This convention of the polite studio style of the early ’60s was about to vanish under the impact of loose-swinging drummers like Starr and the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts (to reappear around 1980 under the automated auspices of the drum-machine). Martin, he recalled, decided that “Love Me Do” needed remaking with a session drummer because Starr had failed to ‘lock in’ his bass-drum with the bass guitar. (The legend is that he was unsteady, hurrying into the choruses.) According to Abbey Road’s general manager Ken Townsend, McCartney was as dissatisfied as George Martin with Starr’s approach, though when questioned by Mark Lewisohn 25 years later the song’s author put a different spin on it.

There was still, though, something bothering him about “Love Me Do”: Starr’s drumming. Texan singer Bruce Channel’s plaintive “ Hey! Baby,” a hit in Britain that spring, had featured similar harmonica but, apart from that, nothing else on the market sounded anything like it. 4, 1962 in Abbey Road’s Studio 3, “Love Me Do” had to wait on Parlophone’s preferred choice “ How Do You Do It?” before being attempted by an understandably jittery group.* (Unused to headphones, they were stiff with nerves and took fifteen takes to get it right.) Both songs were considered for release as the Beatles’ debut single but, during the two hours it had taken to make, Martin had formed a hunch about “Love Me Do.” Its vernacular title, dockside harmonica, and open harmonies had a freshness that suited the group and seemed intriguingly hard to categorize. One of half a dozen songs rehearsed during the afternoon of Sept. The lyric is perfunctory and, where pop numbers of this period classically revolved around three common chords, “Love Me Do” mostly makes do with two (G and C). Unsure of how to finish it, he showed it to his friend John Lennon, who may have contributed the rudimentary middle eight.

Made up while ‘sagging off’ (playing truant) from the Liverpool Institute in 1958, “ Love Me Do” was one of 16-year-old Paul McCartney’s earliest songs.

Love me do the beatles progress