Love Me Do: McCartney A Life in Lyrics

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey there, it's justin Richmond. Sixty years ago this week, the Beatles touched down in the US for the very first time and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. That appearance blew the minds of just about everybody who was there to witness it. A lot of the musicians we talked to on this very show cited as a moment that they realized they were going to do music for the rest of their lives. Most recently we heard that from Mark Mothers bov Devo.00:00:43Speaker 2: So.00:00:43Speaker 1: To celebrate this momentous anniversary sixty years since the Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan, we're releasing the second season of McCartney A Life and Lyrics, another show that I worked on here at Pushkin Industries. I'm going to share the first episode from that season with you on Broken Record. It's about the song Love Me Do. Paul McCartney and Paul Muldoone sat down to discuss the origins of that song and also a bit about the origin of the Beatles, and also about that Ed Sullivan appearance. I hope you like the episode. If you do, subscribe to McCartney Life and Lyrics. We already have the second episode up on Band on the Run, and we'll be releasing more episodes a weekly through April. McCartney A life and Lyrics I hope you enjoy.00:01:26Speaker 2: We admired a singer at that time called Bruce Chanelle I think his name was, who had a song called Hey Baby where there was a harmonica roof. So we started doing Hey Baby. I sang it. John played the harmonica. I think that was one of the contributory factors for when we're going to write something that's a good idea. This harmonica thing's a good idea. John could play it well. We could write something that would feature you know, instruments come in sort of vogues. I mean you think of skiffle guitar was like a harmonics. What everyone got for Christmas is what everyone got, and that then spawned the sixties revolutions.00:02:39Speaker 3: I'm Paul will do and I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.00:02:47Speaker 2: And will you look at me, I'm going on to it. I'm actually a performer.00:02:52Speaker 3: That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours of our conversations.00:03:05Speaker 2: It was like going back to an old snapshot album looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.00:03:13Speaker 3: This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir, and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music. In this episode, love Me.00:03:29Speaker 4: Too, BA, love Me Do you Know?00:03:34Speaker 2: I Love you?00:03:36Speaker 1: Balways be true soly.00:03:43Speaker 2: Love Me Do.00:03:46Speaker 3: For a group like the Beatles to come into existence, you need quite a few planets to align, but you also need prodigious talent, clever strategy, and instiable drive. In this episode, we trace the origins of one of the earliest Beatles songs. These days it's difficult to remember a time before the Beatles, but back when Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote Love Me Doo, there were merely school boys trying to make a hit.00:04:22Speaker 2: In the afternoons, I sometimes had a rather kind of light class that I could get out of, and so I would say I had a dentist's appointment or something, and they didn't check too heavily, so I would be able to get on the bus go back home. And arrange to meet John, who ran about that time was going to the art college next door in my school, So we'd meet up at my house is now National Trust established twenty fourth in the road, and we would meet there because that was the most convenient place, and my mom and dad wouldn't be there, so we would go there and start just knocking around, showing it other stuff that we'd written already, and then writing new stuff together. And that's involved a couple of songs that have never been published or never been heard, songs like just Fun was one of them, and they were very rough little things, but you know it was.00:05:31Speaker 5: The start, right now? You still have copies of those? Are there still copies of it?00:05:35Speaker 2: You know? I do? I say, or did have an old school exercise book. It's a nice little blue book, a hard pack, and in that I wrote just fun, Just Fun. They said that our love was just fun the day that our friendship begun. There's no blue moon that I can see. There's never been in history, because our love was just fun, kind of country picnic. And then Too Bad about Sorrow's was sort of too bad about Sartrose Wo wow wow ooh do do do do I think? It's a little too opy thing. This was the start. And then I'd written in angel voices.00:06:24Speaker 3: In that little blue notebook