Paul McCartney branded one ‘album filler’ Beatles song a ‘failed attempt’
THE BEATLES star Paul McCartney was not happy about one song he declared as "acceptable album filler". He also explained how writing and performing the song was "work" - and John Lennon agreed.
In 1963 The Beatles were still breaking through into the music industry around the world. Although their popularity was rapidly growing, they were only ever as good as the singles they were releasing. And for their second album, With The Beatles, they were hoping to release a slew of singles to bolster their popularity. During these recording sessions, they penned the song Hold Me Tight.
Hold Me Tight is a short and chaotic romp with harmonies that struggle to reach the mark from all four members of The Beatles. And the band themselves weren’t happy with how this recording ended up.
In Paul McCartney’s biography from Barry Miles, Many Years From Now, he confessed they were really struggling to bring a single to the table for the album. He said: “When we first started it was all singles and we were always trying to write singles. That’s why you get lots of these two-minute 30-second songs; they all came out the same length.”
McCartney then turned his gaze to Hold Me Tight, a song he revealed he truly did not look back fondly on.
The Beatles: Paul McCartney was not a fan of the band’s song (Image: GETTY)
McCartney said: “Hold Me Tight was a failed attempt at a single which then became an acceptable album filler.”
Oddly enough, the 1963 album With The Beatles had 14 songs on it – but none of them were ever released as singles.
This was a marked difference from their previous album, 1962’s Please Please Me, which had two singles releases (Love Me Do and Please Please Me).
Indeed, the band’s follow-up album, 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, also had two singles released from it (Can’t Buy Me Love and A Hard Day’s Night).
McCartney continued to damn Hold Me Tight during an interview with Beatles historian Mark Lewishon.
The Beatles: Paul explained how the track was a failed attempt at a single (Image: GETTY)
The Beatles: Paul and John agreed on the criticism (Image: GETTY)
McCartney said: “I can’t remember much about that one. Certain songs were just ‘work’ songs, you haven’t got much memory of them. That’s one of them.” And his bandmate, John Lennon, agreed with this sentiment. Lennon told Playboy’s David Shepp in 1980: “That was Paul’s. Maybe I stuck some bits in there – I don’t remember.” He added: “It was a pretty poor song and I was never really interested in it either way.”
The recording of the song was mired in a few problems overall. Once the recording of Hold Me Tight was finished, the band were not happy with it at all. In order to remedy the problems they were facing, they decided to get producer George Martin to change its sound. They did this by speeding up the tape of the final recording, giving it a false sense of urgency and excitement.
Despite this one song’s failures, With The Beatles did very well commercially. The record reached number one in both the UK and German album charts. It was also certified Gold in six countries (UK, USA, Germany, Canada, Australia and Argentina) and sold more than 800,000 copies at the time worldwide.
