Little child, won’t you dance with me?
I’m so sad and lonely,
Baby take a chance with me.
If you want someone
To make you feel so fine,
Then we’ll have some fun
When you’re mine, all mine,
So come, come on, come on.
When you’re by my side,
You’re the only one,
Don’t you run and hide,
Just come on, come on,
So come on, come on, come on.
Little child, little child,
Little child, won’t you dance with me?
I’m so sad and lonely,
Baby take a chance with me.
Hold Me Tight
This number was influenced by the Shirelles, an all-girl group from New Jersey who had several hits in the early sixties. On their early albums the Beatles did cover versions of a few Shirelles songs, including ‘Baby It’s You’. Once the Beatles had stormed the USA the following year, launching an ‘invasion’ of British groups, the Shirelles were one of the many American groups who fell from favour and went into decline.
The song is written and sung by Paul, who does his best with a few oooh-oooh falsettos but then seems to lose interest and the song–words and music–runs out of steam. It was written in the Forthlin Road days and when asked years later, Paul couldn’t remember much about it, dismissing it as a ‘work’ song.
The manuscript is in Paul’s hand and is an early version–written in a notebook by the look of it–with a couple of drawings, one of which is a face (could it be John?). There are several crossings outs and changes. The final version was longer, possibly because after he had played it to John they had gone on to do more work on it together. But not to much effect.
‘Hold Me Tight’, from the LP With The Beatles, an early version in Paul’s hand. With a drawing by him of John–possibly.
Hold me tight,
Tell me I’m the only one,
And then I might,
Never be the lonely one.
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night,
It’s you, you you you–oo-oo–oo-oo.
Hold me tight,
Let me go on loving you,
To-night to-night,
Making love to only you,
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night,
It’s you, you you you–oo-oo–oo-oo.
You don’t know what it means to hold you tight,
Being here alone tonight with you,
It feels so right now, feels so right now.
Hold me tight,
Let me go on loving you,
To-night, to-night,
Making love to only you,
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night,
It’s you, you you you–oo-oo–oo-oo
You oo-oo
I Wanna Be Your Man
Paul wrote this with Ringo in mind. In most of their stage shows, there had been a Ringo number, a song chosen for him which was within his limited vocal range. But the song was never finished, barely progressing beyond the title and chorus.
Then came a chance encounter in a London street with Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones. Oldham, who had once done some publicity work for the Beatles, told them that the Stones were looking for a new song. At that stage they had released only one record, a cover version of a Chuck Berry number. The Beatles had been to see them play live in a couple of London clubs and had become friendly with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
John and Paul went to where the Stones were rehearsing and played what they had written so far, telling the Stones that if they liked it, they would finish it off for them, no bother. Which they did, there and then, showing off their expertise–much to the admiration of Jagger and Richards. The Stones were roughly a year behind the Beatles in their development, but this song got them into the Top Twenty, helping to make them a major act–and of course a major rival to the Beatles from then on. It also encouraged Jagger and Richards to write and record their own songs, having seen how easy John and Paul had made it look.
When the Beatles returned to working on their own new LP, they got Ringo to sing it. The Stones might have been impressed–or desperate–enough to record the song, but it was never really finished and never gets anywhere. The title line is repeated thirteen times–which suggests an element of desperation. Later, John admitted that it wasn’t one of their best: ‘We weren’t going to give them [the Stones] anything great, right?’
Not A Second Time
This one is wholly a John song–and typical of him in that it has him crying and hurt because some girl has let him down, and he won’t be giving her a second time. But something surprising happened: the tune was picked up by William Mann, music critic of The Times, and subjected to the first intellectual analysis of any Beatles song. On 23 December 1963, just a month after With the Beatles was released, Mann extolled ‘the Aeolian cadence at the end of “Not a Second Time” ’ raving about the Beatles’ ability to ‘think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes’.
It must have come as a shock to those parents who were still dismissing the Beatles as long-haired talentless Scousers. John too affected surprise. He was quoted in 1965 as saying that Mann ‘just used a whole lot of musical terminology and he’s a twit’. But by the seventies John was admitting rather proudly that Mann’s review had marked the start of intellectual analysis of their music–while the phrase ‘Aeolian cadence’ was picked up by newspaper columnists, none of whom had any idea what it meant, employing it as a form of shorthand to convey pretentiousness.
