This is my 6th entry in my continuing series on each of The Beatles 186 original songs released from 1962 through 1970. This song, “I Saw Her Standing There,” is my favorite of them thus far.

It’s a great song, but even if it weren’t a great song it would be notable for being the lead track on The Beatles very first album (1963′s Please Please Me.)

Musical Analysis

In 4/4 time in the key of E. There’s a good five pages dedicated to the musical analysis of this song in The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul.

What The Beatles Said About It

McCartney: “Sometimes we would just start a song from scratch, but one of us would nearly always have a germ of an idea, a title or a rough little thing they were thinking about and we’d do it. I Saw Her Standing There was my original, I’d started it and I had the first verse, which therefore gave me the tune, the tempo and the key. It gave you the subject matter, a lot of the information, and then you had to fill in… It was co-written, my idea, and we finished it that day.”

McCartney: “We were learning our skill. John would like some of my lines and not others. He liked most of what I did, but there would sometimes be a cringe line, such as, ‘She was just seventeen, she’d never been a beauty queen.’ John thought, ‘Beauty queen? Ugh.’ We were thinking of Butlins so we asked ourselves, what should it be? We came up with, ‘You know what I mean.’ Which was good, because you don’t know what I mean.”

McCartney: “I played exactly the same notes as he did and it fitted our number perfectly. Even now, when I tell people about it, I find few of them believe me. Therefore I maintain that a bass riff doesn’t have to be original.”

(McCartney is referring to the bass in Chuck Berry’s 1961 single “I’m Talking About You.”)

Mono Vs. Stereo

You can pretty much copy what I wrote for “There’s A Place” for the rest of the songs on Please Please Me.

The awkward stereo mixes of these early mixes (and how great the more straightforward simple songs sound in mono) are a great reason to purchase The Beatles in Mono Box Set.

But, while the stereo mix is a bit awkward, I still like listening to it in stereo too. I love being able to hear each element of the songs separately (the bass line, the lead guitar licks, the vocals, the drums, the hand claps) and that’s easier with the parts of the song panned to different places. This is less important with these early songs than with the more complex songs that the band would record later but it’s still a factor for me.

Songwriting

Mostly a McCartney song and Lennon never claimed to have much input on it but McCartney did say it was co-written and he gave Lennon credit for changing the lyric “she’d never been a beauty queen” to “you know what I mean.”

Who Played What?

Lennon: backing vocal, rhythm guitar, hand claps.
McCartney: lead vocal, bass guitar, hand claps.
Harrison: lead guitar, hand claps.
Starr: drums, hand claps.

Recording

The 2nd of ten songs recorded on February 11, 1963 that made it on the Please Please Me album. The 1st was “There’s A Place.” Six covers (“A Taste of Honey,” “Anna (Go To Him)”, “Boys,” “Chains,” “Baby It’s You,” “Twist and Shout”) and five originals (“There’s A Place,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Do You Want To Know A Secret,” “Misery,” “Hold Me Tight”) were recorded in a legendary 10 hour session on this day. “Hold Me Tight” wasn’t released until it was included on their second album (With The Beatles.)

Charts

Peaked at #14 in 1964 in the US (when a flood of Beatles singles were released.) It was not released as a single in the UK.

Critics

Rolling Stone Magazine included the song at #139 on it’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time (in 2003.)

Ian MacDonald wrote that this song was the “authentic sound of youth” and gave it credit for resuming the “rock and roll rebellion” that had been lying dormant in the early ’60s in Revolution in the Head.

Tim Riley wrote that McCartney’s “one, two, three, faw!” count off has become a “classic call to rock” which shows “how important the beat is to everything that follows” in Tell Me Why.

Last.FM Ranking

#76 among Beatles songs on Last.FM with over 56,000 listeners over the last six months. This gives some indication to the incredible depth of their catalog. Think about it: a song as well known as this one is only the 76th most listened to song by The Beatles by users of the Last.FM service, that’s pretty amazing. It’s currently right behind “Revolution” and right ahead of “I Will.”

Available On

An alternate version of the song can be found on The Beatles Anthology 1.

Covers

Among those that have covered this song are: Daniel Johnston, Elton John, The Smithereens, Jerry Lee Lewis (featuring Little Richard), Little Richard, and David Cassidy.

Tiffany changed the “her” to a “him” for “I Saw Him Standing There” in 1988. Diana Ross & The Supremes had done that many years earlier but their version wasn’t released until 2008.

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