The Beatles, album "On Air — Live at the BBC Volume 2"

Rare albums - Studio Apple Corps - 2013
CD: 11.11.2013

On Air — Live at the BBC Volume 2

1. 00:15 And Here We Are Again - диалог - 23.07.1963

2. 01:55 Words of Love (Buddy Holly) - диалог - 20.08.1963

3. 00:37 How About It, Gorgeous? - 30.07.1963

4. 01:47 Do You Want to Know a Secret? (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 11.02.1963

   JOHN 1980: 'Well, I can't say I wrote it 'for' George.
   My mother was always… she was a good comedienne and a singer.
   Not professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that.
   She had a good voice.
   She could do Kay Starr.
   She used to do this little tune when I was one or two years old… she was still living with me then.
   The tune was from a Disney movie: (sings) 'Do you want to know a secret? Promise not to tell? You are standing by a wishing well.' So, I had this sort of thing in my head, and I wrote it and just gave it to George to sing.
   I thought it would be a good for him, because it had only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world.
   He has improved a lot since then; but in those days, his ability was very poor.'

   PAUL 1984: 'A song we really wrote for George to sing.
   Before he wrote his own stuff, John and I wrote things for him and Ringo to do.'

   GEORGE 1994: ''Do You Want To Know A Secret' was my song on the album.
   I didn't like the vocal on it.
   I didn't know how to sing.'

5. 02:28 Lucille (Richard Penniman and Al Collins) - 17.09.1963

6. 00:21 Hey Paul…. - диалог - 25.06.1963

7. 02:49 Anna (Go to Him) (Arthur Alexander) - 17.09.1962

8. 00:18 Hello! - диалог - 25.06.1963

9. 01:55 Please Please Me (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 13.08.1963

   JOHN 1963: 'Our recording manager (George Martin) thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler.
   We were getting tired though, and just couldn't seem to get it right.
   In the following weeks we went over it again and again.
   We changed the tempo a little, we altered the words slightly, and we went over the idea of featuring the harmonica just as we'd done on 'Love Me Do.' By the time the session came around we were so happy with the result, we couldn't get it recorded fast enough.'

   JOHN 1980: ''Please Please Me' is my song completely.
   It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it? I wrote it in the bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue, which was my auntie's place.
   I heard Roy Orbison doing 'Only The Lonely' or something.
   That's where that came from.
   And also I was always intrigued by the words of 'Please Lend Your Ears To My Pleas,' a Bing Crosby song.
   I was always intrigued by the double use of the word 'please.' So it was a combination of Bing Crosby and Roy Orbison.'

   PAUL 1988: 'It's very Roy Orbison when you slow it down.
   George Martin up-tempo'd it.
   He thought it was too much of a dirge, and probably too like Orbison.
   So he cleverly speeded us up… and we put in the little scaled riff at the beginning, which was very catchy.'

10. 01:49 Misery (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 12.03.1963

    JOHN 1980: 'It was kind of a John song, more than a Paul song… but it was written together.'

    PAUL 1988: 'John and I were a songwriting team, and what songwriting teams did in those days was wrote for everyone.
    'Misery' was for Helen Shapiro, and she turned it down.
    It may not have been that successful for her because it's rather a downbeat song… 'the world is treating me bad, misery.' It was quite pessimistic.
    And in the end Kenny Lynch did it.
    Kenny used to come out on tour with us, and he used to sing it.
    That was one of his minor hits.'

11. 01:52 I'm Talking About You (Chuck Berry) - диалог - 16.03.1963

12. 00:36 A Real Treat - диалог - 25.06.1963

13. 02:28 Boys (Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell) - 25.06.1963

14. 00:27 Absolutely Fab - диалог - 25.06.1963

15. 02:15 Chains (Gerry Goffin and Carole King) - 25.06.1963

16. 01:54 Ask Me Why (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 24.09.1963

17. 02:16 Till There Was You (Meredith Willson) - 30.07.1963

18. 01:46 Lend Me Your Comb (Kay Twomey, Fred Wise and Ben Weisman) - 16.07.1963

19. 00:23 Lower 5E - диалог - 10.09.1963

20. 01:46 The Hippy Hippy Shake (Chan Romero) - 10.09.1963

21. 02:21 Roll Over Beethoven (Chuck Berry) - 03.09.1963

22. 01:48 There's a Place (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 03.09.1963

    JOHN 1980: ''There's a Place' was my attempt at a sort of Motown, black thing.
    It says the usual Lennon things: 'In my mind there's no sorrow…' It's all in your mind.'

