Best of the Beatles (15 page)

‘Crying, Waiting, Hoping’

(Buddy Holly)

The British singer-songwriter Harvey Andrews says, “All the great songwriters of my generation came from Buddy Holly. When rock ’n’ roll started, there was something about
Holly that got to us. He was the first singer-songwriter, although we didn’t know it at the time. We don’t go back to Little Richard, we don’t go back to Fats Domino, and we don’t go back to Elvis, though we liked all of them. Buddy Holly was the one that the young songwriters could relate to.”

The Quarry Men recorded ‘That’ll Be The Day’ at their first recording session, the Beatles recorded ‘Words of Love’ on
The Beatles For Sale
album and Paul McCartney liked Holly’s songs so much that he bought the catalogue.

Shortly before his fatal tour, Buddy Holly recorded six new songs in his New York apartment – ‘Crying Waiting Hoping’, ‘Learning The Game’, ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’, ‘That Makes it Tough’, ‘That’s What They Say’ and ‘What To Do’. They have been released with overdubbed instruments but the unadorned tapes remain the best, largely because of the intimate nature of the songs.

George Harrison sang ‘Crying Waiting Hoping’ with vocal back-up from John and Paul, and it is one of the most successful of the Decca tracks.

‘Hello Little Girl’

(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)

John Lennon wrote ‘Hello Little Girl’ around 1958, and it was one of the first original compositions that the Beatles included in their performances. They had tired of the song by the time they recorded for Parlophone, and Brian Epstein offered it to his other signings. Gerry Marsden turned it down as he preferred to be seen as independent from the Beatles, although his run-through is included
on Gerry and the Pacemakers – The Best of the EMI Years
(1992). The Fourmost had no such reservations and took the song into the Top 10 in 1963. I once asked Tony Barrow why Gerry Marsden hadn’t been invited to the Civic Reception for the
Beatles in Liverpool in July 1964 and he responded, “Do you really think Gerry would have wanted to be there?”

‘Like Dreamers Do’

(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)

The influence of ‘Besame Mucho’ can be heard in this early Paul McCartney composition. Again, it was one of the first original compositions to be included in Beatles’ performances. It’s a naïve song – ‘I’ve waited for your kiss, waited for your bliss’ – is banal. Nevertheless, the song was passed to the Applejacks who took it into the Top 20 in 1963. As luck would have it, the Applejacks recorded for Decca and were produced by Mike Smith.

‘Love of the Loved’

(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)

‘Love of the Loved’ is another Paul McCartney composition and one he considered passing to Beryl Marsden. Epstein insisted on giving it to his protégé, Cilla Black, and it was her first single. Says Cilla, “Paul McCartney wrote it and I’d heard the Beatles do it many times in the Cavern. I wanted to do a group arrangement and I was ever so disappointed when I got to the studio and there was brass and everything. I thought it was very jazzy and I didn’t think it would be a hit. I preferred the B-side, which Bobby (Willis, her future husband) wrote, ‘Shy of Love’. ‘Love of the Loved’ made the NME Top 30 in October 1963.

‘Memphis Tennessee’

(Chuck Berry)

In
Chuck Berry: The Autobiography
(Faber and Faber, 1987), the rock ’n’ roller explains that he developed ‘Memphis Tennessee’ from a line in a Muddy Waters blues where he was talking to a long distance operator. He writes, “My
wife had relatives there but, other than a couple of concerts there, I never had any basis for choosing Memphis as the location for the story.”

The song about Chuck Berry trying to establish contact with his 6-year-old daughter was released in 1959. It was not a UK hit – indeed, Chuck Berry had only one Top 20 hit prior to 1962 – but it was recorded by the Beatles with John Lennon’s vocal. The British beat boom sparked an interest in Chuck Berry’s work and he had a Top 10 hit with ‘Memphis Tennessee’ in late 1963. At the time, he was then in prison for corrupting a minor.

‘Money (That’s What I Want)’

(Berry Gordy Jr/Janie Bradford)

At first, Berry Gordy Jr, the founder of Tamla Motown, had success as a songwriter, writing ‘Reet Petite’ for Jackie Wilson and ‘You Got What It Takes’ (Marv Johnson). Gordy is quoted in
Motown: The History
(Guinness, 1988) as saying, “When people asked me what I did for a living, I would say, ‘I write songs.’ They would have sons and daughters becoming doctors and lawyers, and my mother and father were embarrassed. Even though I had many hits, I didn’t have any money. I came from a business family – my mother and father always talked about the bottom line, and the bottom line is profit.”

‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ was recorded by Barrett Strong for Gordy’s new Anna label in 1959 and made the US Top 30. Although it did not chart here it became a staple song for beat groups. The Beatles, the Searchers, the Undertakers and Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes recorded Liverpool versions and other covers came from Bern Elliott and the Fenmen and the Rolling Stones, who both recorded for Decca. Elliott made the UK Top 20 around the time that George Harrison, the most money
conscious Beatle, wrote a companion song in ‘Taxman.’

The balance on the Decca audition tape puts Pete Best’s drums in the background, but it is easy to imagine how they would be thundering out in the Cavern. The various versions enable us to hear the drumming techniques of Pete Best, Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts on the same song. Garry Tamlyn: “There’s a similarity in drumbeat among them all. At the beginning of the verse, we have emphasis on either tom-toms or snare drum in quaver patterns, but by the time you hit the chorus section, we have a standard rock beat. There are some differences in rhythm, Pete Best was performing the typical late 1950s, early rock umpapapa, and in the beginning of the verse, he was using tom-toms in semi-quaver rhythm – it is a bit like Jerry Allison’s drumming in Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’. Ringo didn’t adopt that semi-quaver tom-tom rhythm, he was playing quaver rhythms on a snare drum, maybe with some tom-tom activity. Charlie Watts employed a standard rock beat, backbeat on beats two and four, even quavers, but he did have some tom-tom activity in the verse section. Very much like Ringo Starr and all of them are very good and competent”

‘Searchin’’

(Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller)

In 1957 the Coasters recorded ‘Searchin’’ in 10 minutes toward the end of a session. Their producers and songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, discuss the song in the CD booklet for
50 Coastin’ Classics
(Rhino 1992). Stoller says, “I had worked out an old-timey piano lick that struck me as being kind of fun, and it worked.” Leiber adds, “Everybody was together. It was one of those moments that rarely happen and it turned out to be their biggest hit.” Although ‘Searchin’’ made Number 3 in the
US, it was only in the UK Top 30 for one week. The B-side was another rock classic and Beatles’ favourite, ‘Young Blood’.

The Beatles were performing this tribute to a fictional detective as early as 1958, with Paul McCartney on lead vocals. The Manchester group, the Hollies, were strongly influenced by the Beatles and their first two hits were Coasters’ songs – ‘(Ain’t That) Just Like Me’ and ‘Searchin’’.

In 1982 Paul McCartney chose the Coasters’ ‘Searchin’’ as one of his Desert Island discs.

‘September in the Rain’

(Al Dubin/Harry Warren)

Harry Warren was an award-winning songwriter who once told the equally impressive Harold Arlen, “You walk two Oscars behind me”. Many of his best-known songs were written in Hollywood with the lyricist Al Dubin and include ‘I’ll String Along With You’, ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ and ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’. ‘September in the Rain’ was written for the 1937 film musical
Melody For Two
. When the tempestuous jazz singer Dinah Washington revived the song in 1961, it made the UK Top 50, and was a success at the time of the Beatles’ recording.

It is mooted that the Beatles held themselves in check at the Decca audition and ‘September in the Rain’ is a good example. As the song draws to a conclusion, you expect Paul McCartney to go for a big ending but he decides otherwise and the final notes are ragged.

‘The Sheik of Araby’

(Harry B. Smith/Francis Wheeler/Ted Snyder)

In 1921, Rudolph Valentino starred in
The Sheik
and a ragtime number was written in his honour, ‘The Sheik of Araby’. This, in turn, was used to accompany his silent
films. It was featured in a 1940 film musical,
Tin Pan Alley
.

Many regard the Beatles’ treatment of ‘The Sheik of Araby’ with George Harrison’s lead vocal as their worst performance and it was singled out by critics hostile to the
Anthology
concept. Although hard to defend it is not without interest. To me, it sounds like an attempt to emulate Joe Brown performing pub favourites like ‘Darktown Strutters Ball’. Joe Brown did include ‘The Sheik of Araby’ in his stage act and on his 1963 live album, but his version is more relaxed.

Pete Best says, ‘The Sheik of Araby’ was a very popular number and we nearly did it on the BBC shows because of the demand. George loved those kind of numbers and we got it from Joe Brown and the Bruvvers. We rocked it up a bit.”

