Even before the age of social media and the bottomless scroll, musicians were fighting against the general public’s relatively short attention span. (First impressions and all that.) More often than not, a listener would know whether they liked a song within the first few seconds, which made those first few seconds all the more important. And on February 11, 1963, The Beatles recorded a song introduction that would become synonymous with the group, all while calling back to a musical idol.
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The Beatles recorded “I Saw Her Standing There” as part of an impressive recording session that saw the Fab Four record Please Please Me in one day. Although undoubtedly a big undertaking for the band and engineers alike, that big day in EMI Studios wasn’t entirely different from what The Beatles were already used to after cutting their teeth at nightclubs that expected them to play for hours on end. And it was just this kind of live feel that producer George Martin was after.
For this reason, Martin advised the band to count in their own numbers like they would if they were on stage. The end result is one of the most iconic intros in The Beatles discography and a subtle homage to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll himself.
Breaking Down the Count-In of “I Saw Her Standing There”
Whether in documentaries, montages, or musical compilations, the first few seconds of “I Saw Her Standing There” often serve as the lead-in for Beatles retrospectives. And with good reason—Paul McCartney’s emphatic “one, two, three, FAH” is a fantastic way to get a listener’s attention. Even before the downbeat, listeners know that they’re in for a rocking and rolling record that sounds like it’s coming straight from a nightclub stage, just like George Martin planned.
“I had been up to the Cavern, and I’d seen what they could do,” Martin later explained in Anthology. “I knew their repertoire, knew what they were able to perform, and I said, ‘Let’s record every song you’ve got. Come down to the studios, and we’ll just whistle through them in a day. We started about eleven in the morning, finished about eleven at night. They always wanted to get the thing right, so it wasn’t a one-take operation. They would listen to it, and then do two or three takes until they got it. It was only later on that they were able to afford the indulgence of more time and lots of re-takes.”
“I Saw Her Standing There” seemed to be an exception, however, with the band recording nine takes before they decided that their first take was actually the best. The best intro, however, was from Take #9, which Martin spliced onto the beginning of the first take. “One, two, three FAH,” became the same kind of “sit down, shut up, and listen” call as Elvis Presley’s, “One for the money, two for the show…” from “Blue Suede Shoes”, which was only appropriate considering how much The Beatles admired Elvis in their early years.
Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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