23. 00:49 Bumper Bundle - диалог - 25.06.1963

24. 01:59 P.S. I Love You (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 25.06.1963

    JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul's song.
    He was trying to write a 'Soldier Boy' like the Shirelles.
    He wrote that in Germany, or when we were going to and from Hamburg.
    I might have contributed something.
    I can't remember anything in particular.
    It was mainly his song.'

    PAUL circa-1994: 'A theme song based on a letter… It was pretty much mine.
    I don't think John had much of a hand in it.
    There are certain themes that are easier than others to hang a song on, and a letter is one of them… It's not based in reality, nor did I write it to my girlfriend from Hamburg, which some people think.'

25. 02:16 Please Mister Postman (Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland and Robert Bateman) - 30.07.1963

    PAUL 1984: 'Influenced by the Marvelettes, who did the original version.
    We got it from our fans, who would write 'Please Mr. Postman' on the back of the envelopes.
    'Posty, posty, don't be slow, be like the Beatles and go, man, go!' That sort of stuff.'

26. 01:46 Beautiful Dreamer (Stephen Foster) - диалог - 22.01.1963

27. 02:21 Devil In Her Heart (Richard Drapkin) - 25.09.1963

28. 00:16 The 49 Weeks (Paul McCartney) - 24.09.1963

29. 02:20 Sure to Fall (In Love With You) (Carl Perkins, Bill Cantrell and Quinton Claunch) - 24.09.1963

30. 00:34 Never Mind, Eh? - диалог - 24.09.1963

31. 02:25 Twist And Shout (Bert Russell and Phil Medley) - 06.08.1963

    JOHN 1963: 'I always hate singing the song, 'Twist And Shout' when there's a colored artist on the bill with us.
    It doesn't seem right, you know.
    I feel sort of embarrassed… It makes me curl up.
    I always feel they could do the song much better than me.'

    JOHN 1971: 'The more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple.
    They sort of said shake-your-arse, or your prick, which was an innovation really.
    The blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain, and also about sex, which is why I like it.'

    JOHN 1976: 'The last song nearly killed me.
    My voice wasn't the same for a long time after – everytime I swallowed it was like sandpaper.
    I was always bitterly ashamed of it because I could sing it better than that, but now it doesn't bother me.
    You can hear I'm just a frantic guy doing his best.'

    PAUL 1988: 'There's a power in John's voice there that certainly hasn't been equaled since.
    And I know exactly why – It's because he worked his bollocks off that day.
    We left 'Twist And Shout' until the very last thing because we knew there was one take.'

    RINGO 1994: 'We started (recording the album) about noon and finished it at midnight, with John being really hoarse by 'Twist And Shout.''

32. 00:24 Bye, Bye - диалог - 24.09.1963

33. 08:21 John - Pop Profile - диалог - 30.11.1965

34. 08:04 George - Pop Profile - диалог - 30.11.1965

35. 02:35 I Saw Her Standing There (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 05.10.1963

    JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul doing his usual job of producing what George Martin used to call a 'potboiler.' I helped with a couple of the lyrics.'

    PAUL 1988: 'I wrote it with John.
    We sagged off school and wrote it on guitars.
    I remember I had the lyrics, 'Just seventeen/Never been a beauty queen,' which John… it was one of the first times he ever went, 'What? Must change that!' And it became, 'you know what I mean.''

    PAUL circa-1994: 'Sometimes we would just start a song from scratch, but one of us would nearly always have a germ of an idea, a title, or a rough little thing they were thinking about and we'd do it.
    'I Saw Her Standing There' was my original.
    I'd started it and I had the first verse, which therefore gave me the tune, the tempo, and the key.
    It gave you the subject matter, alot of information, and then you had to fill in.
    So it was co-written… and we finished it that day.

36. 01:52 Glad All Over (Carl Perkins) - 24.08.1963

37. 00:37 Lift Lid Again - диалог - 24.08.1963

38. 02:02 I'll Get You (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 05.10.1963

    JOHN 1963: 'The B-side of 'She Loves You' was meant to be the A-side.'

    PAUL 1963: 'If we write one song, then we can get going after that and get more ideas.
    We wrote 'I'll Get You,' which is the B-side, first.
    And then 'She Loves You' came after that.
    You know – We got ideas from that.
    Then we recorded it.'

