50 years ago to the date, the UK was getting used to a bright new Liverpool band who would very soon conquer the world and change the course of popular music forever in the process.
On October 5th, 1962 The Beatles released the first single proper in their homeland, ‘Love Me Do‘. In many ways it marked both the start and the end of an era for the group – being the culmination of their emergence from local Merseyside favourites to newly-signed regulars on the UK and European live circuit, whilst at the same time beginning their incredible eight-year run of creative and commercial dominance which remains unrivalled to this day.
Fittingly, ‘Love Me Do’ is one of the purest examples of Paul McCartney and John Lennon‘s famous songwriting partnership, written in the late 1950s primarily by the former and subsequently built upon by the latter when those collaborative instincts were still in their infancy, and still treasured by the pair.
Though modest by their later standards, the loyal fanbase which The Beatles had earned around Britain during a previous year of solid touring meant their debut single peaked at a respectable #17 on the charts upon its release, hitting the shelves in North America at the birth of Beatlemania several months later.
‘Love Me Do’s qualities of a straight-forward, instantly memorable melody, together with a chirpy, almost innocent delivery, remained the signature foundation of Lennon and McCartney’s early writing, though their constantly maturing and evolving creativity was already becoming apparent when ‘Please Please Me‘ followed at the beginning of 1963, handing the Fab Four their first number one in all of the UK charts – except the one that really mattered – in the process.
Just over a year on from ‘Love Me Do’, the true genius of The Beatles was becoming apparent, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand‘ was about to top the charts Stateside after a series of delays, and the band would soon introduce themselves personally to tens of millions of Americans live on the Ed Sullivan Show.
The rest, as they say, is history.