First Banger: The Shredding Delight of the Beatles’ ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’
by Colin Fleming
For their first year-and-half as a singles-making band, the Beatles were pop merchants. Their intentions with the 45 rpm market was to dazzle record-buyers with sheen—albeit sheen with soul—and brilliance of composition, as well as a sort of hyper-professional tidiness.
We think of the masterful chords and changes of “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the encircling, bell-like tones of “Please Please Me,” the welcoming melodicism of “From Me to You.” First single “Love Me Do” was the exception, an opening salvo and note-to-self—that self being the Beatles themselves—that things must be kept real, and what’s more so than rhythm and blues?
Raving rock and roll is up there. Not raving as in the Jerry Lee Lewis madman approach, but how about some guitar shredding rock and roll? It was in March 16, 1964, [in the U.S.; four days’ later in the U.K.] that The Beatles decided the time had come for their first banger of a single, and what a banger it is, one that’s been overlooked in the band’s history. The banger was “Can’t Buy Me Love,” a Paul McCartney tune written in January in a Paris hotel and envisioned as something different than what the song became.
“Can’t Buy Me Love” began life as a country and western number more befitting Beatles for Sale at the end of 1964 than A Hard Day’s Night, the album on which it closes Side A. And even if one doesn’t wish to term this—as this writer would—the greatest LP side in rock and roll history, there had been nothing like it to date, and nothing since. That doesn’t happen without the ideal capper, and “Can’t Buy Me Love” was happy—deliriously so—to oblige. [The album is available here.]
The original U.K. release
The first version of “Can’t Buy Me Love” was put to tape on January 29, not at EMI but instead Paris’ Pathé Marconi Studios, where the band had just produced German-language variants on “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The Beatles were abroad in more ways than these, with their hearts—or at least McCartney’s—deep in America. Somewhere in Texas, probably.
Take 1 of “Can’t Buy Me Love” shows just how much the Beatles loved the States. Their ardor for Elvis and Chuck Berry was prodigious, but an appetite for country and western music didn’t trail by much.
This was a period in Beatles history when John Lennon was the songwriting man. McCartney could match his partner for quality, but not yet for volume. A chief McCartney gift was being able to compose what for him was an ostensible lark—a pastiche, a riff, an homage—and have that throwaway come across as anything but on the actual recording. Consider, for example, “She’s a Woman” from later that same year. The song is a series of yelps, howls and screams, a bit of punctuative rhythm guitar, but it doesn’t lack for cohesion and fullness. The idea was a Macca staple, which would one day grow into the made-of-simple parts majesty of “Hey Jude.”
But first, those tumbling tumbleweeds of pre-overhauled “Can’t Buy Me Love.” The arrangement is both busy and simplistic, a pairing of the down and back rhythm of a ride in the saddle—this loping, giddy-up—with doo-wop rise-and-fall backing vocals out of the gospel tradition.
Makes for a fascinating outtake, and having first located it on an edition of the Ultra Rare Trax bootleg series prior to official release on the first Anthology, it’s something to treasure.
What would have happened, though, if the C&W version of “Can’t Buy Me Love” had been the follow-up to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and the first post-Ed Sullivan Show single? That’s the type of deal that alters trajectories.
The Beatles, though, knew this wasn’t the song that “Can’t Buy Me Love” was going to be, so they did one of their patented presto-change-o routines and reinvented the work on the fly. Out went the country and western blood, and in came the banger blood; with a rip and a snort, McCartney and the guys—George Harrison in particular—let loose, and what we have is a triumphant sonic unleashing.
Listen to the original hit single, remastered in 2023
The Beatles had something right from the song’s jump in its earlier guise, which they retained: They began not with the verse, but the chorus. Beatles songs that commence with a chorus typically fare well. “She Loves You” is the ballyhooed example, but “Can’t Buy Me Love” wouldn’t have exploded as it did—and it requires the opening explosion—if we were initially presented with talk and promises of diamond rings.
Whereas on the C&W version the band had gone up and down, now they launched themselves in a forward direction. The finished “Can’t Buy Me Love” is a blast from the cannon. The Beatles were enamored with rock and roll with edge, and how can you not be if you love rock and roll? There’s that feeling of doing what you ought not, but it’s worth it and, more importantly, vital. “Helter Skelter” is infused with that same spirit, but whereas that song lumbered, “Can’t Buy Me Love” raced—and, having raced, seems to regather within itself to race again.
What’s here lyrically? The aforementioned diamond rings, some Brill Building tropes, but McCartney’s vocal (overdubbed back at EMI on February 28) imbues all of it with raw soul—Black soul, too, we might say. McCartney had his Little Richard routine, and this isn’t it, but the vocal approach bears African-American hallmarks.
We hear strain in the voice—a strain of striving—with nary a hint of breakage. Otis Redding covered “A Hard Day’s Night,” but he would have been well at home with “Can’t Buy Me Love.” There’s a conviction beyond the would-be wisdom—which on the page is jejune—that accounts for our sensation that we’re being told of important matters, but that’s how we feel anytime someone is unburdening themselves to us; that they have a need to do so and are following through can outweigh the specific content of their words.
Related: The author’s appreciation of A Hard Day’s Night
Paul McCartney was a smart guy in 1964 and understood what he was tapping into and the value of going with it. Lennon tries to keep up on rhythm guitar and comes close to pulling ahead as Ringo Starr, the beat king, makes sure the energy doesn’t flag for so much as a single note. He had a gift for keeping everyone’s efforts honest and adrenalized, like a coach who accepts no excuses and pumps you up.
Watch the Beatles perform the song live in London in 1964
Then we have George Harrison, young man on guitar who takes his first solo on a Beatles single and goodness does he try to set your hair aflame. If you wanted to say there’s a hint—small but real—of what will later be heavy metal, you wouldn’t be off-base.
This is the first Beatles guitar solo that shreds, and it’s hard to fathom/estimate how many kids decided they wanted to be guitar heroes upon hearing Harrison’s thrilling break. It sounded louder than anything one would have heard on the radio to that juncture, a form of six-string liberation shouted from Mersey mountains of rock and roll joy.
“We’re out!” The Beatles in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (YouTube video capture)
Jump, then, to A Hard Day’s Night the film, and Starr’s declaration of, “We’re out!” as the Beatles then race down the fire escape to cavort in a field, “Can’t Buy Me Love” pumping away. There aren’t many—if any—cinematic moments that evince freedom like this one does, and you can’t conceive of the sequence working as well with any other number.
“Can’t Buy Me Love” was the Beatles’ breakaway single, a confirmation and another start. In that spring of 1964, they were at their most visible, and arguably as visible as any humans had been up until that point in history. [On April 4—in just its fourth week on the chart—it was #1 in the U.S., where it stayed for five weeks.] Time for pop perfection? No. Country and western excursion to the Texas panhandle? Nope.
Time to bring the rock and roll like it hadn’t been brought before. And if you want to call “Can’t Buy Me Love” an anthem for a particular spirit, a diehard rocker’s ethos, that’s good, too. [The 2023 remastered song is available on The Beatles’ “Red” album in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.]
Watch the famous scene from A Hard Day’s Night where “Can’t Buy Me Love” is featured
A Hard Day’s Night is available for streaming or purchase here.
2 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationGreat take on one of the greatest songs in rock, Colin!
Flip it over & you have another shredding guitar solo this time from John I believe or both John & George(12 string electric), and searing vocal of John with fabulous backing vocals from Paul & George & Ringo’s driving drums. Pure joyous rock. ” You Can’t Do That” Both songs are amazing..