From Mop Tops To Moustaches

It’s a cheeky thing to say, but maybe the best thing The Beatles ever did was ‘I Saw Her Standing There’; track one, side one, off their first album Please Please Me. It’s all there on this song: the fiery syncopated rock beat – tougher and more strident than other pop bands of the time; Lennon and McCartney are singing together, they are writing together – McCartney’s original first line “Well, she was just seventeen / Never been a beauty queen” changed to the more knowing and lascivious “Well, she was just seventeen / You know what I mean” by Lennon; there are telltale signs of sophistication in the songwriting – the minor chord in the chorus, the pushed extra notes out of the middle eight; and there’s the other two: George Harrison sparking on rhythm and lead guitar, Ringo driving the band with subtle and intricate drum patterns. The great arc that the and will travel over the next seven years, from Beat group to Mod, from Psychedelia to the madness of The White Album, will eventually bring them back to ‘Get Back’, another rocking three-chord song, and on their last album, Let It Be, they will attack ‘One After 909’, originally written by Lennon in 1957. So the circle is complete but you have to wonder, in the light of the sheer joy and beauty of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, how much better did they ever get than this?