EARly beatles songs
INTRODUCTION
The Lennon-McCartney catalogue is world-famous, and millions of people are familiar the with their songs, through the recordings made for EMI. Books like Revolution In The Head have catalogued them all thoroughly – but John and Paul had been writing songs like these for years before they had their big break. These very early songwriting efforts are not so well known, but deserve our attention.
So, what did they come up with before success beckoned? When did the earlier songs arrive? What became of them? And can they still be heard? The answers are right here, on this website.
In the year-by-year pages, we look at the early songs written by the Beatles, which specifically means those composed (or in some cases begun, but not completed) before the start of 1963 – prior to the onset of Beatle fame. Incredibly, we can identify more than 50 songs written or part-written prior to the group’s first hit, which survive with varying degrees of evidence.
Some of the originals we encounter are lost to time; Lennon’s first (“Calypso Rock”) we have just a title for. His second we know of only through one line of the lyric. But fortunately many more survive, and it would be quite wrong to think that these early attempts were all lemons. Some readers may be interested to learn that some of the Beatles’ more famous numbers date right back to the start of Lennon and McCartney’s writing careers, some of them even during their school days.
It is surprising and impressive in equal measure to consider the age of the songwriting Beatles when they penned some of the future hits. Lennon was 17 when he wrote one future top 10 song (“Hello Little Girl”, as recorded by the Fourmost). McCartney was an accomplished songwriter at an even earlier age, and was a mere 14 when he created the music for “When I’m Sixty-Four”. He also came up with “World Without Love” at the age of about 17, which would later become a UK chart-topper in the hands of Peter And Gordon – and there are several other examples too.
Retrospect is a fine thing, and it is curious now to think that despite their obvious talents, both Lennon and McCartney were unsure of their writing skills before they reached stardom. Partly this was because of context; performers generally did not write their own songs before the Beatles and Bob Dylan came along (with a few exceptions of course). More keen to give their audiences professionally written material than to risk their own, they uncharacteristically followed the established pattern, seldom presenting originals on stage. As a consequence, their songwriting was almost a separate activity to their performing, and inevitably several early songs got left to one side, incomplete, and in no apparent need for polishing off.
The songs are not unconnected to the group’s other activities of course, and so we try to view them in their correct time and place; each song is set in its historical context by a running narrative of the group’s activities, which outlines every new stage of their development.
Note on authorship: As we know, songs written by Lennon or McCartney during the Beatles years were automatically given a joint copyright. However we are more interested in who came up with each song (and only a few are 50-50) and so rather than provide a joint credit every time, we cite the Beatle who is most responsible for the creation of a given song. This isn’t to say Lennon or McCartney’s songs were necessarily composed by one of them alone, just that one figure normally looms noticeably larger than the other. (“I Saw Her Standing There” is a good example. The song was drafted by McCartney alone, and fleshed out while he was visiting London with his girlfriend. Although Lennon later helped him finish it up, it remains very much McCartney’s baby – and so we name it as his song.)
KEY RESOURCES
Much of the information on this site is secondary, since many of the early songs have been researched by others over the years, with information published in a variety of places. This site is an attempt to organise the data into something complete and meaningful on its own terms, so although we rely on other ‘Beatle-ologists’, we can sometimes correct errors – and by looking at the information as a whole, discover previously unseen patterns.
Special mention is due to two Beatle authors: Walter Everett, whose two-volume The Beatles As Musicians was probably the first time this early work was discussed in any length in one place (his details are at times sketchy, since more information has come to light since the books were published); and Mark Lewisohn, whose The Beatles: Tune In is easily the best commentary on the group’s early days. He mentions many of the early compositions, but tends to treat them in passing, while the broader narrative of the Beatles’ story flows along. (In the following text, mention is repeatedly made of Everett and Lewisohn. These are references to those books, unless otherwise stated.)
Besides a number of well-researched Beatle tomes, we are fortunate to have a few important tapes and documents, preserving the group’s early compositions in one way or another. These include:
All of these are significant in their own right, since each one provides evidence of songs otherwise not known.
Not everything survived the years, of course. Lennon and McCartney initially kept an exercise book, jotting down all the songs they came up with as they went. How frustrating that this is not in the public domain, as it could be packed with songs otherwise unknown (McCartney still has it, but has never revealed its contents in any detail). There is also rumoured to be a tape from 1962 with yet more originals on, although this has never surfaced and looks like it never will.
So, what follows is a discussion of everything we know from the songwriting pens of John, Paul, George and Ringo (for they all appear on the radar) before they were famous. We start, of course, at the very beginning.
