How Do You Do It

McCARTNEY: "By the time we got to 'Love Me Do', they started to feel a bit bluesier. When we eventually got down to London, that was the one we insisted on recording rather than 'How Do You Do It', [later] the Gerry and the Pacemakers song, which was more George Formby than anything else. We knew that peer pressure back in Liverpool would not allow us to do 'How Do You Do It'. We knew we couldn't hold our heads up with that sort of rock-a-pop-a-ballad. We would be spurned and cast away into the wilderness." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

HARRISON: "When we first went to EMI and saw George Martin, he gave us a song. Some guy who was supposed to be a writer of pop songs wrote it. George said, 'Here's a song. Go back and learn it.' So we went and learnt it, but later we said, 'Look, we'd rather do our own songs.' " The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

McCARTNEY: "There was always an underlying ambition to go in a slightly artistic direction, whereas a lot of our fellow groups didn't have that. This is why we didn't do 'How Do You Do It' when George Martin suggested it. 'It's a number one!' he said, and God knows we needed a number one. We said, 'No, no! No thanks!'" Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

McCARTNEY: "Brian gave us a warning, 'Do it! It doesn't matter if you don't like it, just do it!' So we learnt it, and we did a demo recording of 'How Do You Do It', but we still didn't like the song. George Martin knew that it was going to be a number one hit, so we took it back to Liverpool and said, 'What are we gonna do with this? This is what he wants us to do, he's our producer, so we'll have to do it.' So we did, but we didn't like it and we came back to George and said, 'Well, it may be a number one song, but we just don't want this kind of song. We don't want to go out with that kind of reputation. It's a different thing we're going for. It's something new.' " The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews