Ask Me Why

CHART ACTION
UNITED KINGDOM: Previously released as a single January 11, 1963, as the B side of "Please Please Me."

UNITED STATES: Capitol refused to release this, but Vee Jay did on February 25, 1963, as the B side to "Please Please Me," the Beatles first U.S. single. It was not a Top 40 hit. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles

AUTHORSHIP Lennon (.7) and McCartney (.3)
Written in the spring of 1962, this was the first of many Lennon and McCartney compositions to show the influence of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, one of their favourite Motown groups.
McCARTNEY: "It was John's original idea and we both sat down and wrote it together, just did a job on it. It was mostly John's." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

RECORDED
November 26, 1962, at Abbey Road.

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass, harmony vocal
LENNON: rhythm guitar, lead vocal
HARRISON: lead guitar, harmony vocal
STARR: drums

MISCELLANEOUS
This song was part of the Beatles' live repertoire in 1962 and 1963, and was one of the songs performed at the Beatles' Parlophone Records audition in 1962.
The public first heard this song on the BBC radio program Teenager's Turn, June 11, 1962, exactly seven months before it was released as a single. The Complete Beatles Chronicle

Cat Call

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (1.00)
McCARTNEY: "I wrote a few instrumentals: 'Cat Call' was one of those." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

On Jane's return from America, she and Paul made a last-ditch stand to consolidate their relationship. Jane, unusually, even accompanied Paul to a recording session on July 20, 1967 to see the trumpeter and trombonist Chris Barber, the man who popularised traditional jazz in Britain. He was recording 'Cat Call', an early instrumental of Paul's which had been a part of the Beatles' playlist down the Cavern. Paul can be heard singing in the chorus and shouting 'Please play it slower!' at the end.
McCARTNEY: "I knew Chris Barber because he was always down all the clubs. He was from the generation before us but his love of blues meant he would be likely to want to get up and jam with Hendrix and play a bit of trombone. His wife, the jazz singer Ottilie Patterson, strangely enough had been a patient of the doctor who'd owned my house in Cavendish before I bought it. There had been stories of this guy painting the house in mid-winter, wearing just a pair of shorts, so I was obviously carrying on quite a rich tradition at this place. I'd said, 'Well, come round for a cup of tea tomorrow.' When Ottilie saw the house, she said, 'Oh yes, this used to be the consulting room.' Chris Barber was a good musician and a good fun, interested guy. He was not patronising. With a few jazz musicians at that time it was, 'Mmm, rock 'n' roll ...' They felt like they knew more scales than we did, or they could read music, unlike us, but not Chris." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

All My Loving

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (1.00)
Though the majority of their early songs were co-written, 'All My Loving' was entirely Paul's, written on tour.
McCARTNEY: "It was the first song I'd ever written the words first. I never wrote words first, it was always some kind of accompaniment. I've hardly ever done it since either. We were on a tour bus going to a gig and so I started with the words. I had in my mine a little country and western song. We played the Moss Empire circuit a lot, and there were always these nice big empty backstage areas. The places have all become bingo halls now. We arrived at the gig and I remember being in one of these big backstage areas and there was a piano there so I'd got my instrument. I didn't gave a guitar, it was probably with our road manager, and I remember working the tune out to it on the piano. It was a good show song, it worked well live." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

McCARTNEY: "I always liked this. I think it was the first song where I wrote the words without the tune. I wrote the words on the tour bus with Roy Orbison. We did a lot of writing then. Then, when we got to the gig, I found a piano and worked out the music. That was the first time that I had actually written this way." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

LENNON: "This was one of his first biggies." Hit Parader (April 1972)

McCARTNEY: "It was the first song I ever wrote where I had the words before the music. I wrote the words on a bus on tour, then we got the tune when I arrived there." Playboy (December 1984)

RECORDED
July 30, 1963, at Abbey Road

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass, lead vocal (double-tracked)
LENNON: rhythm guitar
HARRISON: lead guitar
STARR: drums

MISCELLANEOUS
This song was part of the Beatles' repertoire for concerts in 1963 and 1964. The Complete Beatles Chronicle

COMMENTS BY BEATLES
LENNON: " 'All My Loving' is Paul, I regret to say. . . . Because it's a damn good piece of work. . . . But I play a pretty mean guitar in back." September 1980, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Can't Buy Me Love

CHART ACTION
UNITED KINGDOM: Originally released as a single, March 20, 1964. It had huge advance sales and entered the chart at No. 1 on March 24. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles

UNITED STATES: Originally released as a single, March 16, 1964. Entered the Billboard Top 40 March 28 and stayed for nine weeks, five at No. 1. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles There were advance orders of 2.1 million copies.

