The Hottest Hit On The Planet!
“She Loves You”
by The Beatles
There’s an interview with Paul McCartney – I remember seeing it sometime in the 90s, I forget where, and I’ve spent far too long trying to track it down – in which he explains, in precise detail, exactly why “She Loves You” was such an important moment in the evolution of the Beatles’ songwriting craft.
This – as accurately as I can remember, which won’t be very, what with it being three decades past and all – is what he said. (Please try to read it in a Liverpudlian accent.)
“So we’d written “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me”, both of which only had one character in the title: “me”. And those were big hits and all, but we felt that maybe they were missing something. Maybe we needed a second character. Let’s call her… “you.”
“So we wrote “From Me To You.” So now in addition to “me” there was “you.” That’s twice as many people. We’d instantly doubled the number of characters in the Beatles universe! That’s just Math! So then we thought, why stop there? What’s the next step? How far can we take this?”
Maybe we need to introduce… a third character! Let’s call her, “she.” And “she” “loves” “you.” So now, there was “me” telling “you” about “she” loving “you.” In just two steps we’d exponentially increased the narrative complexity of our hits.”
Those may not be Paul’s exact words – I don’t think people were saying “it’s just Math” in the 90s – but that was the gist.
And it underlines a fundamental truth: that the early Beatles songs were so simple that the introduction of a third character represented a great leap forward in the band’s creative development.
Which is why I have formulated the theory that those early Beatles songs were so inanely simple – “love, love me do, you know I love you,* I’ll always be true, so ple-e-e-ase, love me do” – on purpose, and for that very reason! It was all part of Paul’s master plan to make anything they wrote after it sound like a revolution!
It wouldn’t surprise me if Paul had their entire narrative arc worked out beforehand:
“Look John, we’re not going to argue about this, I’ve got it all worked out… we’re going to start off with silly little jingles.”
“But then we’ll discover acid and Bob Dylan and get serious and freaky and weird and pretentious and do things like make up an imaginary band, and you’ll start going on about how you are a walrus.”
“And then? We’ll finish it all off with a medley so long that it takes up the entire second side of an album!”
“Then we’ll split up and you’ll start making records with a Japanese conceptual artist.”
“Don’t look at me as though I’m crazy… it’s a foolproof plan.”
Paul had it all worked out. He’d probably already written “Golden Slumbers.”
I’m still working my way through a couple of details, such as: how this all fits in with the fake-Paul conspiracy. But I think I’m on to something.
But yes, “She Loves You.” Not only a great big leap of narrative complexity, but the most excitable Beatles song of their silly jingles phase. And it’s exciting straight from the get-go. Forget Max Martin, this is the definitive example of jumping straight in with the chorus. And with a chorus like that, you know it can’t be bad. YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!
“She Loves You” is a 10!
*So clearly there was a “you” character even as early on as “Love Me Do.” But it didn’t make the title, so it’s equally clear that “you” were just a supporting role. “Love Me Do” was all “me, me, me.”
Meanwhile, in Surfing Land:
“Fun, Fun, Fun”
by The Beach Boys
Mike Love is not one of rock’n’roll’s great frontmen.
Have you ever seen Mike Love on a list of rock’s great frontpeople?
No, and you never will.
Just look at him, singing “Fun, Fun, Fun” – in 1964, at the peak of his powers, before Brian took over the band – in a manner that can only be described as half-assed. So little effort is Mike putting into “Fun, Fun, Fun”, that he appears to be chewing gum, thereby proving that he can’t rock and chew gum at the same time. I’m not sure that Mike Love is even having “Fun”, let alone “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
Those moves Mike does bother to pull appear to have come less out of “The Complete Guide To Being A Rockstar” and more out of “The Complete Guide To Being A Dorky Dad Who Is Constantly Embarrassing His Children.”
He makes air-whip motions during the “Roman chariot race now” line, and if that isn’t dorky enough, he does a chicken dance during the “wild goose chase-now” line! This is Mike Love’s idea of “Fun Fun Fun”!
It was also Mike’s idea to bite some licks off Chuck Berry.
This is something they’d done before, on “Surfin’ U.S.A.”, where their biting was so blatant, they had to give Chuck a writing credit.
They were a bit more subtle this time – ie, they didn’t also rip off Chuck’s melody – but the influence is there.
Maybe it’s less of a rip-off though, and more of a nod. More of a way of signifying that “this is going to be a song about a craaaazy chick!” That’s what Chuck Berry riffs were; a kind of shorthand for announcing upcoming craziness. The whole song itself may as well be a Chuck Berry song:
- There’s a car involved.
- There’s a teenage girl, doing things that her Daddy might not approve of.
