Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul muldoon. Before we get to this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show, pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus.
We admired a singer at that time called Bruce Chanelle I think his name was, who had a song called hey Baby. Whether 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 harmonica. You know, instruments come in sort of vogues. I mean you think
of skiffle guitar was was like a harmonic. It's what everyone got for Christmas, is what everyone got, and that then spawned the sixties revolution and do it.
And I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest songwriter of our era and.
Will you look at me? I'm going on to it. I'm actually a performer.
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.
It was like going back to an old snapshot album looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
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 Too.
BA, love Me Do you Know? I Love you? Balways be true, so love Me Do.
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 insatiable 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 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 right about that time was going to the art
college next door my school. So we'd meet up at my house is now National Trust Establishment 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 each other stuff that we'd written already,
and then writing new stuff together. And this 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 the start.
Right now? You still have copies of those? Are there still copies of it?
You know? I do? I say, or did have an old school exercise book. It's a nice little blue book, the 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 bloom woon that I can see there's never been in history, because our love was just fun, kind of country masponicuticuney. And then too Bad about Sorrows was sort of too bad about Sarrose Waa waa 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.
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.
And at the top of the page, I'd written another Lennon McCartney original.
So you read you had a sense, even though you were what sixteen, a little older perhaps that you would have a future?
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, Rogers and Hamstein. If Lena McCartney as good as two of us, and we could, we can make it one of those type names. Liber and Stoller, Goffin and King, but these were magic names to us. We didn't realize Goffin and King was
Carol King. Didn't realize it was a girl.
And an amazingly young woman.
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 Love Me Doing One After nine or nine actually got published and actually got recorded.
An orney.
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 all. I don't know where it is. I think it might show up somewhere, but it's the first ever so Lenna McCartney manuscript. Anyway. Yeah, well, oh dear is right, but you know you have to let these things go.
Right, maybe do.
App Another duo which had a profound influence on young Lennon and McCartney was the Everly Brothers.
There are certain people that you can credit for pretty much everything he did, because I think that's I think that's true of everyone. I think everyone's got a hero that forms them. Yeah, like this, like.
Ah did I exist?
And 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're the greatest. And it was different. You'd hear 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.
Oh yeah, you gotta wheel.
So yeah, we loved them and idolized them and wanted to be like them. That Oh yeah. It's like when people later would see the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
But even ladies and gentlemen, you live from New York, the head Snovan Joe.
I mean trillion people who say that I knew that's what I wanted to be.
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.
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 Eleeman says that they all formed on that night, that formed this this future for themselves, and there we were in Liverpool form in this future and the same kind of deal the day when you think goodbye.
Lennon 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.
You know you love me baby, You tell me baby, that's someday.
You will be. The day when you think goodbye. 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 league guitar he played the sols. But Buddy sang and 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 Buddy Holly inspired the youngsters to explore their full musical potential, and he also helped John Lennon overcome his embarrassment about wearing glasses.
He also wore these big horn room glasses, and as did John. And if ever 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 pretty good the glasses. But when Buddy get them along, the glasses stayed. Or it was like Harry Potter with all the kids.
Like Buddy Holly had more than just the musical chops and the suave image that John Lennon and Paul McCartney covered it for themselves. The name of his group, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, had a certain entomological ring to it.
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. So we said to them. Ice met them years later, fantastic man, the Beatles. We loved cricket, chirpy little things and the Great Game of Cricket are a brilliant name for a group, and they went, you know, oh no, we just heard a grass upper in the studio wall.
You know, did you do you remember sitting around thinking, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Beatles will be a great name for us. Oh yeah.
My memory of it was that we were striving to find something with a dual meanings because of the Crickets. This is the idea. Now the actual origin of it is clouded in mystery.
You know, I missed you.
It was just a club split up.
I missed you. Because there are all sorts of theories about this. There's the Wild Ones with Marlon Brando and at one point Lee Marvin says he Johnny, Johnny or Johnny, I think he's cool.
Come on, Johnny, we all missed you.
Miss h Johnny, we love you, you know, coming back to the gang or something like that. Johnny, we love you. The Beatles love.
You, Beatles, mischief, the Beatles, mister.
It turns out the Malls, the girls in the motorcycle gang will Beatles. So the Beatles love you 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 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.
At one of those writing sessions twenty fourth in road, a little garden path past my dad's lif happened the 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 now here, there's nothing to it. It's a will have a wisp little song lovely.
So what do you think made it become such a potent part.
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.
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, and.
So we all went over to ben O Dawn, who was in the wirral back and head a Taylor. We'd never been to a Taylor really, you know, so certainly not on maps. We all went over and got suits, so we had this image. We had all the experienced musical experience of Hamburg of playing a lot your ten thousand hours, mister Gladwell's right, ten thousand hours. So 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 bluesy 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.
At the heart of these simple lyrics is a familiar story, a young man yearning for a woman to love.
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, nobody 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 and 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 guish of that, and
at that age it's largely unspoken. You just said, oh your mother, Yes, so did I. We knew I knew the circumstances of his mother, he knew the circus in mine, and we would talk about it a little bit, but being young boys, you didn't talk about it much. So all this was rolled up into this package, this longing, and its spilled out, which is the best way to write.
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.
John and I looked. I thought, they're 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.
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. The one half.
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 then have an hour break and 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.
Win a harmonica like the Beatles, playing not a toy but a genuine a marine band harmonica, just like those played by the Evil.
Maybe the Beatles to come together was the force of their benging. 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 way along.
With the Beatles with your own genuine honer marine band harmonica from KLi Am, when.
What the Beatles would become was beyond what any of its members could have dreamt of when they were sixteen and playing harmonica in their living rooms.
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 or more other than I
was gonna Oh my god, am I going go? 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 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. No me.
Love me?
Do you know?
I love you?
Ah way be through.
So please.
Love me, love me?
Yeah, love me, love.
Me, Love me. Doe from the Beatles nineteen sixty three album Please Please Meet. In the next episode, McCartney starts over with a ragtag band on the run.
I just thought it would just start something that feels good. I'm we will build it up like the Beatlestead.
McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries.