Judy Lockhart-Smith, then George Martin’s secretary and now his wife, remembers being very impressed by Brian Epstein at their first meeting. ‘He had a very nice coat and was well mannered and well spoken, not the usual sort of Charing Cross Road manager.’
George was also favourably impressed. ‘But I wasn’t particularly knocked out by what he played me. I didn’t think a great deal of the songs or the singers. But I did think they produced an interesting sound. I said I’d give them a recording test.’
Brian had gone away ecstatic, but to George it was just another would-be recording group. He was so keen to find a good new group, he was giving tests to a great many.
‘I was originally thinking of using them as a backing group with a named lead singer, like Cliff Richard and the Shadows. I desperately wanted my own Cliff. That was how my mind was working at the beginning, looking for the possibilities of one of them being the lead singer. When I met them, I soon realized that would never work.’
George met them for the first time on 6 June 1962, when he gave them their recording test at EMI’s Number Three studio in St John’s Wood. This was the time Brian sent him the new list of suggested numbers.
‘I found them very attractive people. I liked being with them, which was funny, I suppose, as they were so insignificant and I was so significant. It shouldn’t really have mattered to me whether they liked me or not, but I was pleased they seemed to. I discovered that John was a fan of Peter Sellers and the Goon records I’d produced.’
George chose only three or four numbers from Brian’s list, including ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘PS I Love You’. He thinks it must only have been an early version of ‘Love Me Do’, because the song itself didn’t knock him out. But he again liked their sound and their personalities. ‘I thought, I can’t lose anything if I sign them up, although I had no idea what to do with them or which songs they could record.’
He was still busy with other records, much more important to him at the time, such as an LP of ‘The Establishment’, London’s first, but short-lived, satirical night club. This is when the long wait for the Beatles began, during which time Pete Best was sacked. George Martin was taking his time over fixing a date for the Beatles because he still wasn’t sure what he would let them record, whether he could chance them doing something of their own, or whether he should get a songwriter to do one for them.
At long last, on 11 September 1962, he brought them down to London to record their first British record, ‘Love Me Do’, with, on the B side, ‘PS I Love You’.
‘I chose “Love Me Do” as the best of the bunch in the end. It was John’s harmonica that gave it its appeal.’
George Martin had heard that Pete Best had gone and they’d got a new drummer. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He decided to hire a really experienced session drummer called Andy White and have him all ready, just in case. He told Brian this, but Ringo wasn’t told.
Before they started the session, George Martin explained to them what he was trying to do. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you don’t like,’ said George Martin.
‘Well, for a start,’ said George Harrison, ‘I don’t like your tie.’ This was a half-serious joke, and has been recalled many times since, but it didn’t go down all that well with George Martin. It was, in fact, a brand new tie, which he was particularly proud of. It was black with red horses on and came from Liberty’s. But everyone laughed, and the session proceeded.
It was the first ever recording session for Ringo and he was far from confident. He would have been even more scared, if he’d realized from the beginning, which he didn’t, that another drummer was hanging around, waiting.
They went into ‘Love Me Do,’ which took about 17 takes before George Martin was happy. ‘I didn’t rate Ringo very highly. He couldn’t do a roll — and still can’t — though he’s improved a lot since. Andy was the kind of drummer I needed. Ringo was only used to ballrooms. It was obviously best to use someone with experience.’
‘I was nervous and terrified of the studio,’ says Ringo. ‘When we came back later to do the B side, I found that George Martin had this other drummer sitting in my place. It was terrible. I’d been asked to join the Beatles, but now it looked as if I was only going to be good enough to do ballrooms with them, but not good enough for records.
‘They started “PS I Love You”. The other bloke played the drums and I was given the maracas. I thought, that’s the end. They’re doing a Pete Best on me. They then decided to record the other side again, the one on which I’d originally played the drums. I was given the tambourine this time.
‘I was shattered. What a drag. How phoney the whole record business was, I thought. Just what I’d heard about. Getting other musicians to make your records for you in the studios. If I was going to be no use for records, I might as well leave.
‘But nobody said anything. What could the others say, or me? We were just lads, being pushed around. You know what I mean. They were so big, the London record company and all that. We just did what we were told.
‘When the record came out as a single, my name was on “PS I Love You”, but I was only playing the maracas, the other bloke was on drums. But luckily for me, they decided to stick to the first version of “Love Me Do”, the one in which I’m playing drums, so that was OK.’
‘Love Me Do’, their first record, was released on 4 October 1962. By that time, they were back in Liverpool, trailing round the local halls and ballrooms again, but waiting for their record to astound the world. Nothing happened.
The Beatles’ Liverpool fans very faithfully bought the record in great numbers, but of course sales in a provincial town don’t have much effect on the charts. They also wrote in hordes to all the request programmes. The first play of it was on Radio Luxembourg.
Mrs Harrison, George’s mother, sat up for hours the night George said they might be on. She got fed up waiting in the end and went to bed, only to be wakened by George screaming that they were on. He also woke Mr Harrison with his shouting, who was very angry as he had to be up early for the first shift on the buses.
‘The first time I heard “Love Me Do” on the radio,’ says George, ‘I went shivery all over. I listened to some of the lead guitar work and couldn’t believe it. But the most important thing in our lives was to get into the Top Twenty.’
They eventually crept into the charts at number 49, in the New Record Mirror. The next week it started showing up in another pop newspaper, the New Musical Express, where it got to 27. It stayed there for some time.
On the strength of having a record, Brian managed to secure them their first TV show, though it was just in the North. This was on Granada’s People and Places from Manchester.
They were then due to go back to Hamburg for another appearance at the Star Club. They had contracted to do this before their record had been made. They thought that if they were out of the country, unable to get in any live plugs on radio or TV, their record would go straight down. But they went off, on their fourth visit to Hamburg. Their record slowly kept creeping up while they were away, which gave them an excuse each time for wild celebrations. The highest ‘Love Me Do’ ever got was to number 17.
George Martin, meanwhile, was pleased, but not overexcited, by ‘Love Me Do’. ‘I didn’t think it was all that brilliant, but I was thrilled by the reaction to the Beatles and their sound. The problem now was to get a follow-up record for them.’
He’d found a song he was sure would be a hit. It was called ‘How Do You Do It’. He sent it to the Beatles, who didn’t like it. George Martin said he did. He was the boss. He wanted them to record it. So they had to. They still said they didn’t like it and didn’t want it produced.