Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Ringo Starr and Maureen Cox on holiday in the Virgin Islands

On May 3, 1964, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Ringo Starr and Maureen Cox arrived at St Thomas in the Virgin Islands, completing their journey from London via Paris and Lisbon. The four spent the month fishing, swimming and listening to calypso music, and hired a private yacht — the Happy Days — with its own crew. To travel without being recognised, Paul and Jane had adopted the aliases Mr Manning and Miss Ashcroft, and Ringo and Maureen travelled as Mr Stone and Miss Cockcroft.

It was during this holiday that Paul McCartney wrote Things We Said Today, which appeared on the UK A Hard Day’s Night album released in July 1964. The holiday lasted the entirety of May, with the group returning to London on May 27. It was the first extended break The Beatles had taken as a group since their rise to fame the previous year.

There was something about the atmosphere there that made me quite keen on writing new songs in the evenings.

Paul McCartney – From The Beatles Monthly Book, July 1964

One of my earliest major responsibilities, the organization of The Beatles’ first real holiday, had been handed to me within hours of my entering the NEMS office. The holiday was to last all of May and was to remain top secret, classified. With code-names, disguises, decoys, unmarked cars – everything but the elimination of witnesses – it proved a deeply thrilling affair. I chose the aliases: the Lennons were to be the Leslies, George was to be Mr Hargreaves and his girl-friend, Pattie Boyd, Miss Bond; they were all going to Tahiti. The others, Paul and Jane Asher (Mr Manning and Miss Ashcroft) and Ringo and Maureen Cox (Mr Stone and Miss Cockroft), were off to the Virgin Islands.

Neil Aspinall was Ashenden and I was Tatlock. The names had a nice fictional feel to them: ‘Ah, Manning, I see you have the documents. Kindly step into the library. Ashenden will have Tatlock serve tea…’ It was about the only fun to be had out of the arrangements, which were so elaborate as virtually to ensure a supreme cock-up. Sure enough, a travel agent mixed up the travel documents so that Ringo, en route with Paul and me to their first stop (Paris), discovered he had George’s passport; while George, on his way with John and Neil to Amsterdam, found he had Ringo’s. Ringo was angry but reasonable about the slip-up; I never did find out how George reacted. In any case, with extra planes travelling to and fro, the passports were properly delivered at the next intermediate points of the journeys.

Derek Taylor – From “Fifty Years Adrift” – From 3 May 1964: Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Ringo Starr and Maureen Cox fly to the Virgin Islands | The Beatles Bible

One of the holidays we went on, again with Ringo and Maureen, was on a yacht in the Bahamas, the Happy Days. I remember writing ‘Things We Said Today’ in one of the cabins below deck one afternoon on my acoustic guitar. I got away from the main party but it was a bit queasy downstairs; you could smell the oil and the boat was rocking a bit and I’m not the best sailor in the world, so I wrote a little bit of it downstairs and then the rest of it on the back deck where you couldn’t smell the engine. I don’t know why the engine was on, I suppose we were moving.

I wrote Things We Said Today on acoustic. It was a slightly nostalgic thing already, a future nostalgia: we’ll remember the things we said today, some time in the future, so the song projects itself into the future and then is nostalgic about the moment we’re living in now, which is quite a good trick. It has interesting chords. It goes C, F, which is all normal, then the normal thing might be to go to F minor, but to go to the B flat was quite good. It was a sophisticated little tune.

Then someone like the Daily Express got word that we were there so we had the buzzing little boats around. The reporters would say, ‘My editor says I’ve got to stay here till you give us a picture!’ So we always had to pose for a picture, smiling hello but thinking, Piss off!

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

Buy on Amazon