    JOHN 1980: 'That was Paul and me trying to write a song… and it didn't work out.'

    PAUL circa-1994: 'It's got an interesting chord in it – 'It's not easy/ To pre-TEND…' That was nicked from a song called 'All My Trials' which is on an album I had by Joan Baez.'

39. 02:15 She Loves You (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 05.10.1963

    JOHN 1963: 'We wrote that two days before we recorded it, actually.'

    PAUL 1963: 'John and I wrote it together.
    We were in a van up in Newcastle somewhere, and we'd just gone over to our hotel.
    I originally got an idea of doing one of those answering songs, where a couple of us sing about 'she loves you' …and the other one sort of says the 'yes, yes' bit.
    You know, 'yeah yeah' answering whoever is saying it.
    But we decided that was a crummy idea anyway.
    But we had the idea to write a song called 'She Loves You' then.
    And we just sat up in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it, you know.'

    JOHN 1963: ''Yeah.' That's sort of the main catch phrase from 'She Loves You.' We'd written the song, and then suddenly realized we needed more… so we added 'yeah, yeah, yeah' and it caught on.'

    JOHN 1980: 'It was written together (with Paul) and I don't remember how.
    I remember it was Paul's idea – instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party.
    The 'Woooo' was taken from the Isley Brothers 'Twist And Shout,' which we stuck into everything.'

    PAUL 1982: 'Occasionally, we'd overrule George Martin, like on 'She Loves You,' we end on a sixth chord, a very jazzy sort of thing.
    And he said, 'Oh, you can't do that! A sixth chord? It's too jazzy.'
    We just said, 'No, it's a great hook, we've got to do it.''

    PAUL 1988: 'We rehearsed the end bit of 'She Loves You' and took it to George.
    And he just laughed and said, 'Well, you can't do the end of course… that sixth… it's too like the Andrew Sisters.' We just said, 'Alright, we'll try it without,' and we tried it and it wasn't as good.
    Then he conceded, 'You're right, I guess.' But we were both very flexible.
    We would listen to George's ideas too, because he was a producer and a musician, and he obviously knew what he was talking about.
    There was good to-and-fro.
    We loved that bit, and we rehearsed it alot.
    John and I wrote that in a hotel room, on twin beds during an afternoon off – I mean, God bless their little cotton socks, those boys WORKED! Here I am talking about an afternoon off, and we're sitting there writing! We just loved it so much.
    It wasn't work.'

40. 02:15 Memphis, Tennessee - диалог - 05.10.1963

41. 00:33 Happy Birthday Dear Saturday Club - диалог - 05.10.1963

42. 00:24 Now Hush, Hush - диалог - 20.10.1963

43. 01:50 From Me to You (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 20.10.1963

    PAUL 1964: ''From Me To You.' It could be done as an old Ragtime tune… especially the middle-eight.
    And so, we're not writing the tunes in any particular idiom.
    In five years time, we may arrange the tunes differently.
    (jokingly) But we'll probably write the same old rubbish!!'

    JOHN 1980: 'We were writing it in a car, I think… and I think the first line was mine.
    I mean, I know it was mine.
    (humms melody) And then after that we just took it from there.
    We were just writing the next single.
    It was far bluesier than that when we wrote it.
    The notes, today… you could rearrange it pretty funky.'

    PAUL circa-1994: 'The thing I liked about 'From Me To You' was it had a very complete middle.
    It went to a surprising place.
    The opening chord of the middle section of that song heralded a new batch for me.
    That was a pivotal song.
    Our songwriting lifted a little with that song.
    It was very much co-written.'

44. 02:42 Money (That's What I Want) (Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford) - 26.12.1963

45. 02:23 I Want to Hold Your Hand (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.12.1963

    PAUL 1964: 'Let's see, we were told we had to get down to it.
    So we found this house when we were walking along one day.
    We knew we had to really get this song going, so we got down in the basement of this disused house and there was an old piano.
    It wasn't really disused, it was rooms to let.
    We found this old piano and started banging away.
    There was a little old organ too.
    So we were having this informal jam and we started banging away.
    Suddenly a little bit came to us, the catch line.
    So we started working on it from there.
    We got our pens and paper out and just wrote down the lyrics.
    Eventually, we had some sort of a song, so we played it for our recording manager and he seemed to like it.
    We recorded it the next day.'

    JOHN 1980: 'We wrote alot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball.
    Like in 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord that made the song.
    We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time.
    And we had, 'Oh you-u-u/ got that something…' And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that – both playing into each other's noses.'

