Beatles – "Love Me Do" (1964)

Someone to love

Somebody new

Someone to love

Someone like you

It’s February 1 . . . which means that it’s time – drum roll, please! – for the first installment of the 2021 edition of 28 POSTS IN 28 DAYS!

This year’s 28 POSTS IN 28 DAYS! will be a little different than those in previous years because it will actually consist of only 12 posts in 28 days – there will be a post every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday this month instead of a post every day.  

Don’t blame moi for that – blame this pesky coronavirus, of course.  Despite the fact that 2 or 3 lines is 100% made in the good ol’ U. S. of A., the 2 or 3 lines supply chain has been severely disrupted by the virus, making it simply impossible for us to produce one quality blog post per day for an entire month.

A simplified schematic of the
2 or 3 lines supply chain

Of course, three posts a week is a full 50% more than the two posts a week 2 or 3 lines usually produces!  And I’m sure you’ll agree that a 50% increase in production is quite an accomplishment in the middle of a pandemic!!  In fact, it’s damn close to miraculous!!!

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I’m not one to complain, but I’m a little bitter that despite our lavish contributions to his 2016 and his 2020 campaigns, that damned old Donald Trump didn’t do diddly-squat to help 2 or 3 lines out during these unprecedented and challenging times.  

I’m still waiting to get a response to my urgent request that the government invoke the Defense Production Act to ensure that my wildly popular little blog has guaranteed access to yttrium and other rare earths, N95 masks, low dead space syringes, and other vital blog-production materials.  I expect to get that response when HELL FREEZES OVER, or perhaps a day or two earlier.

Until then, I want to give a big shout-out to all the essential workers at 2 or 3 lines, who are wearing masks, working from home, and soldiering on.  

I expect that by next February, we will have achieved herd immunity and things will be back to normal – the new normal, that is.  

If so, 28 POSTS IN 28 DAYS! will return to its once-a-day schedule instead of the once-every-two-or-three-days schedule we’ll be following this February.

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28 POSTS IN 28 DAYS! always has a theme, and this year’s theme is early Beatles records – more specifically, early Beatles recordings of John Lennon-Paul McCartney songs.

Despite the fact that I’ve been listening to Beatles records since before I hit puberty – which was a very long time ago indeed – I never realized until now what lazy songwriters Lennon and McCartney were back in the early days of Beatlemania.  

Back in ’64 and ’65, John and Paul really emphasized quantity over quality when it came to cranking out hit songs.

I think I’m qualified to make that judgment because I am a pretty lazy writer myself.  As you regular readers of 2 or 3 lines know, I’ve been emphasizing quantity over quality for years now – n’est-ce pas?

Not necessarily!

We don’t believe in wasting time on 2 or 3 lines, so we’re starting 28 POSTS IN 28 DAYS! off with what is perhaps the laziest Lennon-McCartney song of all time.

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Let’s start with the song’s title, “Love Me Do” (which probably should be punctuated as “Love Me, Do”).

Here’s a little colloquy about that title from an Italian-language website:

Q: I have a question for you. It is about the song “Love Me Do” by the Beatles.  I know perfectly well the meaning of “love me” but what about “do”?  I don’t understand.  Thanks!  Paolo

A: This famous song has a strange grammatical structure that you wouldn’t normally find in English. Here “do” is a rafforzativo [which is an Italian term for a word or phrase that intensifies or strengthens a statement] – like “please” or “go on.”  The Beatles undoubtedly added it for musical reasons and because it made for a better rhyme.  This often happens in songs but not usually in the title.  The basic meaning is “love me, please.”  

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Here’s the first verse of “Love Me Do”:

Love, love me do

You know I love you

I’ll always be true

So please, love me do

The Beatles doubled up on the rafforzativo in the first and last lines of that verse.  (The last line is essentially “So please, love me, please.”)

You probably remember this line from “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” the 1965 Herman’s Hermits hit: “Second verse, same as the first.”

The same could be said of “Love Me Do” – the second verse is the same as the first.

As is the third verse.

And the fourth verse.

That’s right – the Beatles repeat the verse quoted above no fewer than FOUR times in “Love Me Do.”

It’s bad enough to record a song that only has one verse repeated four times.  It’s even worse when that verse’s lines are trite and unoriginal crap.  

Paul McCartney at age 16

The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia says that the verse was written by Paul McCartney when he was 16.  That sounds about right. 

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There’s a bridge (or “middle eight”) – apparently written by John Lennon – that comes after the verse is repeated the first time:  

Someone to love

Somebody new

Someone to love

Someone like you

(What should the over-under be on how long it took to write that?  Ten minutes?  Five minutes?)

The bridge was later played as a harmonica solo (by Lennon) between the third and fourth reiterations of the verse.

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Here’s what Paul McCartney had to say about “Love Me Do”:

“Love Me Do” was completely co-written. . . . It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea.  

(Amen to that.)

Lennon told a different story:

“Love Me Do” is Paul's song.  He wrote it when he was a teenager.  Let me think, I might have helped on the middle eight, I couldn’t swear to it.  I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way way before we were songwriters.

(I’m reminded of the old saying, “Success has many fathers, while failure is an option.”)

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The Beatles recorded “Love Me Do” with three different drummers in 1962 – on June 6 with Pete Best, on September 4 with Ringo Starr (who had replaced Best as the Beatles’ drummer only days before), and on September 11 with studio drummer Andy White.   

The late Andy White

Producer George Martin brought in White because he wasn’t happy with Ringo’s drumming.  He did allow Ringo to play the tambourine on that recording.  

I’m not crazy about White’s drumming, but I’m not crazy about the “Love Me Do” recording in general.  To say it is somewhat lacking in energy is a major understatement.

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“Love Me Do” was the Beatles’ debut UK single.  It was released October 1962 and peaked at #17 on the UK single charts.

“Love Me Do” wasn’t released in the U.S. until April 1964, when Beatlemania was in full swing.  It reached the #1 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100” the week of my 12th birthday – the fourth of the six Beatles singles that reached #1 that year.  

The Beatles would eventually have twenty #1 hit singles in the U.S.  I have to rank “Love Me Do” as the weakest of those twenty records.

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Click here to listen to “Love Me Do.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: