I Want To Hold Your Hand — The Beatles
This song was the final blow from across the sea that felled America. Although in this video, they stand on a mock copy of the Liverpool Echo, almost taunting, saying, “we already own you.”
A true Lennon/McCartney effort:
We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u/ got that something…’ And Paul hits this chord [E minor] and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each other’s noses.
Imagine being a fly on the wall there.
Now, a lot is made of Lennon’s early womanizing, even while married. Before the band hit it big, John made no secret or limitation of his love of women, indulging in Germany and secret trysts in Liverpool. So some people scoff at the notion that he’d be satisfied just to hold someone’s hand.
But I disagree. He truly did love Cynthia, at least in the early years. But there was that fear of abandonment, that belief that everyone in his life would leave him, like his mother and father. He wasn’t so good with commitment, perhaps as a defense. But judging by his art and the comments of those who knew him best, there really was that isolated, lonely guy inside, yearning to be safe, holding someone’s hand.
