Paul McCartney believes one of The Beatles’ earliest hits is nothing without the work of George Harrison.
The veteran songwriter, 83, confirmed the work of Harrison had been the missing piece to All My Loving, a song which the band would perform during their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. McCartney, who had been working on the song for a time in The Beatles‘ early years, says a change from Harrison led to the song finding its footing and subsequently opened up a faster workflow for the band. Writing in his book, The Lyrics, McCartney confirmed it was Harrison who managed to nail the missing piece of the song and subsequently changed the form of All My Loving.
McCartney, explaining the recording process behind All My Loving, wrote: “I brought it to the recording session where The Beatles’ producer George Martin listened to it. We were about to record it, and he said, ‘I think it would be good with an introduction.’
“And I swear right there and then, George Harrison went, ‘Well how about this?’ and he played the opening riff, which is such a hook; the song is nothing without it. We were working very fast and spontaneously coming up with ideas.”
McCartney had, in interviews given before the release of The Lyrics, credited John Lennon with the guitar work. Lennon, who was shot and killed in 1980, would claim the guitar work on All My Loving was his work in the final interview given before his death.
Lennon was full of praise for the song even after the band had broken up, saying All My Loving is a “damn good song” in an interview given months before his death. Speaking to Playboy in 1980, Lennon said: “[I]t’s a damn good piece of work … But I play a pretty mean guitar in back.”
That guitar line was a last-minute addition, according to McCartney, who needed a strong riff to carry his With The Beatles track. He wrote in his book, Lyrics, that the triplets chord structure was a spark of genius which gave the song its unique sound. He wrote: “The thing that strikes me about the All My Loving recording is John’s guitar part; he’s playing the chords as triplets.
“That was a last-minute idea, and it transforms the whole thing, giving it momentum. The song is obviously about someone leaving to go on a trip, and that driving rhythm of John’s echoes the feeling of travel and motion. It sounds like a car’s wheels on the motorway, which, if you can believe it, had only really become a thing in the UK at the end of the fifties.”
The Beatles had been on a “package tour” line-up when McCartney wrote the song. Package tours would feature five or six different acts on one show, though All My Loving made The Beatles big enough to host their own shows.
