How Do You Do It? (song)

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Album This song officially appears on the Anthology 1 Official album.

Timeline This song has been officially released in 1995

House Of Wax

How Do You Do?

Related sessions

This song has been recorded during the following studio sessions

The Beatles’ second Abbey Road recording session

Sep 04, 1962

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Song facts

From Wikipedia:

“How Do You Do It?” was the debut single by Liverpudlian band Gerry and the Pacemakers. The song was number one in the UK Singles Chart on 11 April 1963, where it stayed for three weeks.

History

The song was written by Mitch Murray, who offered it to Adam Faith and Brian Poole but was turned down. George Martin of EMI decided to pick it up for the new group he was producing, the Beatles, as the A-side of their first record. The Beatles recorded the song but opposed releasing it, feeling that it did not fit their sound, but worked out changes from Murray’s demo-disc version. These included a new introduction, vocal harmony, an instrumental interlude, small lyric changes and removal of the half-step modulation for the last verse. They recorded the song in September, 1962; although Murray disliked their changes, the decision not to release the Beatles’ version was primarily a business one. Love Me Do was their first single instead. The recording was officially released in November 1995 on the Beatles retrospective Anthology 1 album.

Gerry and the Pacemakers’ version, also produced by Martin, became a number-one hit in the UK until it was replaced by “From Me to You” (the Beatles’ third single). It was the title song of a seven-inch EP record also featuring “Away From You“, “I Like It” and “It’s Happened to Me” (Columbia SEG8257, released July 1963). The single entered the US charts on 5 July 1964, eventually reaching number nine.

Paul McCartney, in “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn:

[George Martin] knew it was a number one hit so he gave us it on a demo, a little white acetate. We took it back to Liverpool and said, ‘What are we gonna do with this? This is what he wants us to do, he’s our producer, we’ll have to do it, we’ll have to learn it.’ So we did, but we didn’t like it and we came back to George and said, ‘Well it may be a number one but we just don’t want this kind of song, we don’t want to go out with that kind of reputation. It’s a different thing we’re going for, it’s something new’. I suppose we were quite forceful really, for people in our position. And he understood. George later took our demo and played it to Gerry [and the Pacemakers] and said, ‘They don’t want it, it’s a major hit, you do it,’ and Gerry leapt at the chance. He kept it very similar in tempo to our version which was quite changed from the original demo because it was our arrangement, basically.

The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn

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From The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations:

[a] mono 4 Sep 1962. edited Jul 1984 at AIR Studios, Montserrat.
CD: Apple CDP 8 34445 2 Anthology 1 1995.

Bootlegged as early as 1973, this song appeared in the album of outtakes reported in 1981, the Abbey Road show in 1983, and the Sessions LP planned for 1984. However, as is evident from a comparison of the older sources, it was edited in 1984 to change the first “wish I knew how you do it to me, I’d do it to you” at the end to “wish I knew how you do it to me, but I haven’t a clue” copied from earlier in the song– a pointless exercise.

Last updated on July 9, 2017

Lyrics

How do you do what you do to me?
I wish I knew
If I knew how you do it to me
I'd do it to you

How do you do what you do to me?
I'm feeling blue
Wish I knew how you do it to me
But I haven't a clue

You give me a feeling in my heart, ooh la la
Like an arrow passing through it
I suppose that you think you're very smart
But won't you tell me how do you do it?

How do you do what you do to me?
I wish I knew
If I knew how you do it to me
I'd do it to you

You give me a feeling in my heart, ooh la la
Like an arrow passing through it
I suppose that you think you're very smart
But won't you tell me how do you do it?

How do you do what you do to me?
I wish I knew
Wish I knew how you do it to me
But I haven't a clue
Wish I knew how you do it to me
I'd do it to you
Wish I knew how you do it to me
I'd do it to you