RULING THE CHARTS

This song headed the largest monopoly of the U.S. charts by any group or individual in recording history. The Beatles' positions on the Billboard Hot 100 chart of April 4, 1964:
No. 1: "Can't Buy Me Love"
No. 2: "Twist And Shout"
No. 3: "She Loves You"
No. 4: "I Want To Hold Your Hand"
No. 5: "Please Please Me"
No. 31: "I Saw Her Standing There"
No. 41: "From Me To You"
No. 46: "Do You Want To Know A Secret"
No. 58: "All My Loving"
No. 65: "You Can't Do That"
No. 68: "Roll Over Beethoven"
No. 79: "Thank You Girl"
At the same time, the Beatles also occupied the top two positions on the album chart, with Meet The Beatles and Introducing The Beatles. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (.9) and Lennon (.1)
McCARTNEY: "This was written really when we was in Paris. We had to have a new record ready for recording in England and we were going to record a song in Paris as well, so we wrote 'Can't Buy Me Love' there and we recorded the first track of it in Paris and we finished it off in London. It's a two-country effort. It's double-tracked as well." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

This song was written in Paris. The Beatles were playing their season at the Olympia Theatre: two and sometimes three shows a day for eighteen days, from January 16 until February 4, 1964. They were staying at the exclusive Goerge V Hotel on the Avenue George-V, in the expensive residential area between the Champs Elysees and the River Seine. In order to work on songs for their upcoming movie, John and Paul had an upright piano brought to the sitting room of their suite and installed in the corner by a window. Here Paul wrote "Can't Buy Me Love". They rehearsed it; George Martin flew over from London; and on January 29 they recorded it at the Pathe Marconi Studios on rue de Sevres. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

McCARTNEY: " 'Can't Buy Me Love' is my attempt to write a bluesy mode. The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won't buy me what I really want. It was a very hooky song. Ella Fitzgerald later did a version of it which I was very honoured by." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

LENNON: "John and Paul, but mainly Paul." Hit Parader (April 1972)

LENNON: "That's Paul's completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song." September 1980, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

HARRISON: "They did 'Can't Buy Me Love' in Paris, and the other side over in Miami Beach. Ringo and I didn't chip in with any of it, except at the recording session, where we always try to help. We suggest little things here and there." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

RECORDED
January 29, 1964, at Pathe Marconi Studios, Paris

GEORGE MARTIN: "When The Beatles first sang 'Can't Buy Me Love' to me, they started singing, 'da da da da', and that was the beginning of the song. So I told them, 'We need a tag for the ending and the beginning.' I then took the first few lines of the actual chorus and changed the ending, and said, 'Right. Let's just have thse lines and, by altering the end of the second phrase, we can get back into the verse pretty quickly.' They said, 'Hey, that's not a bad idea! OK, we'll do it that way.' So that, in fact, is the way it was done." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass, lead vocal (double-tracked)
LENNON: rhythm guitar
HARRISON: lead guitar (Rickenbacker 360/12 [12-string])
STARR: drums
guitar from Guitar (November 1987)

HARRISON: "For the first time ever on record, I play a 12-string guitar, which is much wilder! I had the guitar given to me in America and will be featuring it in some of the numbers we do on stage in the future." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

DICK JAMES: "During the recording of this song, he was really having a ball, because it was the first chance that he had to record with the L300 12-string guitar which he had bought in the States. He thoroughly enjoyed himself, twanging and incorporating different effects." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

MISCELLANEOUS
MARTIN: "The way they first sang 'Can't Buy Me Love' was by starting on the verse, but I said: 'We've got to have an introduction, something that catches the ear immediately, a hook. So let's start off with the chorus.' " All You Need Is Ears : The inside personal story of the genius who created The Beatles

"Can't Buy Me Love" was used for a pivotal scene in A Hard Day's Night. In the early scenes director Richard Lester had developed the feeling of confinement by shooting most scenes in enclosed spaces. (The idea had been spurred when Lennon replied to Lester's question of how he had liked Sweden on a recent tour: "It was a room and a room and a car and a room and a room and a car . . .") The movie led up to the point where the Beatles rebelled.

RICHARD LESTER: "We see them break out. We needed a visual example of that escape. Suddenly, the film opens up, and that's really the point of 'Can't Buy Me Love.' "

This song was part of the Beatles' repertoire for concerts in 1964 and 1965. Live
This song was played as a march by a military band as the Beatles received their MBEs in the Great Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, October 26, 1965. The Beatles Diary, Volume 1 : From Liverpool to London

McCARTNEY: "[We] felt proud because Ella Fitzgerald recorded it, too, though we didn't realize what it meant that she was doing it." Playboy (December 1984) The version by jazz singer Fitzgerald was a minor hit in May 1964. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles

