Love Me Do

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	John & Paul
Lead Vocal	Paul & John
Recorded	Sep 1962
Length	2:22
Key	G
Noted Takes	18
Producer	George Martin / Ron Richards
Engineer	Norman Smith

Originally released on

Love Me Do (single)

Parlophone — 45-R 4949

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"Love Me Do" is the debut single by the English rock band the Beatles, backed by "P.S. I Love You". When the single was originally released in the United Kingdom on 5 October 1962, it peaked at number 17.

Paul wrote the song aged 16, on the family piano in Forthlin Road, Liverpool. John contributed the harmonica hook (John had bought a chromatic harmonica in Hamburg). It was their debut single. Paul sang lead on the recorded version after George Martin identified a harmonic conflict between John's vocal and harmonica parts. Paul later recalled the uncomfortable spontaneity of this arrangement: "I was suddenly given this… suddenly pushed into it" (Lewisohn 1988, p.6). The song's blues roots were acknowledged by Paul in interview: 'Love Me Do was us trying to do the blues. It came out whiter because it always does' (Lewisohn 1988, p.7).

Recorded three times in 1962: at the 6 June artist test with Pete Best on drums (that tape was destroyed once it was clear nothing from the test would be issued — Lewisohn p.17), on 4 September with Ringo at his first Beatles session, and again on 11 September, when Ron Richards — producing in George Martin's absence — brought in session drummer Andy White and moved Ringo to tambourine. The mapping of versions to releases is the reverse of what many assume: the 4 September Ringo version was on the original UK single (Parlophone 45-R 4949), while the 11 September Andy White version — the one with the tambourine — went on the Please Please Me LP and, from 1963, on all single pressings (Lewisohn p.22). Eighteen takes of the re-make were recorded before one proved satisfactory (Lewisohn p.20). For the full mix-and-master lineage, see the dedicated section below.

Someone else has got to sing 'Love Me Do' because you can't go 'Love Me waahhh'.— George Martin, recalled by Paul McCartney (Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p.6)

George Martin didn't think that Ringo was a very good drummer… Andy White was the kind of professional drummer…— Paul McCartney, interviewed in Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p.6

What’s distinctive

The Beatles’ first single, taped three times in 1962 with three different drummers: Pete Best at the June artist test, Ringo on 4 September, and the session drummer Andy White on 11 September, with Ringo moved to tambourine. The single carried Ringo’s version and the album carried Andy White’s, eighteen takes in, and the tambourine is still the quickest way to tell them apart.^1,2

Recording

The song that got them noticed. Love Me Do was one of four songs the Beatles taped at their EMI artist test on 6 June 1962, alongside Besame Mucho, P.S. I Love You and Ask Me Why, and “it was during ‘Love Me Do’ that Norman Smith pricked up his ears”; the engineer sent for George Martin. Pete Best was on drums that evening. By the time the group came back, he had been dismissed in favour of Ringo, so when the Beatles returned ninety days later for their first proper session, it was with a new drummer and a song they would record twice in one week.^1,2
Backing first, voices second. There was no multitrack to build on. The first proper session “was recorded solely to mono”, and the group set about “recording the musical backing first, with no vocals”. That tape was then played back while they sang, and the combination of the prerecorded music and the live vocals was recorded to a second tape, the process EMI called “Superimposition”. For Love Me Do the backing alone “took 15 takes to get right. Then the vocals were superimposed, and this too took a long time.” The handclaps in the middle-eights went on in the same pass. Later sessions could still be worked the same way, a suitable rhythm track first and vocals after, “as had been done with ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962”.^1,2
A week, a new drummer, and a tambourine. The 4 September recording “really hadn’t proved good enough to satisfy George Martin”. Ron Richards, who produced the return visit on 11 September, was plain about why: “we weren’t happy with the drum sound on the original ‘Love Me Do’,” and “so I booked Andy White for the remake.” P.S. I Love You came first. “The re-make of ‘Love Me Do’ came next, and again Andy White sat in on drums”, with Ringo, deposed on only his second session, on tambourine. It took eighteen takes, and take 18 went to the mono mix the same day.^1,2
Two records under one catalogue number. The single, Parlophone 45-R 4949, came out on 5 October 1962 with Ringo’s version on it: “Clearly, the 11 September version was not regarded as having been a significant improvement after all.” It “rose to 17 in the charts, a healthy debut”. The Andy White take went onto the Please Please Me album, and at the time of the EP The Beatles’ Hits it was decided that future pressings of the single should carry it too. “To ensure this, the master tape of Ringo’s version was destroyed.” The record the public bought changed underneath it, and one instrument gives the game away: “The one without the tambourine is from 4 September, the one with is 11 September.”¹

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road: Studio Two (recording, 4 and 11 Sep 1962; the 4 September afternoon rehearsal was in Studio Three); the 6 Jun 1962 artist test is logged as Studio Two or Three; Studio One, control room only (stereo mixing for the LP, 25 Feb 1963)¹
Tape machines	EMI BTR machines: mono BTR2 and stereo BTR3, the BTR3 convertible to “Twin-Track”. The June artist test went to a mono tape and a Twin-Track tape at once; the 4 September session went solely to mono, with the vocals superimposed tape to tape^1,2
Console	REDD.37: eight inputs, four outputs, two echo sends and returns, battleship grey^1,2
Outboard / monitoring	RS124 compressors (an Altec design modified by EMI) and RS114 limiters; Altec 605A monitors on repackaged Leak TL-25 amplifiers²
Guitars / amps	The group’s 1962 instruments: Rickenbacker 325 Capri and Gretsch Duo Jet electric guitars, two Gibson J-160E acoustic-electrics, Hofner 500/1 bass; Vox AC15 and AC30 amplifiers. Paul’s bass through Ken Townsend’s makeshift rig: Leak preamp, Leak TL12 amplifier, Tannoy speaker (see Studio Notes)^1,2
Drums / percussion	Premier drum kit (1962); tambourine by Ringo on the 11 September re-make; handclaps in the middle-eights, 4 September^1,2

Recording Timeline

6 June 1962 (Wednesday) — artist test, Studio Two or Three, 6.00–8.00pm. P: Ron Richards and George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Chris Neal. Four songs, Besame Mucho, Love Me Do, P.S. I Love You and Ask Me Why, takes unknown, with Pete Best on drums. The test was recorded simultaneously to a mono tape and a Twin-Track tape. Nothing from it was to be issued, and “the tapes – two quarter-inch reels – were destroyed.” Paul’s bass amplifier gave trouble that evening, and the repair outlived the session (see Studio Notes).^1,2
4 September 1962 (Tuesday) — recording and mono mixing, Studio Two, 7.00–10.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: unknown. The group flew down from Liverpool Airport in the morning, checked into a small Chelsea hotel and arrived at Abbey Road shortly after lunch for a vigorous rehearsal in Studio Three, with the photographer Dezo Hoffmann in attendance. The evening session recorded How Do You Do It, a song George Martin had hand-picked for them, and Love Me Do, logged as takes 1–15+: the backing first, then the vocals superimposed, with handclaps added to the middle-eights of both songs. Mono mixes followed, Love Me Do from an unknown take number, and an acetate of the two titles was cut for Martin and Epstein.^1,2
11 September 1962 (Tuesday) — recording and mono mixing, Studio Two, 10.00am–1.00pm. P: Ron Richards. E: Norman Smith. 2E: unknown. P.S. I Love You, takes 1–10, then the Love Me Do re-make, takes 1–18, both with Andy White on drums; the session also tried Please Please Me (takes unknown). Mono mixes from take 10 of P.S. I Love You and take 18 of Love Me Do. “It took 18 takes before it was perfect.” George Martin was not producing; in Norman Smith’s account, “George sent in Ron Richards to produce.”^1,2
5 October 1962 (Friday) — UK single release. Parlophone 45-R 4949, Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You, carrying “the version with Ringo on drums, after all”. It rose to 17 in the charts, with sales heavily concentrated in the Liverpool area. The 250 advance copies made for radio stations and the press “carried a mis-spelling, corrected before regular copies were made, showing McArtney instead of McCartney.”^1,2
25 February 1963 (Monday) — stereo mixing, Studio One (control room only), 2.30–5.45pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: A.B. Lincoln. For the stereo Please Please Me LP, Love Me Do was mixed “from 11 September 1962 mono remix”. With no second track to spread across the picture, the album’s stereo is a mock stereo made from the mono.^1,4
22 March 1963 (Friday) — UK LP release. Please Please Me, in mono, with the 11 September version of Love Me Do; the stereo LP, Parlophone PCS 3042, followed on Friday 26 April 1963.¹
6 September 1963 (Friday) — EP release. The Beatles’ Hits, Parlophone GEP 8880, with the Andy White version. The swap took place here: it was decided that future pressings of the single “should all have this take”, and the master tape of Ringo’s version was destroyed to make sure of it.¹

