The Beatles’ time-defying ubiquity and meteoric rise to fame give them a sort of agelessness that makes it easy to forget that Paul McCartney was writing Beatles songs before the age of 18. Thank goodness McCartney was born in Liverpool, where the drinking age is 18. Otherwise, he might not have been allowed in the bars and nightclubs where he cut his teeth in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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Fortunately for music lovers everywhere, the stars lined up just right for McCartney and his bandmates. While the Beatles were well into their 20s by the time they made their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, they were laying the groundwork for their iconic band as rambunctious teenagers.
These McCartney-penned tracks are some of his childhood best.
“When I’m 64”
Perhaps the most fascinating song on the list of tunes that Paul McCartney wrote before he was 18 years old is the classic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band track, “When I’m Sixty-Four.” McCartney wrote this song sometime in the spring of 1956 when he was just about to turn 15 years old. An amazingly forward-thinking song for a teenage boy, the sweet, simplistic love song asks its subject: Will you still need, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four? (Then again, the most telling sign that a teenager wrote it is the idea that at 64 years old, the average person would need to be spoon-fed.)
“Cayenne”
Paul McCartney wrote the deep-cut instrumental “Cayenne” in 1960, the year he turned 18. However, the song collected dust in the Beatles archive until 1995 when Apple Records included the song on Anthology 1. The recording quality is fairly abysmal. Per Macca himself, he recorded the song in his childhood home’s bathroom, and honestly, we believe him. Still, the instrumental track is a fascinating insight into the Beatles’ earliest influences. Listening back to the warbly song, you can imagine folks in seedy Hamburg nightclubs dancing to the minor jam until the wee hours of the morning.
“In Spite of All the Danger”
Before there were the Beatles, there were the Quarrymen, and the latter is who recorded the shuffling country rock number, “In Spite of All the Danger,” in 1958. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, pianist John Lowe, and drummer Colin Hanton recorded the McCartney-Harrison track on lathe-cut vinyl at Percy Phillips’ home studio, which meant at the end of the session, they had a single copy to show for their work. Eventually, Apple Records released “In Spite of All the Danger” on Anthology 1, showcasing the earliest stages of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison’s harmonic magic.
“Love Me Do”
The Beatles’ debut single was one Paul McCartney wrote when he was still in secondary school. It was also one of the first original tracks he, John Lennon, and the rest of the Quarrymen began performing in clubs throughout Europe. “This was quite a traumatic thing because we were doing such great numbers of other people’s, of Ray Charles and [Little] Richard and all of them. It was quite hard to come in singing “Love Me Do.” We thought our numbers were a bit wet. But we gradually broke that down and decided to try them,” Lennon recalled in Anthology.
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