Paul – lead
vocals, bass
John – acoustic guitar
George – lead guitar
Ringo – drums
The American Billboard Hot 100 listing for 4 April 1964 sums up the frenzy generated when Beatlemania swept across the Atlantic. It includes no less than twelve Beatles songs, and features a truly remarkable top five –
1. Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles (Capitol)
2. Twist And Shout – The Beatles (Tollie)
3. She Loves You – The Beatles (Swan)
4. I Want To Hold Your Hand – The Beatles (Capitol)
5. Please Please Me – The Beatles (Vee Jay)
31. I Saw Her Standing There – The Beatles (Capitol)
41. From Me To You – The Beatles (Vee Jay)
46. Do You Want To Know A Secret – The Beatles (Vee Jay)
58. All My Loving – The Beatles (Capitol/Canada)
65. You Can’t Do That – The Beatles (Capitol)
68. Roll Over Beethoven – The Beatles (Capitol/Canada)
79. Thank You Girl – The Beatles (Vee Jay)
The Beatles’ monopoly of the Billboard top five followed two weeks of the group occupying the top three spots, and one week of them comprising the top four. The following week, on 11 April, ‘There’s A Place’ and ‘Love Me Do’ (both Tollie, a subsidiary of Vee Jay) also entered the chart, the latter getting to number one.
Under the American system at that time, both sides of a single could chart, depending on the song requested at the point of sale. So, the above twelve songs were available on eight actual discs, the (US) Capitol and Vee Jay entries being double-sided hits – ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’/‘You Can’t Do That’, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’/‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘Please Please Me’/‘From Me To You’ and ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’/‘Thank You Girl’. ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ charted because a Chicago disc jockey got hold of a copy of a Canadian single, which created a demand for the song. (The American chart system of point-of-sale demand lasted almost as long as the Beatles themselves, finally changing in November 1969.) ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was the first single ever to simultaneously top the US and UK charts. In fact, for three straight weeks from the beginning of April, the group were number one on the album, singles and EP charts in the UK and the album and singles charts in the US. For two of these weeks, Beatles albums held the top two positions in the US with Meet The Beatles! and Introducing… The Beatles, and in Britain with With The Beatles and Please Please Me. By the end of 1964, the Beatles had had thirty records in the Billboard Hot 100, half of which made the top 20. It represented an unparalleled domination of the American record charts by any artist or group, and paved the way for a host of other British acts to take on the Americans on their own home turf.
The 1964 British Invasion of the American charts has become something of a cliché, but that makes it no less true – that year there were more British hits in the US than in all the post-war years combined. At the beginning of 1964, the Billboard chart featured one British artist in the Hot 100 – Cliff Richard’s ‘It’s All In The Game’ was at number 60. The year’s final chart included the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, Julie Rogers, Manfred Mann, the Searchers, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies and two songs by the Beatles, all in the top 20.
While the Beatles held the top five Billboard places, one particular Australian chart went one better –
1. I Saw Her Standing There
2. Love Me Do
3. Roll Over Beethoven
4. All My Loving (EP)
5. She Loves You
6. I Want To Hold Your Hand
Amazingly, none of the Australian top four appeared in the American top five, meaning nine different songs held the top chart positions in the two countries. Meanwhile, according to Billboard magazine, “in Canada, the Beatles hold the first nine chart positions”. The head of steam built up over the previous year, which had been regulated within the group’s home country, suddenly exploded around the world when America picked up on ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. In its wake, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ easily rode the ensuing tidal wave, rapidly sweeping its way around the globe. In America, the single went gold on the day it was released, having notched up an astonishing 2.1 million advance sales. The effect down under was particularly marked – the Beatles topped the Australian singles chart for 37 of the 41 weeks between 28 December 1963 and 3 October 1964.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ itself neatly captures the essence of the appeal of the Beatles’ music. Among the influences on the Beatles – skiffle, country, folk – the strongest was probably the rhythm and blues of Little Richard, early Elvis Presley and Atlantic/Stax records. ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ sums up the incorporation of the blues style into white Liverpool rock. The verse is straight 12-bar blues, a direct descendent of Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. The progression of sevenths of C–F–C–G–F–C (I–IV–I–V–IV–I), with consistently flattened sevenths and thirds (Bb, Eb) in the melody is text-book blues – it is the first original Beatles’ song to adhere strictly to the blues tradition. This classic blues construction is intercut with an eight-bar refrain Em–Am–C7–Em–Am–Dm7–G6 (iii–iv–I7–iii–vi–ii7–V).
The refrain introduces another technique common in popular music, but which Paul is using for the first time here – the constant downward move in fifths. Broadly, if we start at C and move down five “white” notes, we go through what is basically: C–F–B–E–A–D–G and back to C. There is something inherently satisfying about this cycle, as it always seems to be heading towards resolution. The refrain of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ ends with a run of the last five chords in this sequence – Em–Am–Dm7–G6–C (iii–iv–I7–iii–vi–ii7–V–I). Whole songs have been built around this sequence-of-fifths sequence – notoriously the disco classic ‘I Will Survive’ consists of nothing but a repetition of all seven chords, in sequence, again and again and again … and we know how compelling even the 12” version of that little number is. The sequence crops up from time to time in Paul’s writing, right up to the end of the Abbey Road medley: “Sleep pretty darling do not cry / And I will sing a lullaby”.
The combination of the blues harmonies and the abundance of minor chords in the refrain was most unusual in pop, and the incorporation of the blues tradition in their own brand of songwriting stamped the Beatles’ first entry in the annals of popular music.
As with ‘She Loves You’, George Martin suggested the song start and end with the first two lines of the chorus – “something that catches the ear immediately, a hook”.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was the first song recorded by the Beatles away from Abbey Road, and their only release not to be recorded in London, although to record the track away from home was probably not planned. While Brian Epstein was planning the Beatles’ visit to America, Electrola, the West German arm of EMI, had told him that the Beatles would only sell well in Germany if they recorded a song in German. They persuaded George Martin that the group should record German versions of ‘She Loves You’ and their latest single ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. Between 16 January and 4 February 1964, just prior to leaving for America, the Beatles were appearing at the Olympia Theatre, near l’Opéra in Paris. So, between shows, they went to the Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris to record ‘Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand’ and ‘Sie Liebt Dich’. This took rather less time than planned, because not only did they cancel a second session on 31 January, but they also recorded ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ in just four takes, one of which broke down when Paul muffed the lyrics (not that the lyrics of the first take, released on Anthology 1, are flawless). Back in London on 25 February, at their first Abbey Road session in over four months, band and manager listened to a playback of the recording and decided a little further work was needed. They all but completed the song with a lead guitar overdub by George and a vocal by Paul. An echo of the original guitar solo can be heard during the re-recorded passage, due to leakage into the microphones recording the rhythm track, which provides ghostly off-beat accompaniment.
The Paris studios were clearly a little more advanced than those at Abbey Road, at least in terms of non-classical recordings. As a result, these three songs were the first to be recorded using four-track tape facilities and therefore the stereo production of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is the most sophisticated to date – vocals centred; bass, drums and acoustic guitar left; electric guitar centre and right.
There is an intriguing footnote to the recording process. Abbey Road documentation that came to light in 1991 shows that a “drummer” was paid to work on ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ during a stereo mixing session on 10 March – just ten days before the single’s release. If this is true, it is unlikely to have been Ringo, as he was filming near Twickenham Film Studios on that day. And the drumming on the stereo version sounds the same as that of the mono, except that the mono mix, made two weeks earlier, has the drums higher in the mix, and the open hi-hat is more prominent. Maybe a musician was brought in but not used? Maybe a recording was made on that day, but then discarded since it was the original take 4, mixed three months later, that was used for the released stereo version? Geoff Emerick writes that there had apparently been a problem with the tape, and the hi-hat intermittently lacked treble, so it fell to engineer Norman Smith to overdub a few bars of hi-hat while Emerick carried out a reduction mix. But would Smith have received a Musicians’ Union fee for this? It seems unlikely. For further confusion, Helen Shapiro remembers visiting Studio Two during recording of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, and being there when “Ringo had to go down and put on extra cymbals tracks over the top – apparently this was something he did quite often”. Shapiro recorded her single ‘Look Over Your Shoulder’ at Abbey Road on 26 February 1964.
The blues origins of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ are more evident on the first run-through of the song, heard on Anthology 1, than on the released version. Apart from being pitched a semitone higher, take 1 is also rougher and far more bluesy, and has John and George contributing backing vocals, both under the introductory chorus extract and throughout the song – “oh, love me too … oh, give to you”. (The removal of these backing vocals for the released version means that ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is most unusual in that it has neither harmony nor backing vocals, although Paul’s lead is, of course, double-tracked. It is the first Beatles single to feature just one vocalist.) The guitar of the released version is leaner and more proficient, particularly with the duet in the solo – although that original guitar solo can be heard faintly in the background.
