“We’ve just written this one but we’re not sure about it…” How The Beatles turned to the Shadows legend Hank Marvin for advice about an iconic song
Before the Beatles came along and forever shifted the cultural landscape later in the decade, The Shadows were one of the most influential and important British bands of the 60s – certainly the most important instrumental group.
Hank Marvin’s guitar playing was hugely impactful on a whole generation of guitarists that came after him. Everyone from Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck to Brian May and Tony Iommi has heralded the influence of Britain’s original Strat-slinger.
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Another band that felt Hank’s influence and acknowledged his impact were The Beatles themselves, and in particular guitarist George Harrison. The band celebrated the Shads in all manner of overt musical ways.
Cry for a Shadow which was recorded in June 1961 by a pre-fame Beatles, was the fab four’s tribute to the British instrumental masters, though the track didn’t see the light of day until it was released as a single in 1964.
The Beatles’ early live performances during their stints in Hamburg included a cover of The Shadows most iconic track, Apache in their setlist. Even The Beatles’ own Here, There and Everywhere was initially offered to The Shadows by Paul McCartney before the band decided to keep it for themselves. Marvin would later record an instrumental version of the song for 2007 album, Guitar Man.
Stand Up Advice
But The Beatles also sought help from the Shadows on occasion. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were known to have turned to Marvin and Shadows rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch for guidance. One particular piece of advice that the fab four took onboard was in regards to The Beatles live concert gear set-up.
“In 1962, Brian Epstein [Beatles manager] had brought Paul and John to our show at the Liverpool Empire,” explains Hank Marvin today. “They’d just come from playing in the Star Club in Hamburg which was a very pub, sort of rough atmosphere. And Brian told them, ‘I want you to see how a real professional band looks on stage and how they present themselves to an audience’.
“We had our Vox guitar amplifiers on stands, and the reason was that having the amplifiers off the floor, we could hear them a bit better. Because when you had them on the floor, a lot of those theatres, because they had a wooden stage with a cellar underneath, it would emphasize the bottom end of the amp. So, by lifting it up, it made the amp sound much clearer. And also, obviously we could hear it better as it’s pointing more up towards our hearing. And they saw that and they too went out and got the same things from Vox, from Jennings Musical Instruments who were the Vox makers at the time, and also placed them on stands.”
From Me To You
A year later after having returned from a Shadows tour abroad, both Marvin and Welch went to see The Beatles perform a concert in London. After the show, the pair paid McCartney and Lennon a visit backstage before all headed out to a party together.
“We’d just come back from a tour in South Africa and saw that their second single release, Please Please Me (1963) was number two in the charts,” recalls Marvin. “We thought it was a brilliant record. And we saw that they were on tour with a guy called Chris Montez, who at that point had the current number one single in the UK. Tommy Roe was second on the bill and The Beatles were third. So, we thought, ‘let’s go and see these guys.’ We went along and the place was half empty, and at that point, no one was screaming.
“The Beatles were very raw, but there was a lot of energy in the way they played and the way they sang. And they were also fooling around a bit on stage. So, we went backstage to see them, and went up the stairs and John [Lennon] was standing and leaning against the drawer of the dressing room, wearing his black glasses because he was shortsighted like me. As soon as he saw me, he whipped them off and put them in his pocket.
“After that, all of us went back to Bruce’s [Welch] house that same night, and we got the guitars out, and we’re all playing rock and roll songs and everything. I have to say, the songs that they played were a few of their own songs; one they’d written for Billy J. Kramer, Do You Want to Know a Secret and From Me to You, which was the follow up single to Please Please Me. Then they turned to us and said, ‘Oh we’ve just written this one but we’re not sure about it. Do you think it’s too long? We think verse is too long’. And that song was, She Loves You! And we listened to it and said, ‘Nah, it sounds great and the chorus is brilliant’.
Fast forward a couple years to 1965 and Marvin and George Harrison end up crossing paths again, but this time it was the Beatle himself offering up some friendly advice to The Shadows, after the group had recently released a single that featured a lead vocal by Marvin. “We had just released Don’t Make My Baby Blue which had vocals and I bumped into George at Abbey Road Studios,” he says. “George said, ‘oh, I love your new record, it’s great. Stop doing the instrumentals, and do more vocals! You, and Bruce can sing so do some more vocals’ And, unfortunately, we didn’t take his advice and we went straight back to instrumentals. And honestly, at that point, realistically, instrumental popularity was waning. Unless you came up with something I like a big film theme or something. And so, his advice was good, but unfortunately, we didn’t follow it.”
In 1978, McCartney would again seek out Marvin, this time inviting him to be part of the guitar ensemble on the recording of Rockestra Theme, a track that appeared on the final Paul McCartney and Wings studio album, Back To The Egg.
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