- Scandalous things, such as going to the hamburger stand when she was supposed to be going to the library.
When her old man finds out, he’s pissed, and revokes her T-Bird driving privileges. For a teenage girl in 1960s America, this is the ultimate travesty of justice.
But never fear, The Beach Boys have arrived to save the day! And The Beach Boys are smarter than her old man! They realize that his withholding of T-Bird driving privileges means that this crazy chick will just have to have ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ in the Beach Boys T-Bird! Where others see a travesty of justice, The Beach Boys see opportunity! All of which are classic Chuck moves.
But no Chuck Berry song ever had Brian Wilson cooing like a theremin at the end!
“Fun, Fun, Fun” is an 8. I just hope she returned her library book in the end.
Given all the Chuck Berry biting, I guess it’s only fair that other bands were biting The Beach Boys sound.
The Beach Boys were so hot at the time – about halfway thought their run of summertime surfing classics – that other groups, with even less credible attachments to surf-culture, were having hits with their schtick.
Such as: The Rip Chords with “Hey Little Cobra:”
A song that managed to impersonate pretty much every Beach Boys song so precisely: that one of them ended up joining the Beach Boys – for real! But nobody ever got fooled into thinking that these guys did drag racing on the weekends. The Rip-Chords sounded so squeaky clean they’d probably drive their Cobra straight past the hamburger stand and head straight for the library instead.
“Hey Little Cobra” is a 4.
Meanwhile, in British Land:
“Glad All Over”
by the Dave Clark Five
The Beatles weren’t the only band in Britain.
There was of course Gerry and The Pacemakers, whose chipper “How Do You Do It?” (it’s a 5) might have been a Beatles single if their producer George Martin had his way. Can you imagine it? Incredibly, even after making such an astonishingly bad call – and despite not liking his tie – they still kept him on, and it turned out quite well for everyone.
Then there was the Dave Clark Five.
It was the Dave Clark Five who knocked The Beatles “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” off the top spot in the UK.
Technically, that’s not really that big of a deal. “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” wasn’t going to be Number One forever, so somebody was going to have to knock them off. But that somebody was the Dave Clark Five.
Which meant that suddenly, the Dave Clark Five were pushed into the role of pretenders to the throne. They were The Band Who Beat The Beatles.
And they did it with a song that tried very hard to sound as exciting as a Beatles single. They almost succeeded.
In many ways, The Dave Clark Five came across as a Beatles tribute act. Or a Beatlemania tribute act. Just watch the video above, as they get mobbed by girls – they even use the photo of a screaming girl as their stage backdrop, on those rare occasions that they aren’t using a Union Jack – hold a press conference, have their own plane, and bop and wiggle their heads about in a very Paul McCartney manner.
Given that they arrived in America only a couple of weeks after The Beatles did, it’s admirable that they were able to nail the impression so quickly.
I presume that the teenage mob footage comes from their rock’n’roll cash-in movie Catch Us If You Can, and so may not have actually been genuine (“Catch Us If You Can”, the hit single from Catch Us If You Can is effortlessly effervescent in all the ways that “Glad All Over” tries way too hard to be, and it’s a 9).
The delirious fun of “Catch Us If You Can” is not hampered in any way but the sense that it’s also totally deluded, coming across as it does as a diss-song to their competition, bragging about their superior chart positions. Unfortunately for the Dave Clark Five their competition included The Beatles.
Having now watched two Dave Clark Five videos, you should have noticed two ways in which they differed from The Beatles.
The first is that their lead singer played the keyboard. The second is that they had a saxophone player. But there’s another important difference that you might not have picked up on:
The Dave Clark Five put great emphasis on the drums.
Dave Clark was not, as you might be forgiven for assuming, the lead singer/keyboard player. No, that’s Mike Smith.
Dave Clark was the drummer. And also the producer.
As producer Dave Clark possessed both the authority and the technical know-how to ensure that the drums were always recorded at maximum volume, an authority that he leveraged at every opportunity. As a result, both “Glad All Over” and “Catch Us If You Can” are great big stompin’ stomps. The first bubblegum glam rock singles, perhaps?
“Glad All Over” is a 7.
Meanwhile in Burt Land:
“Anyone Who Had A Heart” and “Walk On By” by Dionne Warwick
1964 was not only about youthful exuberance. It was also about grown-up sophistication. And no one brought more grown-up sophistication to 60s pop than Burt Bacharach.
“Anyone Who Had A Heart” was so sophisticated that it has three time signatures! This was not on purpose. Burt didn’t set out to compose a piece of staggering musical complexity. Burt Bacharach was so sophisticated he wrote songs with three-time signatures by accident, in his head.
But Burt needed more than just musical sophistication to take over the pop world.