In spite of the report in the Beatles Book of April 1964 that “Paul and John finished writing their new hit in Paris just in time to play it over to George Martin when he flew across to see them”, the song is a more or less solo composition from Paul. At different times, John has claimed part and no credit for the song. Any influence John had is likely to have been limited to advice over the lyrics, particularly the rather more sophisticated “I may not have a lot to give, but what I’ve got I’ll give to you”. It is interesting to compare the words with ‘Drive My Car’, which also referred to diamond rings, and also boasted an ambiguous relationship between the singer and his lover. The brilliantly enigmatic “my friend”, previously used in ‘I’ll Get You’, the B-side of ‘She Loves You’ (where it merely provides a convenient rhyme for the original title of the song), gives the song mystery and depth.
The song is also an interesting contrast to ‘Money’, in that it seems to underline how far the Beatles had come in the past year. John’s version of ‘Money’ perfectly encapsulates the importance of money to those who need it. Money buys power and more importantly freedom. To the subjugated and oppressed, the dream of money is pervasive, and John sings it with the memories of Hamburg, of touring in a clapped out van, of playing his heart out for hours on end for little recompense still fresh in his mind. You believe that what money don’t get, he really can’t use. But move forward a few months, and Beatlemania begins to bring its rewards. While it never created the riches most people assumed it did, it did bring financial power and greater freedom of choice. So now, Paul says, you can have it. Money doesn’t buy you happiness, money can’t buy you love.
Being Paul’s baby, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ marked a return to Beatles singles that were not written jointly – ‘Love Me Do’ was Paul’s and ‘Please Please Me’ was John’s, but the next three were joint compositions. John seems to have been spurred on by the success of Paul’s latest song, because he was then responsible for the Beatles’ next five A-sides.
Although by the beginning of 1964, covers of Lennon-McCartney songs were becoming increasingly popular, they were invariably covered by artists close to the Beatles themselves – colleagues from the Epstein stable, such as Billy J Kramer and Cilla Black, or personal friends, such as the Rolling Stones. ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ broke new ground when, in the early spring, it was recorded at Abbey Road by Ella Fitzgerald. George Martin, who produced the session, is sceptical about her motives in recording the song, suggesting she jumped on the bandwagon because “a Beatles song was a commercial certainty”. But he admits that, to many people, it gave John and Paul an “almost royal seal of approval” as composers. It is interesting that she chose to record ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ of all songs, as it is, in its own way, the closest to her musical roots.
While the covers of Lennon-McCartney songs continued to spread for a while, the floodgates really opened when the Beatles released ‘Yesterday’. (It seems likely that Paul wrote ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and much of ‘Yesterday’ while the group was in Paris for that series of concerts in January 1964. This burst of creativity was apparently helped by the piano installed in their suite at the George V hotel.)
In the film A Hard Day’s Night, the song marks a fundamental transition in the narrative. The film was conceived around a remark of John’s. When asked how he liked Sweden, he replied it was “a room and a car and a car and a room”. (In the film, Wilfred Brambell, playing Paul’s Grandfather, has similar sentiments – “Lookit, I thought I was supposed to be getting a change of scenery, and so far I’ve been in a train and a room, and a car and a room, and a room and a room”.) For the first half of the film, director Richard Lester filmed the Beatles exclusively in interior scenes – in railway carriages, hotels, even railway stations – all the time in confined spaces, trapped by their success. Then, while their minders usher them back to their dressing room, Ringo pushes open a fire door and, as they find themselves in the fresh air and sunshine at the top of a fire escape, whoops, “We’re out!” Over the sound of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ (which is the only song in the film that the group do not mime and the only one recorded before filming began), the film then really opens out as the four romp around an open field for the duration of the song. The openness is accentuated by using helicopter shots, fast inter-cutting and some slightly speeded up filming. As the final chord fades, the wellington boots of a landowner come into shot, and with the line “I suppose you realise this is private property” the action moves back indoors. The scene is full of energy, excitement and visual humour, contrasting well with the pacey confinement of the rest of the film.
The song appears again towards the end of film, appropriately covering the Keystone cops-style chase sequence where John, Paul and George rescue Ringo from the clutches of the police. (Ringo: “I demand to see my solicitor.” Derek Guyler: “What’s his name?” Ringo: “Well if you’re going to get technical about it…”)