During the latter part of 1962, The Beatles made history by being among the first British bands to release a self-penned debut single. One of the first songs that John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote together was “Love Me Do.” McCartney came up with the song idea while the two were living in Hamburg in 1961.
“I am aware that he had the song in Hamburg, too,” Lennon subsequently told Beatles biographer and friend Barry Miles. “Long, long before we were composers.”
That wasn’t quite accurate, though. Even though they hadn’t yet attained the pinnacles of their professional songwriting careers, McCartney and Lennon were already prolific songwriters long before McCartney wrote “Love Me Do.” Additionally, they already had a writing team.
When Paul McCartney was just 14 years old, he wrote his first guitar song, “I’ve Lost My Little Girl,” sometime in 1956 or 1957. The song was a straightforward piece of adolescent balladry that bemoaned the death of a loved one. It was a song of mourning for his mother’s untimely death after cancer surgery.
Lennon wrote his first song, “Hello Little Girl,” not too long after. Recorded on New Year’s Day 1962 during The Beatles’ Decca Records audition. This song would remain one of his most cherished for several years. This version appeared on the official bootleg album Anthology 1 in the 1990s after failing to impress Decca executives. In 1963, the song also went on to become a top ten hit in the UK for The Fourmost, a Merseybeat group.
Nonetheless, Lennon and McCartney did not collaborate on either of these songs; instead, they were both solo compositions. The band’s first song co-written by its two main songwriters, “I’ve Lost My Little Girl” and “Hello Little Girl,” was released in early 1958, according to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn.
It has been confirmed by McCartney that the first song he and Lennon wrote together was “Too Bad About Sorrows.” To support his claim, he has cited the school exercise book that the two used to write the lyrics to their early compositions.
Before the song unexpectedly reappeared during the filming of Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back, it was believed to be lost forever. While searching through the numerous hours of video footage from the Get Back studio sessions, Jackson selected two instances. Lennon and McCartney experimented with short versions of an old song. Both of these incidents appear in Jackson’s last documentary.
On January 8, 1969, Lennon was idly tinkering with his guitar during a session when he casually strummed some off-key chords and joked over the top:
Too bad about sorrows
Too bad about love
There’ll be no tomorrow
For all of your love
This is the opening line of the first song he co-wrote with McCartney. During a subsequent rehearsal on January 21, the group attempted a semi-serious rendition of the song. McCartney crooned the lyrics until he and Lennon started sobbing, at which point the demo fell apart. But there’s also a second verse in this version:
You said you were sleeping
But I can’t forget
The troubles you’re leaving
Don’t be like that
McCartney is probably the only living person who knows how the rest of the song goes. These two extracts from Get Back might be the only hints we have of the origins of the greatest songwriting duo in contemporary music history. Nevertheless, we should be grateful that hundreds of documents exist that document its evolution from that point on.