He needed Hal David, to find the words to fit into his oddball time-signatures.
But they’d been working together for years, occasionally coming up with cutesy masterpieces such as “Magic Moments” – the Perry Como song – but just as often coming up with novelty fluff like “The Blob” by The Five Blobs:
Burt needed a muse, to fuse that grown-up sophistication with teenage heartbreak and thereby make it sparkle!
He needed Dionne Warwick.
When Dionne Warwick was in the booth, magic happened. When Dionne Warwick was in the booth, she made heartache sound exquisite. And sensuous.
The Dionne, Burt and Hal Show was such a magical combination that “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and “Walk On By” were recorded in the same session!
In November 1963. At Bell Sound Studios.
To be fair, Bell Sound Studios was a place where musical magic happened virtually every day.
Name any late 50s, early 60s classic – “Runaround Sue”, “I Only Have Eyes For You”, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, “It’s My Party,” a whole bunch of Drifters classics – and it was probably recorded at Bell Sound Studios.
Don’t bother trying to visit it. It’s not there anymore. It’s now a steak house. With a Hilton on top of it.
That “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and “Walk On By” were recorded in the same session makes sense. They both capture the same sense of sadness. “Walk On By” with its teardrop trumpet toots. “Anyone Who Had A Heart” with Dionne sighing “whatIamtodo?”, before disappearing into the sadness as it envelopes her whole.
But even when she’s lost all hope, even when she’s crying at the mere sight of you walking down the street:
Dionne Warwick never loses her composure.
Dionne Warwick never loses her poise. Dionne Warwick never loses her foolish pride.
Of the two classics, it was “Anyone Who Had A Heart” that seemed to excite people most at the time, instantly becoming one of those songs that everybody felt they needed to record, leading to the sort of multiple-versions-racing-up-the-charts situation that had been commonplace in the 40s and 50s, but not so much anymore.
Cilla Black – whose version is lacking any of Dionne’s sensuality, although she did have equally as amazing hair – took her version to Number One in the UK. And before you knew it, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were the baroque bachelor-pad hit makers of choice, for any beehive wearing balladeer.
“Anyone Who Had A Heart” and “Walk On By” are both 10s. The Dionne Warwick versions anyway. Cilla’s version is a 7.
Meanwhile, in Folk Land:
“The Times They Are A-Changin’” by
Bob Dylan
Nobody says “a-changin’” anymore.
Nobody really said “a-changin’” in 1964. It was an antiquated affectation. Which means that “Times They Are A-Changin’” is a song about looking forward that sounds as though it is looking back, that sounds as though it comes from some distant past. A past even more distant than 1964. A song about changin’ times that sounds as though time hasn’t changed at all.
1964 is now the past. At the time it was the present. So when Robert tells us that “the present now will later be the past”, he’s speaking a profound – if obvious – truth. “Times They Are A-Changin’” is full of such profound – if obvious – truths.
People refer to “Times They Are A-Changin’” as the archetypal protest song. Which is basically a nice way of saying that it’s so vague that it can be sung at protest rallies for virtually any issue imaginable. Any issue where there are “senators” and “congressman” blocking up the hall.
Any issue where the proponents believe they have history on their side, and that their opponents should just give into the inevitable and get out of the way before they sink like a stone. Sometimes “Times They Are A-Changin’” comes across as less of a song of hope, and more of a veiled threat to the enemies of time.
“Times They Are A-Changin’” is practically Biblical.
“The loser now, will be later to win.”
“The slow one now, will later be fast.”
“The first one now, will later be last”
Instead of the Beatles, Robert is giving us the Beatitudes.
It’s impossible not to sound wise beyond your years – and despite a voice that made him sound as though he was born old, Dylan was only 22 – when your lyric sheet reads like a Psalm.
Ultimately though, Dylan was correct. Times were a-changin’. Times always do. And with a song like “Times They Are A-Changin’” in the world, the times may have a-changed faster than they otherwise would have.
I much prefer the zanier side of Zimmerman. “Ballad Of A Thin Man” for example, which the “Times” line about writers and critics who philosophize with their pens might be seen as foreshadowing (for a guy so wordy he’d one day win a Nobel Prize For Literature, Dylan was certainly skeptical of intellectuals). “The suns not yellow, it’s chicken!” The whole of “Talkin’ World War III Blues.” Hilarious!!!
“Times They Are A-Changin’” needs more punchlines.
“Times They Are A-Changin’” is a 7.
What a crazy a-changing time to be alive!
To hear these, and other 50s hits, tune into DJ Professor Dan’s Twitch stream on Wednesday, 8pm Melbourne time, 9am London time, 1am L.A. time (of the night before), middle of the night (before) New York time!!! But maybe you can catch the end over breakfast!!!
