I Lost My Little Girl

Song facts

“I Lost My Little Girl” is the first song written by Paul McCartney on guitar, when he was 14, in 1956 or 1957 (“Suicide” and “When I’m Sixty Four” have been composed in the same time frame, but on piano). A live performance of this song has been released on McCartney’s 1991 album Unplugged (The Official Bootleg).

Historic is the word – ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ was the first song composition by a bright-eyed boy-scout from Allerton, Liverpool; written at 14, towards the end of 1956/early 1957, a few months before he would team up with the Quarry Men to skiffle his way around Liverpool. Not only was Unplugged Paul McCartney’s first public performance of his song in more than 30 years – listen for the authentic Buddy Holly hiccup – but this is also its first commercial release.

From Unplugged liner notes

From earlybeatlessongs:

There seems to be no dispute that this was the first song McCartney wrote on guitar. (And since this one is a ‘rock’ song, McCartney himself thinks of it inaccurately as his first ever composition.) McCartney is usually said to have written it at age 14 and since we know it was composed in the period after his mother’s death, it logically sits somewhere between November 1956 and June 1957 (when he turned 15).

Once McCartney teamed up with Lennon, the song entered the Quarry Men’s set list, but no audio of a group performance is known. It is rumoured (probably falsely) that a version was taped in 1962, but the first time we actually hear it is from 1969, at the Get Back sessions. Curiously, the song was sung through by Lennon, not McCartney, on January 25, with the others gradually joining in. (This version doesn’t bear much relation melodically to McCartney’s subsequent recordings.)

We finally get to hear its author sing it thanks to a piano demo made in 1973, implying McCartney might have been considering recording it properly at that point. This version has an added section: “Gather round people, let me tell you the story of the very first song I wrote”, which is almost certainly new at that point – more evidence that he planned to release it, although it never materialised. 

The song was finally recorded in something resembling a finished version, in a live stage performance in January 1991, for the MTV “Unplugged” series. This recording duly found its way onto CD, where it was copyrighted (correctly) to McCartney alone.

At this stage we need to pause for a moment, as the chronology needs attention. As noted above, McCartney had apparently already written “I Lost My Little Girl” in the aftermath of his mother’s death. McCartney has noted the sub-text of the song’s title but insists it was not a conscious reference when he devised the song. 

Confusion arises because Mark Lewisohn dates the number to late-1957, after McCartney had hooked up with Lennon. Ordinarily we would accept Lewisohn’s word, but here we have to make an exception, with due respect to the author. 

It is true that McCartney wrote the song on guitar, and equally true that he did not own one of his own until July 1957 – around the time he and Lennon met. This fact alone seems to imply that “I Lost My Little Girl” was written during McCartney’s Quarry Men days. However, we know that he was proficient on the instrument before the two came together, having taught himself well on Ian James’s model. This is not in dispute; when McCartney eventually did meet Lennon, he amazed the latter with his ability, bursting into a rendition of “Twenty Flight Rock”, which was ahead of anything Lennon was able to do at that stage. (He also corrected Lennon’s guitar tuning; it had been tuned in the same way as a banjo.)

It is noticeable that in interview, McCartney does not discuss the song in the context of the Quarry Men, and always seems to link it to the period after his mother’s death (almost a year before Lewisohn dates the song). Not only was it showcased to Ian James at Forthlin Road, implying that it was written on that borrowed guitar, but McCartney himself has said, “I must have played it to John when we met and we decided to get together”, which is pretty conclusive. 

[…] I traded my trumpet in for an acoustic guitar, a Zenith, which I still have. It was OK as a first guitar. Being left handed, I would play it upside down. Everyone else had right-handed guitars, but I learnt some chords my way up: A, D and E – which was all you needed in those days. I started writing songs, because now I could play and sing at the same time. I wrote my first when I was fourteen. It was called ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ – ‘I woke up this morning, my head was in a whirl, only then I realised, lost my little girl, uh, huh, huh.’ It’s a funny, corny little song based on three chords – G,G7 and C. I liked the way one melody line went down and the other went up, which I think is called contrary motion. It was a very innocent little song. All my first songs, including that one, were written on the Zenith; songs like ‘Michelle’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. It was on this guitar that I learnt ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, the song that later got me into the group The Quarry Men. […]

Paul McCartney, The Beatles Anthology

Anything that I had written on an acoustic was considered. Like ‘Mother Nature’s Son’, which we also thought about for Unplugged but just didn’t fancy in the end. And ‘I Lost My Little Girl’, the first song I ever wrote, at 14, was written on the guitar. After that I wrote ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, but that was on piano. ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ is a very innocent little song – G, G7, C – but quite interesting because the chords go down as the melody goes up; it’s a clear musical trick, but it’s also interesting to see such ideas around in my first song.

Paul McCartney, from Club Sandwich 58, Summer 1991

You wouldn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to recognise that the song is a very direct response to the death of my mother. She died in October 1956 at the terribly young age of 47. I wrote this song later that same year. I was 14 at the time. Because my dad played trumpet, I’d learnt it a little bit. I gave that up because I couldn’t sing with the mouthpiece in my mouth. The point being that I liked the idea of singing, and I was watching loads of people who were coming on to the scene. When you look back and think about it, rock and roll was only just being born. Since the trumpet was indeed a bit of a non-starter in rock and roll, I ended up with a guitar, of sorts. A Zenith acoustic. It was right-handed, because they didn’t sell left-handed guitars, so I had to do a botch job, turn it over so that now the fat, low strings were going into the thin holes and the thin, high strings were going into the fat holes. I had to carve out the thin holes to allow the fat strings to go in, and then put a little match in each fat hole so that the thin string could lie on top of it. I now had pretty much a left-handed guitar, and I had a couple of chords that I’d learnt.

Paul McCartney – From Paul McCartney reveals the stories behind his greatest hits | The Sunday Times Magazine | The Sunday Times (thetimes.co.uk) – From “The Lyrics” book, 2021

When I first started writing songs I started using a guitar. The first one I ever wrote was one called “I Lost My Little Girl” which is a funny little song, a nice little song, a corny little song based on three chords—G, G7 and C. A little later we had a piano and I used to bang around on that. I wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four” when I was about 16. I wrote the tune for that and I was vaguely thinking then it might come in handy in a musical comedy or something. I didn’t know what kind of career I was going to take.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Rolling Stone, 1974

Last updated on January 4, 2024

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