The Beatles: "All My Loving" / "This Boy"

March 23, 1964 (5 weeks)

On February 9, 1964, The Beatles were sitting at number one on the Hot 100 for a third week with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" but the floodgates were only just beginning to open. As a matter of fact, it's likely that John, Paul, George and Ringo's appearance on American TV that night would be the catalyst for the forthcoming deluge of Beatle product. People may overstate its impact but there's no denying that the Fab Four going on The Ed Sullivan Show was a big deal.

With the American public unfamiliar with the vast majority of their repertoire, it fell to an unknown number to kick off this very important performance. Eschewing two of their UK chart toppers, they went with the Paul led "All My Loving". Just the sight of Paul McCartney's champagne smile would have been enough to sell them to the Americans but the song itself was a revelation. A breezy, effortless piece of addictive pop, Paul had his most uplifting and backed by John's frenzied rhythm guitar, George doing some fine country-ish lead and Ringo providing a beat that you hardly notice (as the cliche goes, you only really notice when the drumming sucks).

Since everyone in the United States was watching that night — actually it was seventy-three million people but that's close enough, right? — there must have been a few chart geeks who tuned in. They didn't have the internet and smart phones and there wouldn't even have been reference books to consult like The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Still, the enterprising pop fan could have looked it up, even if it would have taken time and effort to do so. What they would have discovered was that "All My Loving" wasn't just a chart non-entity in the US but also back The Beatles' native England. Look it up now and that's still very much the case. It was only in Canada that one of the great Beatles' singles that never was managed to go all the way to number one. (Import copies from the great white north sold well enough to get it to scrape the American Top 50)

It wasn't until April of 1964 that Beatles' releases began to align in Britain and the United States. "Can't Buy Me Love" had been recorded at Paris' famed Pathe studio during the same sessions in which they reluctantly churned out German-language versions of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at a time when they still weren't quite number one Stateside. By the time it had come out, they were superstars on the verge of shattering a number of chart records no one ever imagined. The British took it to the top for a routine three weeks while it spent just over a month at number one in the US. But Canadians weren't about to follow suit since they preferred to have "All My Loving" / "This Boy" instead. They made the right choice. ("Can't Buy Me Love" did no better than number three in Canada, blocked from going any higher by The Dave Clark Five's "Glad All Over") 

"Can't Buy Me Love" coincides with the height of Beatlemania in the US but it's not in the same league as "Please Please Me", "From Me to You", "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand", a quartet that makes up arguably the finest run of singles ever released in a calendar year. The rush, the thrill, the spirit of old isn't quite there anymore. The use of acoustic guitar on it looks forward to tracks like "I'll Be Back" and "I'm a Loser" later in the year but I think having a folk instrument as backing only emphasizes how how shallow McCartney's lyrics are. Plus, there's no escaping the fact that it's insincere: when Lennon put his vocal life on the line to scream about "Money" being the thing he "wants", it was a signal of their desire for fame and the spoils that come with it; by comparison. McCartney chirping on about how he doesn't "care too much for money" would register high on any credible bullshit meter.

The duality of Lennon-McCartney is something that tends to only be recognizable in the group's later work. The most obvious example is the extraordinary "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane", a pair of songs that manage to fit together in spite of the differences between the two composers. Lennon's imaginative isolationism contrasts with McCartney's outgoing absurdities but the two complement each other as well. The same goes for the equally outstanding pairing of "Hey Jude" and "Revolution": while the warm heartedness of the former may seem in conflict with the aggressiveness of the latter, lines like "the movement you need is on your shoulder" and the desire for peace rather than destruction suggest that they have a great deal in common.

But where did this contrast begin? Since Lennon and McCartney were very different people in the same band, it was probably always there but it wouldn't have really begun when their practice of 'eyeball-to-eyeball' songwriting came to an end. By the end of 1963, the two had settled in homes that were a good deal more than a short bike ride away so there was always going to be time apart for them to work out ideas on their own. "Can't Buy Me Love" / "You Can't Do That" proved to be the first of many 'Paul gets one side, John gets the other' singles but the Canadian-only release of "All My Loving" with "This Boy" does it far better.

While "Can't Buy Me Love" seems like an abrupt end to all that joyous pop from '63, "All My Loving" provides the very same lift of "Please Please Me" and "She Loves You". Prior to the release of their second album With The Beatles, no one would've contemplated discussing classic deep cuts. Yet, for a record intended to not have any singles released off it, it sounds like nothing but crammed with hits. And even alongside such gems as "It Won't Be Long", "All I've Got to Do" and "Not a Second Time" (along with their finest assortment of cover versions), "All My Loving" stands out as that a track that anyone else would have put out as a 45 in a second. As Ian MacDonald points out, "The Beatles' rivals looked on amazed as songs of this commercial appeal were casually thrown away on LPs".

As I wrote last time, "This Boy" ended up getting dropped from the North American release of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in favour of the much more radio friendly "I Saw Her Standing There". Picked up for "All My Loving" by Capitol Canada, it manages to for Lennon what its flip does for McCartney. The word play from songs such as "Please Please Me" and "It Won't Be Long" isn't present; in its place are beautiful three part harmonies and John doing some of his best down on bended knee pleading. (Though not nearly as similar as many might assume, "This Boy" and future Lennon compositions "Yes It Is" and "Because" all trade substance for loveliness; the same goes for his sublime solo "Love" from his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album)

There isn't a whole lot to "This Boy" but it is tremendous all the same. While the three part harmonies from John, Paul and George are what everyone takes away, it is also a great example of just what an outstanding vocalist Lennon was. There's that same raspy quality as heard on "Twist and Shout" but in this instance it's far more pained. While we hear Lennon put so much of himself into some of his more extreme and/or emotional material ("Cold Turkey", "Mother"), I'd argue this is a feature of his work as a whole. The lyrics may indeed be slight but the man was such a pro that he really makes it sound a whole lot more meaningful than it deserves.

Great as both "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" are, neither of them suggest that The Beatles would be dominating pop for the remainder of the decade. But hints that there might be more to them than simply a pop sensation were starting to seep through. "All My Loving" positions Paul McCartney as pop's foremost craftsman, a role he maintains to this day, while "This Boy" is the first clue that John Lennon was going to put it all out on the line. The two worked so amazingly well together that it must have seemed impossible that they could thrive even more when left to their own devices. The Beatles were already leaving their competition in the dust so all that was left was for them to start competing with each other. Game on.

Score: 10