Tune In (The Beatles: All These Years, #1)

by Mark Lewisohn

Some nicks are conjectural. “I saw her standing on the corner” is the opening line of the Coasters’ “Young Blood,” and “she’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen” is from Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie”—both songs still in the Beatles’ set. “How could I dance with another / Since I saw her standing there” has a similar melody and meter to “I want to be in that number / When the saints go marching in”—the tune Paul learned on trumpet in 1955–6 and the B-side of their own “My Bonnie” record. Other nicks are definite. In a 1964 interview, Paul cheerfully admitted to the wholesale lifting of the bass riff in Chuck Berry’s “I’m Talking About You” that runs throughout “I Saw Her Standing There”: “I played exactly the same notes as he did and it fitted our number perfectly.”53 But it wasn’t so much the parts that were important, it was what Paul and John did with them. Though the title wasn’t settled, their new song was dynamic, catchy, appealing, clever … and an instant favorite with audiences.