They also wrote the songs themselves, which revolutionised the music industry worldwide. The three-part harmonies reminded me of the sort of thing you’d hear in church, deep soul. Love Me Do was clearly influenced, but different. I’d heard Big Mama Thornton singing Hound Dog and Barrett Strong doing Money (That’s What I Want). Before them, most British music had seemed like a lightweight copy of American records, but Love Me Do felt like a spiritual awakening. My teenage hormones were raging, and the Beatles looked so cute, not at all threatening. When I was 13 we were obsessed with the radio in the way kids now are obsessed with TikTok. It still makes me smile when I hear it and I take enormous pride in thinking that it was the launchpad for me. In terms of what they did later, Love Me Do is the bit that gets jettisoned once the rocket is in orbit, but it was vital to the whole process. Lennon and McCartney’s voices weren’t swathed in reverb like records were then, and their sense of melody was phenomenal. It might have been the harmonica intro – the only other song I remember with a harmonica break back then was Frank Ifield’s I’ll Remember You – but Love Me Do was head and shoulders above Freddie and the Dreamers or Gerry and the Pacemakers or any of those bands with similar accents. I don’t know why that song more than any other would leap out at me, but it was the first song I ever sang. I was three years and two months old when Love Me Do came out, but I had a plastic toy guitar and whenever the song came on the radio I would stand on a stool and sing along.
‘I sang to it with a plastic guitar when I was three years old’
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