Beatles Countdown #96 – P.S. I Love You
Feb 26
1960s paul mccartney, the beatles No Comments
Back to McCartney for a second as we roll out number 96, “P.S. I Love You!”
As the B-Side to their first single “Love Me Do,” “P.S. I Love You” was a very big historical song for the band with lots of fun information about it. To start off, session drummer Andy White actually drums on the track instead of Ringo Starr. Ringo didn’t impress the producers in his first actual session with the band after replacing Pete Best so the hammer had to come down. He simply plays the maracas in what had to have been a seriously embarrassing musical moment. It seriously couldn’t have been the last for the guy who wrote “Don’t Pass Me By” though. To his defense though, the drums do lack the distinctive heavy drum beat that their early songs had, instead trading it for a light, brisk beat. I don’t know which would have sounded better, but the song does stand out differently in The Beatles’ early catalogue for this very reason. Speaking of somewhat musical prowess, Paul liked to plug in random chords just to show off his then-talent in the early days which gives us a very brief, but weird sounding C#7 chord in the opening. Paul would come to love his 7th chords later on extensively so get used to them. Another fun informational piece is that the band played the song as part of their audition for Parlophone Records in June, 1962. Well, now I wonder if Lennon “hoping to pass the audition” was an attempt at being cute or an attempt at cutting down Paul’s song. Hmm…
The song was relegated to B-Side status because of a popular 1936 song which was covered a lot throughout the years & producer Ron Richards (subbing for “the fifth Beatle” George Martin) wanted to avoid confusion. It was eventually put on their debut album Please Please Me a couple of months later so at least the song didn’t get shoved in a box & forgotten about. While always speculated to be about his then-current-flame Dot Rhone, Paul insists it was just a song about a love letter. Lennon would insist it was Paul just trying to emulate the “Solider Boy” sound The Shirelles had found success with at the time. Not a bad group to try and emulate if I do say so myself. Reviewers over the years have remarked that even though it’s a song about a letter, the P.S. could be a very subtle hint to “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly. Paul idolized Buddy Holly so much so that he bought his entire catalogue of music years later. Yes, he bought someone else’s songs, but when Michael Jackson bought his songs, he called for a foul. Hypocrisy? You decide. But anyway, yeah, that’d be a cool thought to have, but I doubt he was thinking about Buddy Holly when he wrote the lyric/song title. He probably thought, “Hey, this song is about a letter – how about P.S. I Love You as the title?” Yep, that makes way more sense. A Shirelles song or a Buddy Holly song? Give it a listen & tell me yourself.
Song: P.S. I Love You
Album: Please Please Me
Year: 1963
To download, right-click here and select “Save Target As.”
Or watch this:
Loading ...
{Comments}