Paul – lead
vocals, bass
John – harmony vocals, guitar
George – harmony vocals, guitar
Ringo – maracas
Andy White – drums
In all, the Beatles performed over 270 shows in various night-clubs during their five trips to Hamburg between 1960 and 1962. From August to November 1960 they played over 100 nights without a break at the Indra, Kaiserkeller and Top Ten Clubs. Throughout April, May and June 1961 they appeared at the Top Ten Club, playing for over five hours every night. In April and May 1962 they played 48 nights at the Star-Club (with just one night off), before returning to the UK for their EMI recording session on 6 June. The Beatles then returned to Hamburg and the Star-Club for a fortnight in November and again in December 1962, clocking up a grand total of over 800 hours on stage in that town. The experience of such a thorough, gruelling apprenticeship is hard to imagine – their living and working conditions being decidedly character-forming. Pete Best described his first impressions of meeting promoter Bruno Koschmider, owner of the Kaiserkeller, to Hunter Davies.
“We were taken round to this other club, the Indra, which was much smaller [than the Kaiserkeller]. It was 11.30 at night and there were just two people in the place. We were shown our dressing room, which turned out to be the gents’ toilet. We expected we’d be living in an hotel, but instead we were taken round to this cinema, the Bambi, where he showed us our sleeping quarters. It was like the Black Hole of Calcutta.”
The group stayed in two grubby eight-feet-by-six rooms, neither of which even had an electric light, for much of their stay in Hamburg. It was in these conditions that Paul managed to continue and develop his songwriting. In 1962, while in Hamburg or travelling to or from there, and possibly inspired by John’s daily letters to Cynthia (“Postman, postman don’t be slow, I’m in love with Cyn so go, man, go”), Paul came up with the wistful ‘P.S. I Love You’.
The inspiration for the style of the song is pretty clear. John told Hit Parader in 1972 that “it was meant to be a Shirelles kind of song”, and in his Playboy interviews in 1980, he describes it as Paul doing ‘Soldier Boy’, a hit the previous summer for the Shirelles (their second American number one, and their last big hit).
‘P.S. I Love You’ has a recording history very similar to that of ‘Love Me Do’. It too was taped during the first Abbey Road session on 6 June, but although the group may have practised it during the afternoon of their second visit, it was not recorded. The released version of the song was taped along with ‘Love Me Do’ on their third session at the studios, on 11 September. George Martin’s choice of stand-in drummer, Andy White, is therefore on both sides of the Beatles’ first single – on the later pressings at least – with a disappointed Ringo playing tambourine on ‘Love Me Do’, and maracas on ‘P.S. I Love You’.
But at least the 11 September session, convened to record an improved ‘Love Me Do’, ensured Lennon-McCartney songs on both sides of the debut single. Had the session not taken place, it’s likely that ‘How Do You Do It’ would have been the B-side to ‘Love Me Do’, as the original version of ‘P.S. I Love You’, recorded on 6 June, was presumably not up to scratch (although it has never been released). Certainly the two songs from that session that are available – ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Besame Mucho’, released on Anthology 1 – show the group to be somewhat ill-at-ease in the studio.
The repeated lyrics of ‘P.S. I Love You’ are simple and direct, and betray a poetic interest. Paul, used to singing the sweeter songs such as ‘A Taste Of Honey’, was not above using verbs such as “treasure”. The also song contains what was to become familiar as a typical Paul ad-lib – “(You know I want you to) remember…” – carefully timed and phrased to fit in perfectly with the rhythm. Like “Sgt Pepper’s (one and only) Lonely Hearts Club Band” it adds to the feel of the song without adding anything significant to the lyric. Anticipated by a brief “oh” after the first line, it is an embellishment for the sake of embellishment, breaking away from the confines of the melody to soar briefly above the backing vocals and instruments, and is gone as soon as it registers.
The arrangement complements the brisk style of the song and is necessarily clean and efficient. The Latin-style cross-stick rim knocks from Andy White pepper the song, and in the context of the Please Please Me LP, give it a unique personality. Paul plays his bass straight, as always keeping to the root and fifth. It would not be obvious to use a ballad style for a song that is a cross between ‘Please Mr Postman’ and ‘It Won’t Be Long’, but it is the natural choice for Paul.
Harmonically, the song is rather more interesting than its A-side, and gives an early indication of the ground-breaking progressions that are to come. The song starts interestingly enough with an eight-bar G–C#7–D (IV–VII7–I) prologue – the C#7 brilliantly placed to give the short phrase an unexpected richness. The verse also has a striking ending in its A–Bm (V–vi) movement. The four bars of the title contain the first of many surprises Paul was to produce – he gets back to D by way of A–Bb and briefly C (V–bVI–bVII–I). This unconventional sidling back to base is highlighted by John’s vocal harmony line.
This bVII–I movement will crop up again in a number of early Beatle compositions, but the fleeting, almost offhand way it is used here is quite intriguing, and prompts the question as to whether Paul already knew his own songwriting strength.
In an interview at the time, John mentioned that the third track recorded on 11 September nearly wound up as the B-side of their debut single. “When we came to the question of the flipside we intended using ‘Please Please Me’. George Martin thought our arrangement was fussy so we tried to make it simpler. We were getting very tired though, and we just couldn’t seem to get it right.” So the A-side of the Beatles’ first single became a toss-up between ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘P.S. I Love You’. In spite of the lyrical and harmonic elegance of ‘P.S. I Love You’ and its more interesting structure and arrangement, the right decision was probably made. ‘Love Me Do’, although simplistic and repetitive, is more characteristic of the group’s sound, and has the advantage of its catchy harmonica hook.
Things were different in America, of course, where either side of a single could make the charts in the 1960s, depending upon which song was requested at the point of sale. Occasionally both sides of a single would make the charts, such as the Beatles’ first Capitol single, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, the B-side of which, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ got to number 14 in the Billboard charts. Very occasionally, both sides would make the top ten, which is what happened to ‘P.S. I Love You’. It peaked at number ten on 6 June 1964, the week after its A-side, ‘Love Me Do’, had made it to number one – it was the first of five Beatle releases to achieve double-top ten success.
But, of course, this was all still a long way in the future. The group had yet to have their first UK number one …