1963 Rock Song, Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney as a 'Throwaway,' Became ..
One man's trash is another man's treasure, as the saying goes…or to put it in classic rock terms, a "throwaway" song for the Beatles was a breakthrough hit for the Rolling Stones.
"I Wanna Be Your Man" was originally released by the Stones as a single in 1963 and became the band's first Top 20 hit in the U.K., peaking at #12. But it was actually written for Ringo Starr to sing by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were walking down London's Charing Cross Road when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards passed them in a taxi.
"So they shouted from the taxi and we yelled, 'Hey, hey, give us a lift, give us a lift,' and we bummed a lift off them," McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now by Barry Miles.
"So there were the four of us sitting in a taxi and I think Mick said, 'Hey, we're recording. Got any songs?' And we said, 'Aaaah, yes, sure, we got one. How about Ringo's song? You could do it as a single,'" he added.
"We often used to say to people, the words don't really matter, people don't listen to words, it's the sound they listen to," McCartney continued.
"So 'I Wanna Be Your Man' was to try and give Ringo something like 'Boys'; an uptempo song he could sing from the drums. So again, it had to be very simple."
In Lennon's opinion, the song was a "throwaway." "The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones," Lennon explained in All We Are Saying by David Sheff.
Source: yahoo.com/Jacqueline Burt Cote