COMMENTS BY BEATLES
LENNON: "This one is Paul solo. None of us sing on the track at all, except Paul. This is better than our other records. It's certainly the one we most enjoyed doing. This is a 12-bar number, which is what we've always wanted to do. You might say our other discs have led up to this one. People think this 12-bar stuff is easy, but it isn't! We really like this disc." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

McCARTNEY: "Personally, I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that 'Can't Buy Me Love' is about a prostitute, I draw the line. That's going too far." Beatles in Their Own Words

McCARTNEY: "Miami was incredible . . . MG Motors were trying to sell their convertibles down there, which was a perfect little Florida car, and lent us one each as a publicity thing. I remember meeting this rather nice girl and taking her out for dinner in this MG in the cool Florida night, palm trees swaying. You kidding? A Liverpool boy with this tanned beauty in my MG going out to dinner. It should have been 'Can Buy Me Love', actually." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

And I Love Her

CHART ACTION
UNITED STATES: Also released as a single, July 20, 1964. It entered the Top 40 on August 8, spent seven weeks there, and peaked at No. 12. Road and Billboard

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (.8) and Lennon (.2)
Jane Asher was probably the inspiration for a number of Paul's love songs, one of the most famous being "And I Love Her", written at Wimpole Street in the basement music room, not long after Paul moved in.
McCARTNEY: "It was the first ballad I impressed myself with. It's got nice chords in it, 'Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky. . .' I like the imagery of the stars and the sky. It was a love song really. The 'And' in the title was an important thing, 'And I Love Her', it came right out of left field, you were right up to speed the minute you heard it. The title comes in the second verse and it doesn't repeat. You would often go to town on the title, but this was almost an aside, 'Oh . . . and I love you.' It still holds up and George played really good guitar on it. It worked very well. I'm not sure if John worked on that at all." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

LENNON: "Both of us [wrote this]. The first half was Paul's and the middle-eight is mine." Hit Parader (April 1972)

McCARTNEY: "The middle eight is mine. I would say that John probably helped with the middle eight, but he can't say 'It's mine'. I wrote this on my own. I can actually see Margaret Asher's upstairs drawing room. I remember playing it there, not writing it necessarily." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

RECORDED
February 25, remade February 26 and again February 27, 1964, at Abbey Road

DICK JAMES: "They were laying down the tracks and doing the melody lines of the song 'And I Love Her'. It was a very simple song and quite repetitive. George Martin and I looked at each other and the same thought sparked off in both of our minds. It was proving to be, although plain and a warm and sympathetic song, just too repetitive, with the same phrase of repeating. George Martin told the boys, 'Both Dick and I feel that the song is just lacking the middle. It's too repetitive, and it needs something to break it up.' I think it was John who shouted, 'OK, let's have a tea break', and John and Paul went to the piano and, while Mal Evans was getting tea and some sandwiches, the boys worked at the piano. Within half an hour they wrote, there before our very eyes, a very constructive middle to a very commercial song. Although we know it isn't long, it's only a four bar middle, nevertheless it was just the right ingredients to break up the over repetitive effect of the original melody." The Beatles Off the Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: acoustic guitar, lead vocal (occasionally double-tracked)
LENNON: acoustic guitar
HARRISON: acoustic guitar solo, claves
STARR: bongos

MISCELLANEOUS
This song was one of the most-covered Beatles compositions, with 372 different versions recorded by October 1972. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles

McCARTNEY: "It's just a love song; no, it wasn't for anyone. Having the title start in midsentence, I thought that was clever. Well, Perry Como did 'And I Love You So' many years later. Tried to nick the idea. I like that - it was a nice tune, that one. I still like it." Playboy (December 1984)

Cry Baby Cry

AUTHORSHIP Lennon (1.00)
Original lyrics: "Cry baby cry, make your mother buy." Lennon said, in about 1968, that he got the words from an advertisement. The Beatles: Illustrated and Updated Edition

McCARTNEY: "Because John had divorced Cynthia and gone off with Yoko, it meant that I'd hear some of the songs for the first time when he came to the studio, whereas in the past we checked them with each other." This was an example of such a song; Paul liked it. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

RECORDED
Rehearsed July 15, 1968, at Abbey Road, then recorded July 16, with overdubbing July 18

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass
LENNON: acoustic guitar, piano, organ, lead vocal
HARRISON: lead guitar (Gibson Les Paul)
STARR: drums, tambourine
GEORGE MARTIN: harmonium
guitar from Guitar (November 1987)

COMMENTS BY BEATLES
LENNON: "A piece of rubbish." September 1980, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

All I've Got To Do

AUTHORSHIP Lennon (1.00)
A Lennon solo effort, shown to Paul only in the studio just before recording. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

LENNON: "That's me trying to do Smokey Robinson again." September 1980, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

RECORDED
September 11, 1963, at Abbey Road

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: bass, harmony vocal
LENNON: rhythm guitar, lead vocal
HARRISON: lead guitar
STARR: drums