Paul McCartney was not a fan of it either
John Lennon pictured in 1966(Image: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Between them, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote countless classic songs that changed music forever. Their work with The Beatles was all credited to Lennon-McCartney, even if one of them wrote it by themselves.
But among the gems were some songs that they were not proud of. The ECHO has recently looked at John’s dislike for the 1967 album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and the 1969 song ‘Let it Be’, as he criticised Paul’s work on them after he left the band.
There are also songs that John was the driving force behind that he didn’t like. One track, which was featured on the 1965 album ‘Help!’, made John so embarrassed that he said he regretted ever writing it.
‘It’s Only Love’ was written by John and was recorded at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in June 1965. The love song opens with the lyrics: “I get high when I see you go by. My oh, my. When you sigh, my, my inside just flies. Butterflies. Why am I so shy? When I’m beside you.”
It is widely viewed as one of the weaker songs on the album but John truly hated it. Of the song, he told Hit Parader Magazine: “That’s the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyrics.”
John added: “Everything rhymed. Disgusting lyrics. Even then, I was so ashamed of the lyrics, that I could hardly sing them. “That was one song I really wished I’d never written.”
Paul was not much of a fan of the track either. He said: “Sometimes we didn’t fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like ‘It’s Only Love’. If a lyric was really bad we’d edit it, but we weren’t that fussy about it, because it’s only a rock ‘n’ roll song. I mean, this is not literature.”
Despite the band’s dislike of ‘It’s Only Love’, ‘Help!’ was a roaring success. It topped charts around the world and is cited as the band’s first step to a more experimental sound.
In a retrospective review, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph said ‘Help!’ captures “a band in transition, shifting slightly uncomfortably from the pop thrills of Beatlemania to something more mature”.