Beatles release Cant Buy Me Love
Liverpool, Merseyside The 20th of March 1964 AD
It is difficult today to convey the extent of Beatlemania at its height (unless you are David Beckham of course), and Can’t Buy Me Love was pretty much at that height. A couple of facts and figures help though: the single, actually released in the USA four days earlier than in Britain, shot to No 1 in America, which is not that unusual; but the next four songs in the chart there were also Beatles numbers, and there were a further nine of their singles dotted around the top 100; and in the UK it was their third single to sell over a million copies. Saying so may have got them into trouble, but for a while The Beatles did seem to be bigger than Jesus.
The pace of things at this time was incredible. Can’t Buy Me Love was recorded on January 29 in Paris while the band was playing a series of 18 concerts at the Olympia, the recording slotted in after some German versions of their songs had been recorded at the Pathe Marconi studios well inside the time for which the facilities had been booked. The song had actually been written by Paul McCartney (though as always per their agreement the credit was Lennon and McCartney) at the George V Hotel in Paris a few days earlier at a piano specially installed for them. George Martin twiddled with the structure a bit (putting the chorus before the verse, a major innovation at the time), and the lovable mop tops did a few quick versions of a very quick song – just two minutes eleven seconds of Parlophone pop perfection.
The instrumentation on the single is very simple: John on acoustic playing chords, Paul on bass and vocals, Ringo ’s drums, and George with electric rhythm and lead guitars thanks to double tracking. Unusually for the Beatles Paul’s is the only voice on the disc, as recordings with George and John singing backing vocals were rejected in favour of the simpler sparer solo voice version – in fact Paul’s vocal was over-dubbed on their return from Paris, at the Abbey Road studios on February 25.
Less than a month after this overdub everything had been put together, huge numbers of the 7” singles pressed, and the song released.
Money can’t buy you everything in life is the message of the song, which with hindsight has more than a hint of irony, Paul McCartney it seems now having enough of the folding to purchase a small country.
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