From Me to You
STEVE TURNER
From Me To You, the Beatles' third single, was written on February 28, 1963, while travelling by coach from York to Shrewsbury on the Helen Shapiro tour. Helen can't remember them actually writing it, but can recall it being played to her when they arrived at Shrewsbury in the afternoon ready for their evening concert at the Granada Cinema.

"They asked me if I would come and listen to two songs that they had," she says. "Paul sat at the piano and John stood next to me and they sang From Me To You and Thank You Girl. They said they sort of knew their favourite but hadn't finally decided, so they wanted me to tell them which one I thought would make the best A side. As it happened I liked From Me To You and they said, "Great. That's the one we like'."

The Beatles played the Odeon Cinema in Southport, Lancashire, the next day, the closest the tour would go to Liverpool, and here they were able to play their new song to Paul's father to get his opinion. They knew the lyrics were simple enough but they were worried that the music was a bit on the complicated side and that it wouldn't catch on with the fans. It was Paul's dad who convinced them that it was a nice little tune.

The title was suggested by From You To Us, the letters column in the weekly pop newspaper New Musical Express. Paul and John were reading the issue dated February 22, which had their tour dates advertised on the front page and stories about Cliff Richard, Billy Fury and Elvis Presley inside.

They started to talk about one of the letters in the column, as John revealed in May 1963, when asked about the origins of the song. There were only two letters and it's hard to see which could have provoked comment. One letter complained about "maniacal laughter" on two recent limbo dance records and the other relished the fact that Cliff Richard appeared to be getting the better of Elvis Presley in the charts. Perhaps it was this second letter that fired the Beatles' own ambition.

Apparently Paul and John started the song by trading lines, making it one of the few Beatle hits that they built from scratch together. The song's great gimmick was the use of the high-pitched "ooooh" sound, inspired by the Isley Brothers' recording of Twist And Shout. When Kenny Lynch heard them singing this on the coach, he said to them, "You can't do that. You sound like a bunch of fairies," and they replied, "It's OK. The kids will like it."

In April 1963, John commented: "We were just fooling about on the guitar. This went on for a while. Then we began to get a good melody line and we really started to work at it. Before the journey was over we'd completed the lyric, everything. We were so pleased ... "

A year later, again talking about how the song was written, John said: "Paul and I kicked some ideas around and came up with what we thought was a suitable melody line. The words weren't really all that difficult — especially as we had decided quite definitely not to do anything that was at all complicated. I suppose that is why we often had the words 'you' and 'me' in the titles of our songs. It's the sort of thing that helps the listeners to identify with the lyrics. We think this is very important. The fans like to feel that they are part of something that is being done by the performers."

From writing to recording took five days although, as John remembered: "We nearly didn't record it because we thought it was too bluesy at first, but when we'd finished it and George Martin had scored it with harmonica, it was all right."

In April 1963 From Me To You became the Beatles' second British Number 1 hit but, released on the Vee Jay label in America, it didn't even make the Top 40.