Paul McCartney says John Lennon's guitar part on The Beatles' All My Loving was a 'last-minute' idea Cult Following
The guitar featured on All My Loving was a “last-minute” idea, according to songwriter Paul McCartney.
The Beatles‘ hit would have a recognisable guitar line throughout the track, but it would be added at the very last moment. John Lennon would play the riff on the With The Beatles song, and McCartney would say this instrumental addition was a difference-maker. In his book, The Lyrics, McCartney shared the help Lennon offered to the song with the instrumental addition. While it’s difficult to pin down when the Wings frontman wrote the song (he has said he thought of the lyrics while shaving, and also wrote it on a tour bus), the song is one of the many great hits of The Beatles. It drew consistent wordplay and, released on November 22, 1963, became one of the Fab Four’s biggest, early hits. Though it has the Lennon-McCartney writing credit, it’s the latter name which is behind the song.
Lennon was full of praise for the song even after the band had broken up, saying All My Loving is a “damn good song” in an interview given months before his death. Speaking to Playboy in 1980, Lennon said: “[I]t’s a damn good piece of work … But I play a pretty mean guitar in back.”
That guitar line was a last-minute addition, according to McCartney, who needed a strong riff to carry his With The Beatles track. He wrote in his book, The Lyrics, that the triplets chord structure was a spark of genius which gave the song its unique sound. He wrote: “The thing that strikes me about the All My Loving recording is John’s guitar part; he’s playing the chords as triplets.
“That was a last-minute idea, and it transforms the whole thing, giving it momentum. The song is obviously about someone leaving to go on a trip, and that driving rhythm of John’s echoes the feeling of travel and motion. It sounds like a car’s wheels on the motorway, which, if you can believe it, had only really become a thing in the UK at the end of the fifties.
All My Loving is a historic release from The Beatles, with it being the first song the band played on American television. Their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show saw the Fab Four play the McCartney-penned track. McCartney would suggest it was the song which catapulted The Beatles into their global success.
Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk
