Interview with Klas Burling • Friday, August 23, 1963

Interview

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KLAS: “On my left is a boy… sounding like what?”

RINGO: “Uhh, Ringo. That’s me. You know me. (imitates drums) Ting-cha, bump bah-bump!”

KLAS: “This would be the drums.”

RINGO: “Yeah, that’s… Well…”

KLAS: “Well..”

(Beatles giggle)

KLAS: “And after that we’ve got..?”

GEORGE: “George Harrison.”

KLAS: “Playing..?”

GEORGE: “Guitar.”

KLAS: “Solo guitar.”

GEORGE: “Yes. (imitates guitar) Dee deena-lee, deena-lee dee dee.”

(laughter)

KLAS: “Next in line is..?”

JOHN: (imitates guitar) “Ja-jing jing jing, ja-ja jing jing.”

(laughter)

JOHN: “John.”

RINGO: “Lennon.”

JOHN: “Rhythmus.”

(Beatles giggle)

KLAS: “And on my right side is..?”

PAUL: (imitates bass) “boom bah-boom boom, bah-boom boom. Paul McCartney.”

KLAS: “All from Liverpool, known as..?”

PAUL & JOHN: “The Beatles.”

KLAS: “Yeah, that’s right. You’ve had some hits in Sweden, and have you ever thought about coming to Sweden?”

RINGO: “Well, we’d like to, you know. But we’re so busy at the moment. I don’t think we’ll get there until sometime next year, if we go at all.”

PAUL: “Actually, you know, we want to come because we’ve heard about the girls in Sweden. All gorgous blondes. you know.”

GEORGE & JOHN: “Yeah.”

KLAS: “That’s Paul, and he’s supposed to be the sweet boy in this family, no?”

PAUL: (jokingly) “Aww, shuttup.”

(laughter)

JOHN: “His dad was a Mars bar.”

PAUL: (laughs)

KLAS: “And George, you would like to go…”

GEORGE: “I would like to go to Sweden, yes.”

KLAS: “By the side, by the way, is Michael Cox. An old fried of yours…”

RINGO: “Yeah…!”

JOHN: (loudly) “Hello, Michael Cox!”

PAUL: “He’s from Liverpool, too.”

GEORGE: “How is he?”

MICHAEL COX: “Fine, fine.”

KLAS: “And he has told you a lot about Sweden, and so on.”

GEORGE: “Yes.”

KLAS: “You’re still interested?”

BEATLES: “Yeah!”

RINGO: “More than ever.”

KLAS: “After this we’ll get to your recording of ‘Twist And Shout.’ I watched you, and John you are singing…”

JOHN: “Shouting it.”

KLAS: “Yeah, you’re shouting it, really. How do you feel from that… the throat?”

JOHN: “Well, ehm, at first it was hard. But when I do it twice a night, it’s easy.” (imitates dog barking)

(laughter)

JOHN: (giggling) “It’s quite easy now. Practice, you know, if I keep shouting every night. But a year ago I couldn’t sing it.”

KLAS: “And another thing in your stage act, John, is all that SICK humor. You’ve got funny hands, and…”

JOHN: “Well, I thought it was quite healthy.”

KLAS: (laughs)

RINGO: “It’s not sick. He’s just a cripple.”

(laughter)

JOHN: (giggling) “I’m not, I’m not!”

(laughter)

JOHN: “I’m quite normal, my Swedish friends.”

(laughter, the Beatles recording of ‘Twist And Shout’ is played)

KLAS: “The songwriters in the Beatles, they are John Lennon and Paul McCartney.”

JOHN: (monotone) “Hurray.”

KLAS: “Tell us something about how you find a song… how you get the idea about a song, to write it down.”

JOHN: “Well, sometimes it’s the words first, and then the music after.”

KLAS: “Very often you’ve got a title, you know… Me and you, and everything like that?”

PAUL: “Yeah. We try to do that, to make it personal so it’s… so we really mean it. When we sing a thing about ‘I love you,’ it’s easier.”

JOHN: (singing) “‘And don’t you forget it!'”

JOHN & PAUL: (singing together, jokingly) “‘I love you and don’t you forget it!'”

PAUL: “Well, you see, it’s easier than singing something about the cat that lives on the hill, man.”

(laughter)

PAUL: “It’s a lot easier just to sing about what you feel yourself.”

KLAS: “And you’ve given a lot of nice numbers to Billy J. Kramer.”

JOHN: (loudly) “Well, he’s our good friend and mate… buddy… pal… friend.”

PAUL: “Yeah. Listen to ‘Bad To Me,’ folks.”

KLAS: “Your latest recording is called..?

PAUL: “It’s called ‘She Loves You.’ And there’s story to this one, how we wrote it. We were on tour with Roy Orbison, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. And we were in Newcastle, up north of England, and we were in a hotel room. We had about three days left in which to write a song. We had a recording date set for three days from this date. So we went to the hotel and we booked in a room, and we just decided that we have to write a song very quickly. So we sat down, no ideas came for a bit. But eventually we got an idea. ‘She Loves You’ came, you know. It was just lucky.”

KLAS: “But from the start that was supposed to be the B-side, John?”

JOHN: “The B-side of ‘She Loves You’ was meant to be the A-side. And the same for ‘From Me To you.’ The B-Side of ‘From Me To You’ was the A-side, and then we wrote another song after.”

KLAS: “Well, it…”

JOHN: “Came out better.”

PAUL: “Yeah, see, we write one song, then we can get going then after that and get more ideas after having written one song. So we wrote ‘I’ll Get You’ which is the B-side, first. And then ‘She Loves You’ came after that, you know. We got ideas from that, and we recorded it.”

KLAS: “Yes.”

PAUL: “And there ya go.”

KLAS: “It sounds very easy, all of it.”

JOHN: “Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s hard.”

RINGO: (jokingly) “We find it difficult sometimes!”

(laughter)

KLAS: (jokingly) “Thanks Ringo.”

(John and Paul giggle)

KLAS: “Well, singing too. All of you. You’re singing, actually.”

PAUL: “Yeah, we all sing.”

JOHN: “The Singing Dogs.”

RINGO: “You know me… ‘Boys.'”

(Beatles laugh)

PAUL: “We’ve written a new song for Ringo which we are gonna do on our new LP.”

KLAS: “Yes, what about that new LP? When?”

JOHN: “It’s September, isn’t it?”

PAUL: “No, it’s November.”

JOHN: (jokingly perturbed at being corrected) “Okay, okay!”

(laughter)

PAUL: “Don’t know when it’ll get to Sweden, though, but we hope it’ll get there in November. (nasal voice) And we hope it sells!”

KLAS: “Alright.”

PAUL: “That’s all I can say.”

KLAS: “Alright. RIght now, we’ll listen to ‘She Loves You.'”

(Beatles yell ‘Hurray!’ and applaud)

PAUL: “More!”

RINGO: “Play it twice.”

(‘She Loves You’ is played)