on the scene and was seen on television,
Speaker 2: we had a freshness, complete simplicity. Lot me do is
Speaker 2: it's got a slightly sort of bluesy thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not a blues but it's got a simplicity, like
Speaker 2: a little sort of down home on the porch with
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Love Salmon, Salma.
Speaker 2: It's a funny thing. You try and recreate that stuff
Speaker 2: now and it's almost impossible. Why because you were sixteen,
Speaker 2: That's why you were looking at the world, and the
Speaker 2: world was good, and there was this marvelous rock and
Speaker 2: roll future unfolding itself, and you were about to become
Speaker 2: part of it. So your longings for a girl which
Speaker 2: was impossible to achieve, you know, nobody had that little,
Speaker 2: perfect high school sweetheart, you know. So there was this
Speaker 2: great long for your career is you didn't know what
Speaker 2: you were going to do, and it was a dread
Speaker 2: of all dreads. I was about to go to teachers
Speaker 2: training college and I was trying to put that off forever.
Speaker 2: I did not want to go into that mold. So
Speaker 2: there was all these different kinds of longings. John and
Speaker 2: I's mothers had both died, which was this amazing bond
Speaker 2: between us. We both understood the anguish of that, and
Speaker 2: at that age it's largely unspoken. You just said, oh
Speaker 2: your mother, Yes, so didn't I. We knew. I knew
Speaker 2: the circumstances of his mother. He knew the circusance in mind,
Speaker 2: and we would talk about it a little bit, but
Speaker 2: being young boys, you didn't talk about it much. So
Speaker 2: all this was rolled up into this package, this longing,
Speaker 2: and it's spilled out, which is the best way to write.
Speaker 3: Me some of this longie for their mothers for love
Speaker 3: for artistry was fairly abstract, but they also had more
Speaker 3: concrete ambitions. They had met other songwriting teams who turned
Speaker 3: out hits 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: but very attractive, very attractive thought. And it wasn't just
Speaker 2: the money. It then the joy of pulling our song
Speaker 2: out of a hat, being able to play it with
Speaker 2: our band, which needed songs. So we were sort of
Speaker 2: feeding the machine.
Speaker 1: 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: Four one are recording hours? Well, what now classical people do?
Speaker 2: It's it's the norm for recording. You normally go in
Speaker 2: ten o'clock, you get yourself together, you start at ten thirty.
Speaker 2: You then will work three hours. You don't have an
Speaker 2: hour break, and you work two thirty to five thirty,
Speaker 2: and that's it. And in those two periods of three hours,
Speaker 2: it was expected that we would be able to finish
Speaker 2: two songs. So we did. And that was the output
Speaker 2: and the great the flow of just having to come
Speaker 2: up with two complete things. But the great thing about
Speaker 2: this was you were finished by five point thirty. When
Speaker 2: a harmonica like the Beatles playing not a toy but
Speaker 2: a Genuinehoner marine band harmonica, just like those play by
Speaker 2: 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 2: Play along with the Beatles with your own genuine Honer
Speaker 2: marine bend 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 there 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 thing. I
Speaker 2: was going to, Oh my god, am I going 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 go home?
Speaker 2: It's snowing, we're freezing, And someone in the group said
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.
Speaker 1: Love me, love me, Love me? Do you know I
Speaker 1: love you? Oh?
Speaker 2: Be true?
Speaker 5: So please love me.
Speaker 3: Love me Do 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
Speaker 3: Did McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production
Speaker 3: between iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries.