The Beatles - Real Love

Real Love, was another track done by The Beatles for the album Anthology 2 and was another demo track by John Lennon given to Paul McCartney by Yoko Ono. The band's original producer George Martin didn't produce the new tracks as he told Paul McCartney that his hearing wasn't as good as it used to be and he didn't want to do a bad job, so they brought in Jeff Lynne (of ELO fame) who had worked with George Harrison on his solo album and the Travelling Wilbury's to produce the tracks. Like the previous single Free As A Bird, the track was slowly pieced together by Jeff. The cassette of the demo was recorded by Lennon on an old tape recorder and was recorded low-fi, so it was full of background hiss and electrical hum and assorted clicks. If took Jeff a few days to get rid of the noise so that it was a workable demo.

The rest of the band put the backing track down, with the guys using many of their old instruments that had been used on many a classic track. McCartney recorded a higher range backing track to ride along Lennon's vocal as it drops in level in odd places. They managed to complete the track by all saying that John had left to go on holiday after putting his bits down, so that they could finish it off for him, it was the only way they could deal with the emotion of the recording. It was released as a single in March 1996 on the band's Apple label and got to number 4 in the UK and 11 in the US charts. It also was the opening track on Anthology 2 album that was released, covering the mid 60's period for the band.

In the UK the single suffered a radio play ban by Radio 1, then the biggest radio station in the UK. They had decided that The Beatles were no longer relevant in the chats of 1996 although many of the bands in the charts at that time (especially Oasis) had cited the band as a major influence. Paul wrote a piece for a newspaper saying how bad the ban was, Ringo said that they didn't need Radio 1 as they had the independent radio stations behind them. This would be the last time that all four original members of The Beatles would chart, Ringo said that this really was the end of the line as there was nothing more they could do as The Beatles. Here's the cover of the CD single

The Beatles - Love Me Do

The 5th of October 1962 is a date that just about changed the world, musically and more importatnt people's lives. Although it would take a couple of years for the full impact to hit, The Beatles had arrived on the music scene and over the next few years of the sixties would cause a revolution that changed the world forever. Love Me Do was released and got to number 17 in the UK charts. Beatlemania was just around the corner and the fab four would be screamed at with every concert they played.

We all know what went on to happen with the Beatles, together and apart over the next few years but EMI were to celebrate again in 1982 when the single got a 20th anniversary release and the single was re-released in a picture cover and picture disc and this time it got to number 4 in 1982, and after that all the Beatles singles got the 20th anniversary reissue treatment.

Shoot forward to October 2012 and the single is now 50 years old, many things have changed, vinyl is no longer a populat format, EMI has been bought out and really isn't a giant like it was back in the old day, Universal (who now own EMI) decided to release Love Me Do as a limited single originally set for October 5th 2012 but the company issued the wrong version onto the single. Andy White was a session drummer brought in on one of the recordings of the single but the Ringo Starr track was used as the original single. EMI pressed the White session onto the anniversary single and realised, they withdrew the single but around 200 copies got out and now changing hands on Ebay for a lot of money. So the single was reissued a few weeks later missing the anniversary and coming out towards the end of October instead. Also on the reissue, the catalogue number on the B Side is wrong to the A Side and also the publisher of the song is MPL Communications which is McCartney's publishing company.

Here is the 50th anniversary single, plus the picture disc and a scan of an original red Parlophone Love Me Do single from 1962