where the two school boys had scribbled their very first lyrics, there was evidence Lennon and McCartney envisioned themselves following in the footsteps of other songwriting giants.00:06:40Speaker 2: And at the top of the page, I've written another Lennon McCartney original.00:06:45Speaker 5: So you already had a sense, even though you were what sixteen, a little older perhaps that you would have a future.00:06:54Speaker 2: Yeah, did you? I mean, I think it was more a sort of wish than a sense. It was more, you know, this thing, if you visualize it, it might come true. And you know, when you think of Lena McCartney, was because we'd heard of Gilbert Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Elena McCarney. It's good, there's two of us, and we could we can make up one of those type names liber and Stoller, Coffin and King. But these were magic names to us. We didn't realize Coffin and King was Carol King.00:07:25Speaker 5: I didn't realize it was a girl, and an amazingly young woman.00:07:29Speaker 2: I was very young, yes, yeah, but you know it was thrilling to know that there were these people out there and this is what we wanted to be and love me do game around that period, One after nine or nine robbed me doing one after nine or nine actually got published and actually got recorded. My baby did another one half the nine or nine.00:07:54Speaker 1: I didn't move about it.00:07:57Speaker 2: The others didn't get recorded. And the school exercise book. I found it probably about ten fifteen years ago, put it in my bookcase and I've since lost it. I don't know where it is. I think it might show up somewhere, but it's the first ever Lenna McCartney manuscript. Anyway. Yeah, well, oh dear is right, but you know you have to let these things go right.00:08:24Speaker 4: Maybe Another duo which had a profound influence on young Lennon and McCartney was the Everly Brothers.00:08:40Speaker 2: There are certain people that you can credit for pretty much everything we did, because I think that's I think that's true of everyone. I think everyone's got a hero that forms them like this. Oh did I exist a little like so? As John and I were two male vocalists who sang in harmony, our biggest influence was the Evely Brothers, who we loved adored to this day. I just think they the greatest, And it was different. You'd have barbershop quartets. You'd heard the Beverly Sisters, the Three Girls, you'd heard all that, but just two guys, good lucking guys. This is good.00:09:46Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're not albu.00:09:54Speaker 2: So. Yeah. We loved them and idolized them and wanted to be like them, like.00:10:03Speaker 6: Oh yeah.00:10:05Speaker 2: It's like when people later would see the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and.00:10:09Speaker 1: Gentlemen like Live from New York, The Sullivan Joe.00:10:17Speaker 2: I mean trillion people who say that I knew that's what I wanted to be.00:10:24Speaker 6: Last on our show in New York, the Beatles played to the greatest TV audience it's ever been assembled in the history of American TV.00:10:32Speaker 2: When I saw you foreheaded monster on the Telly and you I've got to be part of this. Our current manager of Beatles Apple Records, says that Bruce Springsteen says that David Lehnerman says that they all formed on that night, formed this this future for themselves, and there we were in Liverpool form in this future and the same kind of deal.00:11:06Speaker 3: The day when you say goodbye and McCartney were working in the wake of all these great songwriting dues who wrote songs for others to sing, and singers like the Everly Brothers who sang other people's songs. But there were also people like Buddy Holly who could do it all.00:11:28Speaker 2: You know, you know me, baby, dude, you tell me baby that songday.00:11:34Speaker 6: You will loudly bad what you say goodbye.00:11:39Speaker 2: Buddy Holly to us was amazing for a number of reasons. He sang and played guitar. Elvis just sang and Scotty Moore played guitar. He normally played guitar, he played the solos. Normally, if you played guitar, there was another guy in the group was a lead guitar played the sols. But Buddy sang played the guitar and played the sols. He also wrote the stuff. So this was like all inclusive, one man band, and we really thought that was great. So this is what we have to do.00:12:20Speaker 3: Buddy Holly inspired the youngsters to explore their full musical potential, and he also helped John Lennon overcome his embarrassment about wearing glasses.00:12:32Speaker 2: He also wore these big horn room glasses, as did John and ifever there would be a girl coming up. John with witness glasses off and put them in his pocket and squint as she went