The Songs The Beatles Gave Away

There were 300 working groups in Liverpool, and lots of them had *that* sound – a style that developed in isolation, away from the pop music mainstream.

Many of those groups were managed by Brian Epstein, who also handled The Beatles. Liverpool wasn’t a competitive scene; The Beatles wrote their songs out of a love of music, and they knew other groups needed strong original material.

So, with a little help from their friends John and Paul, other groups also made the charts.

The Fourmost were given two Lennon/McCartney songs for their first two singles. Hello Little Girl was an early Lennon song that he’d sung on the Decca audition tapes. It was the first tune he’d ever worked out with a band of his own.

The style of The Fourmost was a bit mannered and formal compared with The Beatles, but similar nonetheless. The song got to #9 in England. Their second release (I’m In Love) was also produced by George Martin and made it to #17.

Epstein had been impressed with a local singer named Billy J. Kramer, but didn’t like his group, so he placed him with an instrumental band from Manchester called The Dakotas.

When Epstein went to America in October 1963 to finalise arrangements for the first Beatles tour, he took Kramer with him.

Billy appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show three months before The Beatles, and he recorded more early Beatles songs than anyone else – six in all.

Do You Want To Know a Secret? b/w I’ll Be On My Way was his first #1 hit in April 1963. The A-side was written primarily by Lennon and was inspired by something he had seen in a Walt Disney cartoon.

The follow-up was Bad to Me b/w I Call Your Name – a double-sided Lennon/McCartney composition that went straight to #1. The A-side of his third single was another unrecorded Beatles song, I’ll Keep You Satisfied. This record disappointed everyone – it only got to #4.

Kramer’s last John/Paul song was From a Window, and it didn’t go higher than #10. That was the last song The Beatles gave him.

In January 1962, Epstein took The Beatles to audition for Decca Records in London. They put 15 songs down on tape, and one of them was a beautiful tune called Love of the Loved. It was never released by The Beatles, but became the first hit for Cilla Black.

George Martin produced her singles, and Epstein designed her stage outfits. Her girl-next-door appeal was much beloved by the British public on other unused Beatles songs, It’s For You and Step Inside Love. In Epstein’s autobiography, A Cellarful of Noise, he refers to her continually as “my darling Cilla.”

The Remo Four had originally backed Johnny Sandon. Brian Epstein liked the group but not the singer, so he teamed them up with Tommy Quickly, a freckle-faced boy-next-door type.

The group put out three singles, but the only one which is remembered now was written by Lennon/McCartney. It was called The Tip of My Tongue.

Paul met actress Jane Asher after a Beatles concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1963. His new girlfriend had an older brother named Peter who sang in a duo with his friend Gordon Waller. Over the next couple of years, Paul gave them four unused Beatles songs.

Probably the greatest giveaway song of all was World Without Love. McCartney wrote the tune when he was 16. The song went straight to #1 for Peter and Gordon and was followed by Nobody I Know and I Don’t Want to See You Again. Next came Woman, a song that Paul gave to Peter and Gordon.

The composer credit on the record read “Bernard Webb,” because McCartney wanted to see if he could write a hit anonymously. He couldn’t – at least not with this one.

So the secret was allowed to leak out – and the song became a hit.

Another song from the old Decca demo was given to The Applejacks – a Lennon/McCartney song called Like Dreamers Do – and it went to #20.

Some of the biggest stars got untried Beatles tunes: PJ Proby was an American who became a notorious solo star in Britain. His records were usually lavishly orchestrated, and he had a powerful voice delivered in a vocal style not unlike Tom Jones.

The Beatles gave him a song in 1965 called That Means a Lot, but he went back to America bankrupt.

The first single by The Rolling Stones wasn’t much of a hit, and the group rehearsed their entire repertoire at Ken Colyer’s Club one afternoon, trying to find a suitable song for a follow-up.

Their manager, Andrew Oldham (a former publicist for The Beatles), was on his way to the club when a taxi cab pulled up alongside him, the rear window rolled down, and two famous faces peered out and offered him a lift.

It was Lennon and McCartney, and when Oldham told them where he was going, they insisted on tagging along, having heard about “these London blues cats.”

After meeting The Stones, John and Paul told them of an unfinished song of theirs that might fit their style. They borrowed two guitars from Keith Richard and Brian Jones and disappeared into a back room for 15 minutes, finally emerging with the completed song – I Wanna Be Your Man.

The Stones decided to release it as their next record, and it became their first hit, reaching #12 in February 1964.

Most of the Lennon/McCartney songs given to other artists were written in 1962 to 1964, when they were still a real songwriting team. By 1966 – although both names appeared under composer credits – the songs were usually written individually.

It is amazing that a group that was expected to release a new album every four months would be so generous with its much-needed original material.

And there was a lot more where these came from: Lennon used to tell a story about the time his first wife, Cynthia, accidentally threw out almost a hundred Lennon/McCartney compositions while cleaning the apartment one day!