Beatlemania was not the first time scenes of adulation and hysteria occurred. In the 1840s, Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt elicited a similar reaction to the Fab Four, leading to poet Heinrich Heine referring to it as “Lisztomania.” Rudy Vallée, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley created similar delirium. The post-World War II baby boom has been credited with the larger number of teenagers in the time of the mop-top quartet. Let’s take a look at the story behind “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles.
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Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you somethin’
I think you’ll understand
When I say that somethin’
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
The Ashers
In 2021, Paul McCartney shared his memory in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present: “I had a girlfriend, Jane Asher, who was a very classy girl whose father was a Wimpole Street doctor and whose mother was a wonderful lady, a music teacher, called Margaret Asher. So I would go round to their house to visit. I loved it there because it was such a family. Margaret and I got on very well. She sort of mothered me.”
Margaret had taught oboe lessons to Beatle producer George Martin.
Oh, please, say to me
You’ll let me be your man
And please, say to me
You’ll let me hold your hand
You’ll let me hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
Eyeball to Eyeball
McCartney continued, “Eventually, I ended up living with the Ashers. I’d already stayed over quite a bit, but Margaret must have said, ‘Well, you know, we’ll let you have the attic room.’ So I ended up there, and they got a piano up in that room. When John came to visit, there was a piano in the basement as well—a little music room where I think Margaret took students. So, we would write there in the basement, both on the piano at the same time, or eyeball to eyeball on our guitars.”
And when I touch you
I feel happy inside
It’s such a feelin’ that my love
I can’t hide
I can’t hide
I can’t hide
Playing Into Each Other’s Nose
In 1980, John Lennon told author David Sheff: “In ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u … got that something …’ And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each other’s nose.”
Yeah, you got that somethin’
I think you’ll understand
When I say that somethin’
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
The First to Hear It
In 2010, Jane Asher’s brother Peter told Gibson.com: “One afternoon, John came over while I was upstairs in my room. The two of them were in the basement for an hour or so, and Paul called me down to listen to a song they had just finished. I went downstairs and sat on the sofa, and they sat side by side, on the piano bench. That’s where they played ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ for the first anywhere. They asked me what I thought. I said, ‘I think it’s very good.”
And when I touch you
I feel happy inside
It’s such a feelin’ that my love
I can’t hide
I can’t hide
I can’t hide
Beatlemania Crosses the Atlantic
The song was their third British No. 1, but their first to top the charts in America. The band was in Paris when they got the news. McCartney said in Anthology: “One night we arrived back at the hotel from the Olympia when a telegram came through to [manager] Brian [Epstein] from Capitol Records of America. He came running in to the room saying, ‘Hey, look. You are No. 1 in America! ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ had gone to No. 1. Well, I can’t describe our response … And that was it. We didn’t come down for a week.”
Said George Harrison: “We were booked to go to America directly after the Paris trip, so it was handy to have a No. 1. We’d already been hired by Ed Sullivan, so if it had been a No. 2 or No. 10, we’d have gone anyway, but it was nice to have a No. 1.
“We did have three records out in America before this one,” he continued. “The others were on two different labels. It was only after all the publicity and Beatlemania in Europe that Capitol Records decided, ‘Oh, we will have them.’ They put out ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ as our first single, but in fact, it was our fourth.”
Yeah, you got that somethin’
I think you’ll understand
When I feel that somethin’
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
German Lyrics
Three months after they recorded the song, The Beatles recorded a version for the German market, as “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand,” for Electrola Gesellschaft, the German wing of EMI. This took place at EMI’s Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris, along with “Sie Liebt Dich” (“She Loves You”) and “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
Oh, komm doch, komm zu mir
Du nimmst mir den Verstand
Oh, komm doch, komm zu mir
Komm, gib mir deine Hand
Komm, gib mir deine Hand
Komm, gib mir deine Hand
Pretty Bossy
McCartney admitted in his book Many Years From Now: “I heard tapes recently of me counting in ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand,’ which was our first No. 1 in the States, and I’m being pretty bossy, ‘Sssh, Sssh! Clean beginning, c’mon, everyone. One, two. No, c’mon, get it right!’ and I can see how that could get on your nerves.”
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Photo by Les Lee/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
