TOP SONGS

Writing in a hotel

McCartney and Lennon were inspired to write "She Loves You" after a concert at the Majestic Ballroom in Newcastle as part of their tour with Roy Orbison and Gerry & The Pacemakers. McCartney recalled they wrote the song in a hotel in Newcastle. In 2003, plans to install a plaque at the hotel concerned were stalled after it turned out neither Paul McCartney nor Ringo Starr, the surviving Beatles, could recall whether it was the Imperial Hotel or the Royal Turk's Head where the group had stayed.
The other circumstances under which the song was written are generally agreed upon. McCartney described it in the same year "She Loves You" was written: "There was a Bobby Rydell song out at the time "Forget Him" and, as often happens, you think of one song when you write another. We were in a van up in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I'd planned an 'answering song' where a couple of us would sing 'she loves you' and the other ones would answer 'yeah yeah'. We decided that was a crummy idea but at least we then had the idea of a song called 'She Loves You'. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it — John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars." It was completed the following day at McCartney's family home at Forthlin Road, Liverpool.^[3]
Interestingly for a love song, the lyrics were written in the third person. This idea was attributed by Lennon to McCartney, in 1980: "It was written together (with Paul) and I don't remember how. I remember it was Paul's idea — instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party. The 'Woooo' was taken from the Isley Brothers' 'Twist and Shout,' which we stuck into everything."
George Martin, the Beatles' producer, argued with Lennon and McCartney about the major sixth chord that ends the song. McCartney said in 1982: "Occasionally, we'd overrule George Martin, like on "She Loves You", we end on a sixth chord, a very jazzy sort of thing. And he said, 'Oh, you can't do that! A sixth chord? It's too jazzy.' We just said, 'No, it's a great hook, we've got to do it.'"
Eventually McCartney opened up, giving a fuller description of the disagreement, in 1988: "We rehearsed the end bit of "She Loves You" and took it to George. And he just laughed and said, 'Well, you can't do the end of course... that sixth... it's too like the Andrews Sisters.' We just said, 'Alright, we'll try it without,' and we tried it and it wasn't as good. Then he conceded, 'You're right, I guess.'"