by, and I see you look pretty good. The glasses are good. But one buddy came along, the glasses stayed on. It was like Harry Potter with all the kids.00:12:54Speaker 3: Like Buddy Holly had more than just the musical chops and the suave image that John Lennon and Paul McCartney covet it for themselves. The name of his group, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, had a certain entomological ring to it.00:13:15Speaker 2: The name the Crickets. You know, we wanted something with a dual meaning, and it turned out they didn't know how the dual meaning the crickets. They didn't know about the game cricket. Oh, I say, And they just thought it was grasshoppers, right, So we said to them. Ice met them years later, fantastic man, the Beatles, We loved crickets, chopy little things and the great game of cricket. A brilliant name for a group. And they went, you know, oh no, we just heard a grasshopper in the studio wall.00:13:47Speaker 5: You know, did you do you remember setting around thinking the buddy Holly and the Crickets. The Beatles will be a great name for us.00:14:00Speaker 2: My memory of it was that we were striving to find something with a dual meaning because of the Crickets. This is the idea. Now the origin of it is clouded in mystery.00:14:14Speaker 3: You know, I missed you.00:14:16Speaker 2: It was just a club split up. I missed you. Because there are all sorts of theories about this, says The Wild Ones with Marlon Brando, and at one point Lee Marvin says, he Johnny, Johnny or Johnny. I think he's cool.00:14:28Speaker 6: Come on, Johnny, we all missed you.00:14:31Speaker 2: Miss him. Yeah, Johnny, we love you, you know, coming back to the gang or something like that. Johnny, we love you. The Beatles love you.00:14:37Speaker 6: Miss Yeah, Beatles mischief all the Beatles, mister.00:14:41Speaker 2: It turns out the Malls, the girls in the Motorcycle Gang were called Beatles, says The Beatles love you, Johnny for all times. And I know John and Stuart his art school friends, Stuart Suckliffe loved that film as we all did. I think they had seen it. I think we just loved it and hadn't seen it anyway. So that's one of the.00:15:05Speaker 3: Theories today it's easy to forget how the creation of the Beatles required thousands of small choices. Songs which are now canonized were once simple phrases. Two boys having fun when no parents were home, one of them with a notebook in hand, the other playing a harmonica.00:15:38Speaker 2: At one of those writing sessions, twenty fourth in road, a little garden path past my dad's lavender hedge. You know, we would write, let me do and John come up with this little harmonica roof. It's so simple. I mean you look at it here.00:15:55Speaker 5: Yes, there's nothing to it.00:15:57Speaker 2: It's a will have a wisp little song, lovely.00:16:07Speaker 3: So what do you think made it become such a potent part.00:16:15Speaker 2: I think our image and our energy as the four Beatles was what was potent. And it had a very fresh sound. That's the sort of thing that people noticed. And we had a very fresh image. Nobody looked like us. And we've been working at it a long time in Liverpool. Originally as really a bunch of rockers, you know, the cliffs and everything gone over to Hamburg as the rockers had got a little bit leatherified there, and then it moved from leather to suits at the request of Brian Epstein.00:16:55Speaker 3: Brian Epstein, an entrepreneurial young man from a family of successful retailers in Liverpool, had stumbled upon the Beatles at a nineteen sixty one lunchtime concert. He had no experience managing artists, but he did have lots of confidence, so in short order he signed the contract to manage the band and told them to get suited up.00:17:21Speaker 2: And so we all went over to Beno Dawn who was in the wirrald back and head a Taylor. We'd never been to a tailor really, you know, so certainly not on maps. We all went over and got suits. So we had this image. We had all the experience musical experience of Hamburg, of playing a lot your ten thousand hours, mister Gladwell's right, ten thousand hours. So when we kind of then came on the scene and was seen on television, we had a freshness, complete simplicity. Let me do It's got a slightly sort of bluozy thing. I mean, it's not a blues but it's got a simplicity, like a little sort of down home on the porch with a couple of guitars on harmonica.00:18:20Speaker 3: At the heart of these simple lyrics is a familiar story, a young man yearning for a woman to love Salmack.00:18:35Speaker 2: It's a funny thing. You try and recreate that stuff now, and it's almost impossible. Why Because you were sixteen. That's why you were looking at the world, and the world was good and there was this marvelous rock and roll future unfolding itself, and you were about to become part of it. So your longings for a girl, which was impossible to achieve, you know, he had that little, perfect high school sweetheart, you know. So there was this great longing for your career is you didn't know what you were going to do, and it was a dread of all dreads. I was about to go to teacher's training college. I was trying to put that off forever. I did not want to go into that mold. So there was all these different kinds of longings. John and I's mothers had both died, which was this amazing bond between us. We both understood the anguish of that, and at that age it's largely unspoken. You just said, oh, your mother died, Yes, so did I. We knew I knew the circumstances of his mother, says he knew the circustance in mind, and we would talk about it a little bit, but being young boys, you didn't talk about it much. All this was rolled up into this package, this longing, and it's spilled out, which is the best way to write lovely love.00:20:28Speaker 3: Some of this longing for their mothers, for love. For artistry was fairly abstract, but they also had more concrete ambitions. They had met other songwriting teams who turned out hits and made good money.00:20:45Speaker 2: John and I looked at thought, the right we could do that? What a good idea. If we get hits, that will then get money and it may not buy us love, but it will buy us a car. I must admit, you know, we were young guys without any money, coming from Liverpool with dreams, and once we realized that to write a hit song would get you some money, it was very attractive, very attractive thought. And it wasn't just the money. It was then the joy of pulling our song out of a hat, being able to play it with our band, which needed songs, so we were sort of feeding the machine. Take one No.00:21:32Speaker 3: Later, when the Fab four removed from writing in the parlor room to writing in the studio, they learned to crank out hits at an impressive piece.00:21:43Speaker 2: Take four one. Our recording hours, Well what now classical people do? It's it's the norm for recording. You normally go in ten o'clock, you get yourself together, you start at ten thirty. You then will work three hours. You don't have it our right in. You work two thirty to five thirty, and that's it. And in those two periods of three hours, it was expected that we would be able to finish two songs. So so we did. And that's that was the output and the great the flow of just having to come up with two complete things. But the great thing about this was you were finished by five thirty.00:22:37Speaker 6: When a harmonica like the Beatles playing not a toy but a genuine huner marine band harmonica, just like those play by the Beatles.00:22:45Speaker 3: Maybe what allowed the Beatles to come together was the force of their belonging. Maybe it was the long studio days, the churning out of albums, the carefully crafted image. Whatever the case, they went from looking at other artists dreaming of becoming them, to being the artists others would dream of becoming.00:23:08Speaker 6: Way along with the with your own genuine owner Marine band harmonica from Klim.00:23:16Speaker 3: When what the Beatles would become was beyond what any of its members could have dreamt off when they were sixteen and playing harmonica in their living rooms.00:23:29Speaker 2: There were all sorts of things. As I say that you instinctively knew, don't try too hard, don't work too hard at reaching for it, because the more you reach, the more it will receive. Just kid on that you don't even want it right, something will happen where everyone else around us be worrying, no more other than I was going to oh my god, ah my god. We always related back to this accident we'd had on the motorway going from running up to Liverpool, where we'd skid it off in the snow down the bank with our van and at the bottom of the van were this, how the hell are we ever going to get home? It's snowing, we're freezing, and someone in the group, so something will happen, And it was like that became a mantra, and you know, as I say, it's actually a very good one. It's this, it's not reaching for it, it's letting it go. Love me, love me, love me? Do you know I love you?00:25:06Speaker 5: Ah me?00:25:08Speaker 1: Through sound Please.00:25:13Speaker 6: Love Me, Love.00:25:27Speaker 3: Love Me Doe from the beatles nineteen sixty three album Please Please Me. In the next episode, McCartney starts over with a ragtag band on the run.00:25:42Speaker 2: I just thought we would just start something that feels good and we'll build it up like the Beatles, did you.00:25:52Speaker 5: Sau.00:25:56Speaker 3: McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries.