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TL;DR:

  • John Lennon didn’t remember how The Beatles’ “Hold Me Tight” came together.
  • John was not a fan of the track and he said he never cared about it.
  • Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ “Hold Me Tight” “was a failed attempt at a single.”
The Beatles' John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney with a microphone
The Beatles’ John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney | Keystone Features/Getty Images

John Lennon dismissed The Beatles‘ “Hold Me Tight” from the album With the Beatles. He didn’t care about the track one way or the other. Subsequently, Paul McCartney revealed “Hold Me Tight” was supposed to be a single but it didn’t make the cut.

John Lennon didn’t totally remember how The Beatles’ ‘Hold Me Tight’ came together and he didn’t care about it

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes an interview from 1980. During the interview, John was asked about “Hold Me Tight.” “That was Paul’s,” he recalled.

“Maybe I stuck some bits in there — I don’t remember,” he said. “It was a pretty poor song and I was never really interested in it either way.” While John had a lot to say about the likes of “Come Together” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” he barely discussed “Hold Me Tight.”

Paul McCartney said the song wasn’t very good but it came from a time when The Beatles were making good music

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed his recollection of “Hold Me Tight.” “When we first started it was all singles and we were always trying to write singles,” he said. “That’s why you get lots of these 2-minute 30 seconds songs; they all came out the same length. ‘Hold Me Tight’ was a failed attempt at a single which then became an acceptable album filler.”

Paul elaborated on what The Beatles were like around the time of the creation of “Hold Me Tight.” “The thing about The Beatles is it wasn’t vulgar,” he said. “We were actually very good. It was like being in an art group, it was being in an association with a few artistic friends. That was the kind of underlying feeling we had after having been in Hamburg.”

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How ‘Hold Me Tight’ performed on the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom

“Hold Me Tight” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on the album With the Beatles. The album reached No. 179 on the Billboard 200 for a single week.

According to The Official Charts Company, “Hold Me Tight” did not chart in the United Kingdom either. On the other hand, With the Beatles peaked at No. 1 for 21 weeks in the U.K. The album spent a total of 50 weeks on the chart.

“Hold Me Tight” inspired a handful of covers. The Treasures, a group that worked with Phil Spector, recorded the song, as did Stackridge. In addition, Evan Rachel Wood covered it for the Fab Four jukebox musical Across the Universe.

“Hold Me Tight” never became a single but Paul saw it as “acceptable album filler.”

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