One, two, three, four
Videos by American Songwriter
Those four words kick off the debut album by The Beatles as they explode into the intro with guitar, bass, and drums. After “Love Me Do” reached No. 17 on the British charts and “Please Please Me” hit No. 1, it was time to record an album. When producer George Martin witnessed the audience’s reaction to the band’s live shows, he decided they should record the same songs they regularly performed. On February 11, 1963, the band entered EMI Studios on Abbey Road in London and laid down 10 songs. Let’s take a look at the story behind one of them—”I Saw Her Standing There” by The Beatles.
Well, she was just seventeen
You know what I mean
And the way she looked
Was way beyond compare
So how could I dance with another
Ooh, when I saw her standing there?
The Origin
Paul McCartney began writing the song as he was returning home from a show in Southport, England. He was influenced by the traditional song “As I Roved Out.” He worked out the arrangement on an acoustic guitar at musician Alan Caldwell’s house in October 1962. (Caldwell went by the name of Rory Storm and had a band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, whose drummer at one time was future Beatle Ringo Starr.)
McCartney wrote some of the lyrics during a trip to London with his then-girlfriend, Celia Mortimer, who was 17. About a month later, John Lennon helped complete the song in the living room of McCartney’s home on Forthlin Road in Liverpool when they both skipped school.
In 2021, McCartney wrote in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, “I first played this song to John when he and I got together to smoke tea in my dad’s pipe. (And when I say tea, I mean tea.) I said, ‘She was just seventeen. She’d never been a beauty queen.’ And John said, ‘I’m not sure about that.’ So, our main task was to get rid of the beauty queen. We struggled with it, but then it came.”
Well, she looked at me
And I, I could see
That before too long
I’d fall in love with her
She wouldn’t dance with another
Ooh, when I saw her standing there
“I’m not sure we do know what you mean, Paul!”
McCartney remembered, “Jerry Seinfeld did a great sort of satirical thing with it. We went to the White House, and Jerry says, ‘Paul, you know, I’ve been looking at She was just seventeen / You know what I mean. I’m not sure we do know what you mean, Paul!”
Well, my heart went, “Boom!”
When I crossed that room
And I held her hand in mine
The Bass Line
The Beatles regularly performed the Chuck Berry song “I’m Talking About You.” Berry released the song in February 1961. The bass line is very familiar. The Beatles’ version was recorded during their appearance at The Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, in December 1962 and on the BBC on March 16, 1963.
In 1997, McCartney confessed in Many Years From Now, “I played exactly the same notes as he did, and it fitted our number perfectly. Even now, when I tell people about it, few of them believe me. Therefore, I maintain that a bass riff doesn’t have to be original.”
Oh, we danced through the night
And we held each other tight
And before too long
I fell in love with her
Now I’ll never dance with another
Ooh, since I saw her standing there
The Recording
The Beatles attempted nine takes of the song before deciding the first was the best. They overdubbed handclaps, and the counting intro from take nine was edited onto the beginning of the song. In 1995, they released the full take nine as part of the “Free as a Bird” single.
In 1980, Lennon told author David Sheff, “That’s Paul doing his usual good job of producing what George Martin used to call a ‘potboiler.’ I helped with a couple of the lyrics.”
Well, my heart went, “Boom!”
When I crossed that room
And I held her hand in mine
McCartney’s parents were very supportive and exposed him to a lot of music. In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, he remembered, “I was loaded with all the tunes I’d heard. Hoagy Carmichael’s writing, Harold Arlen’s writing, George Gershwin’s writing, Johnny Mercer. I’d heard all this stuff growing up. I hadn’t written anything much myself, but it had all gone in. And then, at school, I’d heard my English teacher, Alan Durband, talking about the rhyming couplet at the end of a Shakespeare sonnet. I don’t know where ‘beyond compare’ came from, but it might have come out of Sonnet 18: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ I may even have been conscious, as a child, of the Irish song tradition—of a woman being described as ‘beyond compare.’ In any case, it’s not what you would expect in rock and roll. And like I say, I don’t know where I dredged it from, but in the great trawling net of my youth, it just got caught up like a dolphin.”
Oh, we danced through the night
And we held each other tight
And before too long
I fell in love with her
Now, I’ll never dance with another
Ooh, since I saw her standing there
Whoa, since I saw her standing there
Yeah, well, since I saw her standing there
The Beginning and the End
The Beatles performed “I Saw Her Standing There” on their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and again the following week. In America, they included the song on the back side of the “I Want to Hold Your Hand” single and it reached No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. On November 28, 1974, Lennon joined Elton John onstage at Madison Square Garden and performed the song. It was the last song Lennon ever performed for a paid audience.
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Photo by Jim Gray/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
