Love me do

Love me do
The Beatles
publication	5th October 1962
length	2 min 22 s
Genre (s)	Merseybeat , Pop , Rhythm and Blues
Author (s)	Lennon / McCartney
album	Please Please Me

Love Me Do ( English love me ) is the title of a song by the British rock band The Beatles . It was published on 5 October 1962 in the UK as an A-side of the first single of the group, on the B-side is the piece PS I Love You . Both titles were composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon under the joint copyright Lennon / McCartney .

admission

Beatles - Love Me Do

With this single began the extremely successful collaboration with producer George Martin , who had the courage to publish both sides of the debut single of an unknown group with their own compositions.

There are three different recordings of the piece with three different drummers. The first recording dates from June 6, 1962, when Pete Best still played drums. This version was only in 1995 at the Anthology - CD released after they had been lost long been regarded. On September 4, 1962 another recording with Ringo Starr on drums followed, with which George Martin in particular was not satisfied. For this reason he hired the session drummer Andy White , who was on drums for a further recording of the song on September 11, 1962; Ringo Starr was allowed to play the tambourine on this recording . This is also the easiest way to distinguish between the two recordings: In the recording with the tambourine, White played the drums, in the recording without the tambourine, Starr. With the single (Parlophone R4949) released on October 5, 1962, the version with Ringo Starr was brought to market, as it turned out that the version with Andy White did not sound better. However, the recording on the single in 1963 was exchanged for the version with White, which to this day has resulted in all singles released after that contain the version with White. The album Please Please Me always contained the version with White from the start. The version with Ringo Starr did not appear again until 1980 on the US edition of the album Rarities and can be found on Past Masters (Vol. 1). At the time, the harmonica played by Lennon was an unusual instrument for a pop song, which increased the recognition value of the single.

On January 28, 1969, the Beatles recorded their first single hit Love Me Do again during one of the numerous jam sessions for their film Let It Be . However, the result was so bad that this version has not yet been published.

The B-side PS I Love You was also a joint composition by Lennon and McCartney, McCartney, who sang the title, had written most of it; Lennon helped with the text. Andy White also played the drums on the recording of this track, while Starr can be heard on the maracas and the tambourine.

Lost master tape

Until about 1963, it was not the practice at Abbey Road Studios to keep the tapes of every single recording session; they were destroyed as soon as the recordings were mixed for publication. It was the same with all the tapes that contained the Love Me Do recording sessions . The tape with the mix of the version from September 4, 1962 (with Starr on the drums) is no longer available. Since the version was not released again until 1980, this was not a problem. However, when the LP Rarities in the USA in 1980 was supposed to contain exactly this recording, the record company EMI had to use its own 7 "single from the archive as source material. A few years later, a record collector provided EMI with a better-sounding copy of the single, from which EMI made a new master tape, which has since been used for all publications.

success

After its release in Great Britain on October 4, 1962, Love Me Do reached number 17 on the UK charts. The remarkable success of the first single by a newcomer band led to the rumor that Beatles manager Brian Epstein had bought around ten thousand copies of the single himself to put it on the sales charts. Epstein has denied this, which several of his former employees have confirmed. Mark Lewisohn , who researched the facts for the biography The Beatles: All These Years - Volume One - Tune In , came to the clear conclusion that the allegation was untenable. On the one hand, such a purchase would not have had any effect on the position of the single because of the process of creating a hit parade. In addition, the initial circulation pressed by EMI was very likely significantly lower, so that Epstein would not even have been able to buy such a quantity. In the 18 weeks that the single was placed in the charts, 116,227 units were sold in Great Britain; a total of between 290,000 and 300,000 copies were sold there. This made it the only Beatles single that had fewer than 500,000 records there.

In the US, the single was released on April 27, 1964 in the wake of the upcoming " Beatlemania " by the small record label Tollie (a subsidiary of Vee-Jay Records ). After entering the Billboard charts at number 81, it reached number 1 for a week on May 30, 1964 and was in the top ten for a total of ten weeks . The B-side PS I Love You reached number 10. In the US, the single was sold a million times.

On October 4, 1982, the EMI released the single again for the 20th anniversary. This time it reached number 4 on the English charts.

Others

Love Me Do served as a theme song in both the TV series Mike Molto in the 1960s, as well as the WDR production Later Marriage Not Ruled Out in the 1970s.

Web links

• Peter Wicke: Love Me Do (The Beatles) . In: Michael Fischer, Fernand Hörner (ed.): Songlexikon. Encyclopedia of Songs , accessed May 21, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years. Hamlyn, London 1988, ISBN 0-600-55798-7 , p. 168
2. ^ Mark Lewisohn: The Beatles: All These Years - Extended Special Edition, Volume One - Tune In , Little, Brown Book Group, London 2013, ISBN 978-1408704783 , pp. 1376-1378; 1601.
3. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 160.