JOHN 1963: 'It came to the charts in two days.
And everybody thought it was a 'fiddle' because our manager's stores send in these… what is it… record returns.
And everybody down south thought, 'Aha! He's just fiddling the charts.' But he wasn't.'
JOHN 1972: 'Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was sixteen, or even earlier.
I think I had something to do with the middle.'
RINGO 1976: '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!'
JOHN 1980: ''Love Me Do' is Paul's song.
He had the song around in Hamburg even, way, way before we were songwriters.'
PAUL 1982: 'In Hamburg we clicked… At the Cavern we clicked… but if you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with 'Love Me Do.' That was the one.
It gave us somewhere to go.'
PAUL 1984: ''Love Me Do' …the first song we recorded, like, for real.
First serious audition.
I was very nervous, I remember.
John was supposed to sing the lead, but they changed their minds and asked me to sing lead at the last minute, because they wanted John to play harmonica.
Until then, we hadn't rehearsed with a harmonica; George Martin started arranging it on the spot.
It was very nerve-wracking.'
PAUL 1988: ''Love Me Do' was us trying to do the blues.
It came out whiter because it always does.
We're white, and we were just young Liverpool musicians.
We didn't have the finesse to be able to actually sound black.
But 'Love Me Do' was probably the first bluesy thing we tried to do.'
PAUL circa-1994: '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.'