    PAUL circa-1994: ''Eyeball to eyeball' is a very good description of it.
    That's exactly how it was.
    'I Want To Hold Your Hand' was very co-written.'

46. 00:58 Brian Bathtubes - диалог - 21.12.1963

47. 02:16 This Boy (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.12.1963

    JOHN 1980: 'Just my attempt at writing one of those three-part harmony Smokey Robinson songs.
    Nothing in the lyrics… just a sound and a harmony.
    There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies… that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n roll.
    But of course, when I think of some of my own songs – 'In My Life,' or some of the early stuff – 'This Boy,' I was writing melody with the best of them.'

    PAUL 1988: 'Fabulous. And we just loved singing that three-part too.
    We'd learned that from: (sings) 'To know know know her is to love love love her…' We learned that in my dad's house in Liverpool.'

48. 00:44 If I Wasn't In America - диалог - 15.02.1964

49. 02:35 I Got a Woman (Chuck Berry) - 04.04.1964

50. 01:58 Long Tall Sally (Richard Penniman, Enotris Johnson and Robert Blackwell) - 16.07.1964

51. 02:09 If I Fell (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.07.1964

    JOHN 1980: 'That was my first attempt at a ballad proper.
    That was the precursor to 'In My Life.' It has the same chord sequences as 'In My Life' – D and B minor and E minor, those kinds of things.
    And it's semi-autobiographical, but not consciously.
    It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads – silly love songs – way back when.'

    PAUL 1984: 'This was our close-harmony period.
    We did a few songs… 'This Boy,' 'If I Fell,' 'Yes It Is' …in the same vein, which were kind of like the Fourmost – an English vocal group, only not really.'

52. 01:19 A Hard Job Writing Them - диалог - 16.07.1964

53. 02:19 And I Love Her (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 27.02.1964

    JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it.
    The first half was Paul's and the middle-eight is mine.'

    JOHN 1980: ''And I Love Her' is Paul again.
    I consider it his first 'Yesterday.' You know, the big ballad in 'A Hard Day's Night.'

    PAUL 1984: 'It's just a love song.
    It wasn't for anyone.
    Having the title start in midsentence, I thought that was clever.
    Well, Perry Como did 'And I Love You So' many years later.
    Tried to nick the idea.
    I like that… it was a nice tune, that one.
    I still like it.'

54. 00:19 Oh, Can't We? Yes We Can (George Harrison) - 30.03.1964

55. 02:31 You Can't Do That (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.07.1964

    JOHN 1964: 'I'd find it a drag to play rhythm all the time, so I always work myself out something interesting to play.
    The best example I can think of is like I did on 'You Can't Do That.' There really isn't a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist on that, because I feel the rhythm guitarist role sounds too thin for records.
    Anyway it drove me potty to play chunk-chunk rhythm all the time.
    I never play anything as lead guitarist that George couldn't do better.
    But I like playing lead sometimes, so I do it.'

    JOHN 1980: 'That's me doing Wilson Pickett.
    You know, a cowbell going four-in-the bar, and the chord going 'chatoong!''

56. 02:23 Honey Don't (Carl Perkins) - 26.11.1964

57. 01:50 I'll Follow the Sun (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1964

    JOHN 1972: 'A nice one.'

    JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul again.
    Can't you tell? I mean – 'Tomorrow may rain so/ I'll follow the sun.' That's another early McCartney, you know… written almost before the Beatles, I think.
    He had alot of stuff.'

    PAUL 1988: 'I wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road.
    I was about 16.
    There was a few from then – 'Thinking Of Linking,' ever heard of that one? So 'I'll Follow The Sun' was one of those very early ones.
    I seem to remember writing it just after I'd had the flu… I remember standing in the parlour looking out through lace curtains of the window and writing that one.
    We had this hard R&B; image in Liverpool, so I think songs like 'I'll Follow The Sun,' ballads like that, got pushed back to later.'

58. 00:56 Green With Black Shutters - диалог - 1965

59. 02:43 Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and Richard Penniman) - Medley - 26.12.1964

60. 00:24 That's What We're Here For (Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1964

61. 03:28 I Feel Fine (Studio Out-take) (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 17.11.1964

62. 07:50 Paul - Pop Profile - диалог - 02.05.1966

63. 08:02 Ringo - Pop Profile - диалог - 02.05.1966