‘Sure To Fall’

(Carl Perkins/Bill Cantrell/Quinton Claunch)

The rockabilly singer Carl Perkins, when asked what he thought of the Beatles performing his songs ‘Matchbox’, ‘Honey Don’t’, and ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby’, replied, “When I look at the Beatles, I see great big dollar signs.” He maintained a long friendship with each Beatle and his 1996 album,
Go Cat Go!
included duets with Paul, George and Ringo and, through modern recording technology, John.

Several Merseyside guitarists (Billy Hatton of the Fourmost, Kingsize Taylor) owned Carl Perkins’ 1959
Dance Album
and one track was the slow country song, ‘Sure to Fall’. The lead vocal is taken by Carl’s brother, Jay, with Carl singing harmony and playing a very distinctive guitar solo. The Beatles’ version is livelier and as close to country harmonies as they could get.

‘Take Good Care of My Baby’

(Gerry Goffin/Carole King)

Diana Mothershaw, who worked at Rushworth’s, remembers Paul McCartney coming into the store regularly in 1962: “He loved Carole King’s ‘It Might As Well Rain Until September’ and he would go on about Goffin and King. He and John wanted to be songwriters like that.” The 1997 film
Grace of My Heart
presented a thinly disguised version of the Goffin/King story and showed how Goffin always wanted to write something more substantial than teenage pop songs. But, as Bobby Vee says, “Those Brill Building songs have endured. We used to think of them as simple songs but they are
profoundly
simple.”

‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ was a transatlantic Number 1 for Bobby Vee in 1961. He remembers, “The first song of theirs that I recorded was ‘How Many Tears’ and they flew to Los Angeles to be at the session. During one of the breaks, Carole sat down at the piano and sang ‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ and it was like, Wow, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dion had already done a version of it, but my producer Snuffy Garrett had asked her to write an intro and she had come to California to present it in its finished form.”

The Beatles, with George on lead vocal, recorded the song with the intro. Pete Best: “George tried a couple of Bobby Vee numbers, and he, more than the others, thought we should do one or two from the Top 20.”

‘Three Cool Cats’

(Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller)

‘Three Cool Cats’ was the B-side of the Coasters’ transatlantic hit ‘Charlie Brown’ from 1959. In the CD booklet for
50 Coastin’ Classics
(Rhino, 1992), Jerry Leiber says, “We tried to make a kind of Afro-Cuban sound that
Mike used to dig a lot in LA in the early 1950s – but fitting into a Coasters-type format with a funny setting and all of that.”

The song had been performed memorably on ITV’s
Oh Boy!
by Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and Dickie Pride. An intriguing feature of the Beatles’ good-humoured version is their cod-Indian accent on one line, which would not be PC today. Mike Smith: “They did black R&B songs like ‘Three Cool Cats’ and it wasn’t very good. They were overawed by the situation and their personalities didn’t come across.”

‘Till There Was You’

(Meredith Willson)

Fifteen songs were taped at the Decca auditions and only two were subsequently recorded and released by Parlophone. One, inevitably, was ‘Money’, but the other, quite surprisingly, was the show song ‘Till There Was You’.

The Music Man
was a 1957 musical about a conman who persuades small town locals to buy band instruments and uniforms but, after falling in love with the librarian, he settles down and becomes the bandleader. Its best-known songs are ‘Seventy-six Trombones’ and ‘Till There Was You’, the latter being a Top 30 hit for Peggy Lee in 1961. Paul McCartney was the Beatle most enamoured by musical theatre and film, although, strange to report, he has yet to write a musical himself. He did, however, write and produce a song, ‘Let’s Love’ for Peggy Lee in 1974.

Paul McCartney sounds unsteady and the Beatles play uncertain notes, but this was a sophisticated song being recorded on a one-take audition. George Martin reworked the song with acoustic guitars and put Ringo on bongos, but the
Anthology
version features Ringo on drums. I asked Garry Tamlyn to compare all three: “There’s very little
drum activity from Pete Best, just even quavers on the
hi-hat
. There are some tempo fluctuations, he pushes the beat a little bit and then pulls it back and so he gets a little out of ensemble with the rest of the band, but he had no
tom-tom
or snare drum activity, like Ringo Starr’s version. It sounds like Ringo was implementing the same beat as he performed on his bongo-drum recording, and that is very good drumming, quite creative, with lots of responses to the phrasing, and very accurate too.”