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I went through a huge Beach Boys phase in college, but it was before the days of Youtube, so I never got around (ahem) to watching their old videos.
And thus I never noticed what an old dad Mike Love was back then. He was 23 in that video; he looks twice that!
Kudos to the BBs for eventually giving credit to Chuck Berry for “Surfin USA.” How many people took Berry’s riffs without giving credit? Of course, Berry borrowed as well. His first hit “Maybellene” took significant parts from “Ida Red.”
Speaking of ripping chords, the intro to “Hey Little Cobra” is so brazen in its mimicry, I’m surprised Brian didn’t (ahem) shut them down.
I vaguely remember that Paul McCartney interview. Was it on Larry King, maybe?
An important part of their early songwriting was the use of pronouns. Writing a song about, say, “Betsy” will limit its appeal to women not named Betsy. Writing a song about “you” doesn’t limit its audience at all. They also used pet names, like “Baby,” “Honey,” and “Girl.” That was smart.
They did have “Michelle,” of course, but that melody is so beautiful that everyone, including women not named Michelle, loved it regardless.
Nice job, Dan!
Knocko The Monk found the interview below!
Thoroughly entertaining.
Mike Love has the look of bewildered ageing relative, out of his depth, on the dance floor at a wedding. No wonder the camera keeps going back to Dennis.
Seeing what you’d written about Dave Clark Five; Catch Me If You Can bragging about their superior chart positions to their rivals does chime with an act of cultural vandalism by Dave Clark. Ready Steady Go was the UKs number one tv show for pop in the swinging sixties. Dave bought the rights to it in the 80s, releasing compilations on VHS and in the 90s Channel 4 showed reruns of it.
There was something different about the show from the original run: there was a lot more Dave Clark Five than anyone remembered. In an attempt to enhance their reputation he had performances of his band inserted into the VHS and tv reruns. I watched those 90s reruns and DC5 were on every week though it was obvious that their performances weren’t from Ready Steady Go and had been shoehorned in to make them appear a lot more popular than they really were.
There’s also stories that his control of the band had him insisting that the rest of the band gave him songwriting credits on songs he had no involvement in writing. He should have gotten together with Mike Love, they’d make a great pair.
Out of all the DC5 hits I’ve heard over the years on oldies radio, there is not one that I especially liked. They’re all just okay. And I’ve felt for decades that Catch Me If You Can has the worst harmonica solo I’ve ever heard on a recording.
Maybe I’m missing something but from what I’ve heard there’s not much in the way of development in their sound. What I’ve heard about DC and knowing what he did with Ready Steady Go means I’m not inclined to investigate any further.
I like this shift in mood in this one, and particularly like the slightly ominous verses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Q_o4sHLRk
It’s not bad.
This is my childhood we’re talking about now. I’m really not quiet old enough to remember the mid-60s, except that my teen brother made sure i got a daily dose of everything rock-n-roll and soul of that time. Where the Action Is, oh yeah.
I really do like the DC5, and think that Mike Smith had one of the best lead voices of the era (along with Mark Lindsey and Mickey Dolenz) for this kind of music. But, the DC5 help illustrate why the Beatles were so extraordinary. At this point, there didn’t seem much to separate the various bands that were part of the British Invasion (except the Beatles’ songwriting chops). They were all bright and chirpy with floppy hair and suits, and were playing what we call power pop today. The difference is that the Beatles moved at light speed from Please Please Me to Tomorrow Never Knows, while DC5 stuck w/ the Power Pop. Really, very few of those bands (and the million garage bands the Beatles spawned in the US) could follow. The Hollies, a great rock-n-roll band, are another example.
We were lucky that the Beatles took us along for the ride.
Even luckier that the Stones and the Kinks managed to keep up with that ride, albeit on their own terms.
Absolutely. While I believe the Beatles stand alone, I’ve used the phrase BeatlesStonesKinksWho when someone ask which was the best band ever. Ray Davis may be the one true songwriting rival of the 3-headed monster, and each of these bands brought something special to the dance (sock hop).
Glad to know that I am not the only one who remembers snippets of interviews with no memory of when and where they occurred. I feel like I spend a lot of time saying, “I know I heard it somewhere. Trust me, it’s accurate.”
In The Beatles Anthology (the 1995 TV series), Paul says:
He said something similar in the Barry Miles biography Many Years From Now (as quoted here), though he goofed when he called it a “personal preposition song” instead of a “personal pronoun song”!
Yep, that would be it!
Hmm, I got it… I guess I could charitably call it “broadly correct”, but let’s face it “mostly wrong.”
I thought it might be in “The Beatles Anthology” and skimmed through it on the Internet Archive to try and find it, but somehow it passed me by!