The Lennon-McCartney catalogue is world-famous, and millions of people are familiar the with their songs, through the recordings made for EMI. Books like Revolution In The Head have catalogued them all thoroughly – but John and Paul had been writing songs like these for years before they had their big break. These very early songwriting efforts are not so well known, but deserve our attention.
So, what did they come up with before success beckoned? When did the earlier songs arrive? What became of them? And can they still be heard? The answers are right here, on this website.
In the year-by-year pages, we look at the early songs written by the Beatles, which specifically means those composed (or in some cases begun, but not completed) before the start of 1963 – prior to the onset of Beatle fame. Incredibly, we can identify more than 50 songs written or part-written prior to the group’s first hit, which survive with varying degrees of evidence.
Some of the originals we encounter are lost to time; Lennon’s first (“Calypso Rock”) we have just a title for. His second we know of only through one line of the lyric. But fortunately many more survive, and it would be quite wrong to think that these early attempts were all lemons. Some readers may be interested to learn that some of the Beatles’ more famous numbers date right back to the start of Lennon and McCartney’s writing careers, some of them even during their school days.
It is surprising and impressive in equal measure to consider the age of the songwriting Beatles when they penned some of the future hits. Lennon was 17 when he wrote one future top 10 song (“Hello Little Girl”, as recorded by the Fourmost). McCartney was an accomplished songwriter at an even earlier age, and was a mere 14 when he created the music for “When I’m Sixty-Four”. He also came up with “World Without Love” at the age of about 17, which would later become a UK chart-topper in the hands of Peter And Gordon – and there are several other examples too.
Retrospect is a fine thing, and it is curious now to think that despite their obvious talents, both Lennon and McCartney were unsure of their writing skills before they reached stardom. Partly this was because of context; performers generally did not write their own songs before the Beatles and Bob Dylan came along (with a few exceptions of course). More keen to give their audiences professionally written material than to risk their own, they uncharacteristically followed the established pattern, seldom presenting originals on stage. As a consequence, their songwriting was almost a separate activity to their performing, and inevitably several early songs got left to one side, incomplete, and in no apparent need for polishing off.
The songs are not unconnected to the group’s other activities of course, and so we try to view them in their correct time and place; each song is set in its historical context by a running narrative of the group’s activities, which outlines every new stage of their development.
Note on authorship: As we know, songs written by Lennon or McCartney during the Beatles years were automatically given a joint copyright. However we are more interested in who came up with each song (and only a few are 50-50) and so rather than provide a joint credit every time, we cite the Beatle who is most responsible for the creation of a given song. This isn’t to say Lennon or McCartney’s songs were necessarily composed by one of them alone, just that one figure normally looms noticeably larger than the other. (“I Saw Her Standing There” is a good example. The song was drafted by McCartney alone, and fleshed out while he was visiting London with his girlfriend. Although Lennon later helped him finish it up, it remains very much McCartney’s baby – and so we name it as his song.)
KEY RESOURCES
Much of the information on this site is secondary, since many of the early songs have been researched by others over the years, with information published in a variety of places. This site is an attempt to organise the data into something complete and meaningful on its own terms, so although we rely on other ‘Beatle-ologists’, we can sometimes correct errors – and by looking at the information as a whole, discover previously unseen patterns.
Special mention is due to two Beatle authors: Walter Everett, whose two-volume The Beatles As Musicians was probably the first time this early work was discussed in any length in one place (his details are at times sketchy, since more information has come to light since the books were published); and Mark Lewisohn, whose The Beatles: Tune In is easily the best commentary on the group’s early days. He mentions many of the early compositions, but tends to treat them in passing, while the broader narrative of the Beatles’ story flows along. (In the following text, mention is repeatedly made of Everett and Lewisohn. These are references to those books, unless otherwise stated.)
Besides a number of well-researched Beatle tomes, we are fortunate to have a few important tapes and documents, preserving the group’s early compositions in one way or another. These include:
- List of songs (1959) – Paul and George's current repertoire, written out.
- The Forthlin Road Tapes (1960) – home recordings containing many original songs.
- McCartney’s letter (1960) – penned to a journalist and listing several of the group’s compositions.
- The Get Back recordings (1969) – a bulky audio document in which many Lennon-McCartney oldies are captured.
All of these are significant in their own right, since each one provides evidence of songs otherwise not known.
Not everything survived the years, of course. Lennon and McCartney initially kept an exercise book, jotting down all the songs they came up with as they went. How frustrating that this is not in the public domain, as it could be packed with songs otherwise unknown (McCartney still has it, but has never revealed its contents in any detail). There is also rumoured to be a tape from 1962 with yet more originals on, although this has never surfaced and looks like it never will.
So, what follows is a discussion of everything we know from the songwriting pens of John, Paul, George and Ringo (for they all appear on the radar) before they were famous. We start, of course, at the very beginning.