The Beatles Song That Felt Like a ‘Very Big Step’ Because of a ‘Strange Chord’
In 1963, the songs The Beatles released laid the groundwork to establish them as the biggest band in the world. They had a handful of hits that year that completely changed their lives. While they were proud of each release, Paul McCartney said one of these in particular felt like a big step forward for the group. He shared how the introduction of a chord made him feel like they were growing as artists.
Paul McCartney said 1 early Beatles song felt like a step forward for the band
In 1963, The Beatles released their debut album Please Please Me. For years before this, though, McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison had performed together. Lennon and McCartney had long been writing songs and had amassed a catalog of music.
“We’d had a fair bit of practice writing over the years, though our legendary ‘first one hundred’ was probably in reality less than half that amount of songs,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “‘Please Please Me’ was more John than me; I didn’t have such a hand in it. ‘PS I Love You’ was more me.”
He pointed to one song that seemed to signal their development as songwriters.
“‘From Me To You’ was both of us, very much together,” he said. “(I remember being very pleased with the middle eight because there was a strange chord in it, and it went into a minor: ‘I’ve got arms that long…’ We thought that was a very big step.)”
John Lennon shared his memories of writing the Beatles song
Lennon recalled writing the song with McCartney while traveling on tour. He said it came together surprisingly quickly.
“The night Paul and I wrote ‘From Me To You,’ we were on the Helen Shapiro tour, on the coach, traveling from York to Shrewsbury,” he said. “We weren’t taking ourselves seriously — just fooling about on the guitar — when we began to get a good melody line, and we really started to work at it. Before that journey was over, we’d completed the lyric, everything. I think the first line was mine and we took it from there.”
Lennon said they took inspiration from their surroundings on the bus.
“What puzzled us was why we’d thought of a name like ‘From Me To You,’” he said. “It had me thinking when I picked up the NME to see how we were doing in the charts. Then I realized — we’d got the inspiration from reading a copy on the coach. Paul and I had been talking about one of the letters in the ‘From You To Us’ column.”
George Harrison shared why ‘From Me to You’ was important for The Beatles
“From Me to You” was a sign of Lennon and McCartney’s growth as songwriters. According to Harrison, it was also a sign that The Beatles could be counted on to consistently produce hits.
“We had four hits in 1963,” he said. “Records were going gold before they had even been released — all kinds of things were happening. The third single ‘From Me To You’ was really important, because that put the stamp on it. We’d had the first one, ‘Love Me Do’, which did well. Then they let us back in the studio and we did ‘Please Please Me,’ then we had the album, and then ‘From Me To You,’ the success of which assured us some fame.”