Ringo didn’t play drums at all that evening… On ‘Love Me Do’ he played the tambourine.— Ron Richards¹

Studio Notes

Why Paul sings the title line. The arrangement changed in the studio. As Paul remembers it, John was singing the line and answering it on harmonica until George Martin heard the problem: “there’s a crossover there. Someone else has got to sing ‘Love Me Do’ because you can’t go ‘Love Me waahhh’… So, Paul, will you sing ‘Love Me Do’!” Geoff Emerick saw Paul singing the lead instead of John as “a decision of expediency, since Lennon obviously couldn’t play harmonica and sing at the same time.” The two memories differ on the harmonica itself. In Emerick’s it was George Martin’s idea on the day: “Don’t you play a bit of harmonica, John? Can you give me something bluesy?”^1,3
“Us trying to do the blues.” Paul’s own verdict on the song is short: “‘Love Me Do’ was us trying to do the blues. It came out whiter because it always does.” Allan Kozinn’s reading hears the same tension. Listen closely and “a peculiar hybrid comes into focus”: the song “was meant to be bluesy, and it is to a degree”, but it is dressed in “vocal harmonies in thirds, fifths and octaves” with an “almost medieval sound”. The harmonica carries the blues half of the record and the two voices carry the other.^1,5
The drumming question. Every account of the September sessions comes back to the drums. On 4 September, in Emerick’s memory, “Ringo was having difficulty maintaining a steady beat, and Paul was starting to get annoyed with him”; George Martin “did his best to prop them up over the talkback” but in private with Norman Smith “criticized the unsteady drumming.” Norman Smith’s own recollection agrees: “I’ve a feeling that Paul wasn’t too happy with Ringo’s drumming, and felt that it could be better… I remember too that there was a fair bit of editing to be done.” Paul put it more simply, that “George Martin didn’t think that Ringo was a very good drummer”, while Andy White “was the kind of professional drummer that we weren’t really used to”. One point is in conflict. Norman Smith remembers the 4 September session ending without a master: “we didn’t actually finish up with a master take at the end of it.” The session log shows a mono mix of Love Me Do made that night, and that mix is the one on the first single.^1,2,3,4
Ringo on tambourine. On 11 September the decision was put to Ringo directly: “I’d like you to play tambourine on this, Ringo; we’ll stick with Andy on the drums.” Ron Richards remembers him waiting “quietly in the control box, next to me” before he was asked to play. The part worked. To Emerick, Ringo’s “tambourine work was impressive”, and it “meshed nicely with each of White’s snare hits”, while Paul “sang the lead vocal with much greater confidence” than he had a week before. One detail of the day does not fit the paperwork: Richards recalls that “Ringo didn’t play drums at all that evening”, but the session sheet gives 10.00am to 1.00pm.^1,3
Tape to tape, not track to track. In 1962 there were two ways to record: songs went “to either Twin-Track tape or straight to mono. Any overdubbing was accomplished via tape-to-tape ‘superimposition’.” Twin-Track was a stereo BTR3 converted by changing its headstack, “the format preferred by George Martin for most of the Beatles’ work during this period”. The June test ran to both at once; the first proper session went “solely to mono”. That is why there is no stereo mix of Love Me Do in the modern sense: every stereo issue of the song is the mono made into stereo (see Releases).^1,2,4
The desk and the machines. Ken Townsend’s memory of the equipment is of something “extremely primitive compared to today’s high technology”: a console with “10 inputs and 2 outputs, with big knobs and levers. Battleship grey was the colour.” The tape machines “were BTR (British Tape Recorder) models, great hefty jobs”, originally green but painted “battleship grey to match the consoles.” The two accounts of the desk differ: Townsend recalls ten inputs and two outputs, while the REDD.37’s documented layout is eight inputs, four outputs and two echo sends and returns, with two input channels able to take an extra signal. Its compressor was the RS124, “an Altec design heavily modified and renamed by EMI”, beside the RS114 limiter, “an EMI design that Norman Smith particularly favoured”, and the monitors were Altec 605A speakers on repackaged Leak TL-25 amplifiers.^1,2
The bass rig from the audition. At the June test Paul’s bass amplifier was the trouble. Ken Townsend “quickly soldered a 1/4″ input jack onto a spare Point 1 preamp”, ran it through a Leak TL12 amplifier to a Tannoy speaker, and “the troublesome distortion and rattling were eliminated”. The lash-up “performed quite admirably as a bass rig – so well, in fact, that the Beatles would use it repeatedly in sessions through much of 1962 and ’63.” Both September versions of Love Me Do were made inside that window.^1,2
Lost tapes, and how two of them came back. EMI kept little. After the June test the reels were destroyed, and after the September sessions “EMI practice at this time was not to keep the session master once mixing was complete”; the mono master of Ringo’s version went the same way. Two of the three recordings returned anyway. A copy of the Pete Best version, “this otherwise lost recording”, turned up in 1994, on a private reel or, by another report, on a disc found in George Martin’s home, and went onto Anthology 1. Ringo’s version was rebuilt from vinyl: its reissues are copies made from a disc in 1980, 1982 and 2009. The sources divide on when the single changed. Lewisohn dates the switch to the Andy White take to 1963, at the time of The Beatles’ Hits; Brennan finds it replacing Ringo’s version on single releases from 1976 to 1982, and notes that “Beginning in 1976, it began to appear on singles and not just on the LP.” Emerick’s memory sides with the earlier date: the Ringo rendition “only appeared on a very few first singles”.^1,3,4

Releases

Two different recordings have shared the single’s catalogue number, and a third surfaced in 1995. Every release is mono at heart; the stereo issues are the 11 September mono made into stereo.

1962 UK single — Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You (5 October 1962, Parlophone 45-R 4949) — the 4 September mono: Ringo on drums, and no tambourine. Its mix master was later destroyed, so this version does not return until the 1980s, and then copied from a disc.
1963 UK LP — Please Please Me (22 March 1963, Parlophone PMC 1202; stereo PCS 3042, 26 April 1963) — the 11 September mono: Andy White on drums, Ringo on tambourine. The stereo LP carries a mock stereo made from that mono on 25 February 1963, not a stereo mix, and the same mock stereo is on The Beatles 1962–1966 (1973). The mono went on to later pressings of the single, the 1987 CD of the album and the 1988 CD single.
1964 US issues — Introducing… The Beatles (Vee-Jay VJLP 1062 / VJSR 1062) and the Tollie 9008 single — the Andy White version: the mono on the single and the mono LP, the 1963 mock stereo on the stereo LP.
1965 US LP — The Early Beatles (Capitol T-2309 / ST-2309) — the stereo copy is the 1963 mock stereo; the mono copy is not the original mono but a mono Capitol made from that mock stereo in 1965. Both are on The Capitol Albums, Vol. 2.
1980 US LP — Rarities (Capitol SHAL-12060) — Ringo’s 4 September version back in circulation, as a mono copy taken from a vinyl disc because the tape no longer existed.
1988 CD — Past Masters Volume One (1988) — Ringo’s version again, from a 1982 copy of a vinyl disc; with the album version still the common one, this made the single version easy to find.
1995 CD — Anthology 1 (Apple 34445-2) — the 6 June 1962 artist test, in mono, with Pete Best on drums: the one EMI recording of the song with its first drummer.
2009 CD — Mono Masters (EMI 99463 2) — Ringo’s version from a new 2009 copy of a vinyl disc.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 6–7, 16–18, 20, 22, 28, 32, 200.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 348, 350–351, 359.
Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), chs. 3–4.
Joseph Brennan, Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations (rev. edn.), “Love Me Do” [outtake], [1] and [2].
Allan Kozinn, The Beatles (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), 16.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Love Me Do?

John and Paul, and it carries the standard Lennon/McCartney credit.

Who sings lead on Love Me Do?

Paul sings the title line, with John. George Martin gave Paul the line because John could not sing it and answer it on harmonica at the same time.^1,3

When was Love Me Do recorded?

Three times in 1962 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road: at the artist test on 6 June with Pete Best, on 4 September with Ringo, and on 11 September with Andy White on drums and Ringo on tambourine.¹

How many takes did Love Me Do require?

The 11 September re-make, the album version, took 18 takes. On 4 September the backing alone took 15 takes to get right.¹

Which version of Love Me Do is on the single?

The first pressings of Parlophone 45-R 4949 carry Ringo’s 4 September version, with no tambourine. The Andy White version, with the tambourine, is on Please Please Me and on later single pressings; the sources differ on whether the change came in 1963 or 1976.^1,4

Is there a recording of Love Me Do with Pete Best?

Yes. The 6 June 1962 artist test was thought lost when its reels were destroyed, but a copy turned up in 1994 and was issued on Anthology 1.^1,4

On this page

Story Section status: Outdated

What’s distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked