Paul McCartney can ‘still hear the nervousness’ on recording of song he wrote age 16

A nervousness can still be heard in Paul McCartney‘s voice on a song he wrote when he was just sixteen.

It would be The Beatles‘ first-ever recording, and the man who would later front Wings believes you can hear just how terrified he was of being in the studio. It’s not only the debut recording of the Fab Four in the studio but a chance to hear a song McCartney had written a few years before joining what would become The Beatles. John Lennon confirmed Love Me Do had been written by McCartney a short while before he joined the band. McCartney would also say it’s his first time singing in the studio, as up to this point it had been a predominantly Lennon job. But his debut vocal work proved to be a success, and though he can still hear the “nervousness” in his voice, Love Me Do would enter the charts.

McCartney said: “George Martin said, ‘Can anyone play a harmonica? It would be rather nice. Couldn’t think of some sort of bluesy thing, could you John?’ John played a chromatic harmonica… I actually had one too, but he’d been clever— he learned to play it.

“John expected to be in jail one day and he’d be the guy who played the harmonica. The lyric crossed over the harmonica solo, so I suddenly got thrown the big open line, ‘Love me do,’ where everything stopped. Until that session, John had always done it. I didn’t even know how to sing it… I can still hear the nervousness in my voice.”

His fellow Beatles, Lennon and Ringo Starr, would praise McCartney for stepping up to provide vocals for the song. Starr said Love Me Do is proof the band had made it, while Lennon would say it’s a song with a “marked amount of maturity” at its heart.

Lennon said: “Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was sixteen, or even earlier.” While the song’s content—heavily leaning on the rock ‘n’ roll tropes of old—may scream teenage lust and love, there’s still a marked amount of maturity in the track’s construction.”

Starr would add: “The first record, Love Me Do, for me that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can’t believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record!”

McCartney would also share why he and the band ended up recording Love Me Do, suggesting the song is one of the early examples of the band strengthening as a four-piece. He said: “Love Me Do was completely co-written … It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea.

“We loved doing it, it was a very interesting thing to try and learn to do, to become songwriters. I think why we eventually got so strong was we wrote so much through our formative period.”