50 Years Ago Yesterday: The Beatles Released Their Debut Single, ‘Love Me Do’
50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles Released Their Debut Single, ‘Love Me Do’
Exactly 50 years ago
todayyesterday, on October 5th, 1962, a new single titled “Love Me Do” hit record stores all over England. It was the debut 45 by the Beatles - though, at the time, that name didn’t mean much to many English fans outside of Manchester and their native Liverpool. (The band’s frequent performances at the Star Club in Hamburg had already won them a devoted following in Germany, however.) The song was a surprise hit, rising to Number 17 on one of the many weekly charts around the U.K., a strong enough showing to convince EMI they had made a smart bet in signing the Beatles.Paul McCartney began writing “Love Me Do” a few years earlier, in 1958, when he was playing hooky from school at age 16. Soon afterwards, he sat down with John Lennon to flesh it out. “It was completely co-written,” McCartney later said. “It might have been my original idea, but some of them really were 50-50s, and I think that one was. It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea.”