"Hold Me Tight"

"Hold Me Tight" is a Beatles song from their 1963 album With the Beatles. It was first recorded during the Please Please Me album session, but not selected for inclusion and re-recorded for their second album. It was the first of only two occasions when a song was held over from one Beatles album to appear on the next, "Wait" (left off Help! then included on Rubber Soul) being the other.

History

"Hold Me Tight" was composed principally by Paul McCartney in 1961, and was part of The Beatles stage act until 1963. In their best-selling The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Roy Carr and Tony Tyler call it the album's poorest track, saying it "fails because McCartney's vision of the complete tune obviously sagged somewhat, and his distressingly out-of-tune singing became quite embarrassing after only a few bars."

Indeed, both McCartney and John Lennon had, at one time or another, shared their distaste for the song, and in a 1980s interview with Mark Lewisohn in The Beatles Recording Sessions, McCartney says, "I can't remember much about that one. Certain songs were just 'work' songs, you haven't got much memory of them. That's one of them." In Barry Miles' Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the songwriter calls it "a failed attempt at a single which then became an acceptable album filler."

However, Ian MacDonald redeems it in his book Revolution in the Head, in which he writes: "Play it loud with the bass boosted, and you have an overwhelming motoric rocker strongly redolent of the band's live sound."

McCartney wrote a different song called "Hold Me Tight" for a medley included on his 1973 solo album Red Rose Speedway.

Cover Versions

This song is amongst the least covered of the Beatles' original compositions. The Treasures, a Phil Spector-produced vocal group, recorded the song in 1964, as a single released on Spector's Philles Records. British band Stackridge included a cover version on their 1976 album, Mr Mick. Another cover version was featured near the beginning of the 2007 Beatles-themed film Across the Universe.

Personnel

* Paul McCartney – bass, lead vocal
* John Lennon – rhythm guitar, backing vocal
* George Harrison – lead guitar, backing vocal
* Ringo Starr – drums

Album: With the Beatles
Released: 22 November 1963
Genre: Rock and roll
Length: 2:32
Label: Parlophone
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Producer: George Martin

Wikipedia