Listening to the tune again now, after all these decades, I still can’t see anything exceptional about it musically. John sings it well, with heart, but the tune is totally unmemorable. And so are the lyrics. Beatles fans are very fond of listing their top 100 faves, but this rarely makes it.
This Boy
One week after With the Beatles came out they produced another single–the B side of which was ‘This Boy’. It received little attention, compared with the A side. Featuring a lead vocal by John, the song was knocked out in a hotel room on tour. John dismissed it as having no content, ‘just a sound and a harmony’. They were trying to do a three-part harmony, aping the Everly Brothers. The lyrics are short, staccato, with no narrative; reading them now, it can be said that they reveal John’s struggle with a split personality. On the one hand there is This Boy, who is happy and loves you, on the other there is That Boy, who isn’t good for you.
Despite their success in the Mersey Beat poll in January 1962, there is still a problem spelling Paul’s surname.
I Want To Hold Your Hand
One of the attractions for Paul of staying at Jane’s was that there were musical instruments all over the house. And they came in handy one day in October 1963 when Paul and John were composing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, allowing them to try bits out on the piano and organ kept in the basement where they were working. For the most part though they were happiest carrying on the way they always had: side by side, playing their guitars.
‘I remember when we got to the chord that made the song,’ said John later. ‘ “Oh you-ooo… got that something”, Paul hit this chord and I turned to him and said, “That’s it–do it again!” In those days we used to write like that–playing into each other’s noses.’
They polished it up, quite quickly, and a day or so later, 17 October, went into Abbey Road Studios to record it. They exploded into it, loving the noise and their own excitement. They were helped by the fact that this was the first time they were able to use Abbey Road’s four-track recording system–which allowed mistakes to be erased and the best bits superimposed.
In that room at the Ashers’ they had already worked out the chords they were going to use, trying out some unusual changes and bridges–something not normally attempted in smooth-flowing pop songs. They also worked on a proper ending instead of the slow fade most pop records went out on.
The song has several internal crescendos, and descendos–if that is a proper word for going down the scales–as well as lots of their now familiar falsetto oohs. John, as the main singer, is at his most strident and aggressive, almost as shouty as in ‘Twist and Shout’.
The music, to teenage female ears, might have sounded sexually exciting, but the words are probably the least suggestive and most soppy and simplistic of all their songs to date. They don’t progress from the title, apart from telling us he will be happy if he holds her hand. He even says ‘please’.
Certainly Brian Epstein must have been pleased, as the lyrics promoted a clean, healthy-living image. Parents could hardly accuse them of being a corrupting influence if all they wanted was to hold a girl’s hand. Har har.
In real life, of course, in the dressing rooms and hotel rooms, they were already going a great deal further than that. Years later, John admitted he had been furious at the way Brian tidied and prettied up their image in the early days, maintaining that their dressing room on tour had resembled an orgy scene from Fellini’s Satyricon. Their image was bullshit, they were beasts and bastards–or so he alleged, but by that time he was over-compensating, determined to shock. He was rather jealous when the Rolling Stones hit their stride and started getting away with suggestive lyrics and outrageous antics, revelling in being seen as dangerous–the antithesis of those ‘nice’ Beatles.
You can of course argue that the lyrics were ironic, that he is not longing to hold a hand; the excitement and intensity of the vocals makes it clear he is longing for and expecting a great deal more–which of course many fans, however innocent, would have suspected.
And they were innocent, in the fifties and sixties, with no active, penetrative sex life for the vast majority of teenagers, whether in the UK or USA. It was pre-Pill, and no one wanted to get pregnant. Before going all the way you had to get married, or at least engaged. In those long-ago, naïve times, holding hands and kissing was as far as it went for most youngsters.
The song was an instant, astounding hit–and at long last, they had a number 1 in America. Until this point Capitol, their US record company, had not issued their records, so the scale of the success took everyone by surprise. When the news came through in January 1964 the band were in Paris, staying at the George V Hotel after their first appearance before a French audience (who had reacted fairly coolly). By the time they moved on to America the following month, to play The Ed Sullivan Show and their first US concert, they had become an overnight sensation.
The manuscript below (now in the British Library) was neatly written out for me by Paul in 1967–hence he has added 3/10, as if he is a teacher, marking it. In another version (see next page), also in Paul’s handwriting, the words are the same but the penmanship is shaky, especially on ‘think ‘and ‘to’. It also looks as if he is spelling ‘yeah’ as ‘yea’–as if he was thinking of using the biblical spelling.