Every Beatles fan worth their goddamn knows that the Liverpool group started their career by performing covers.
Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney had been writing together since they were teenagers, it was years into The Beatles’ career that they dared to perform their own original songs. For the first few years, they enjoyed playing covers of their favourite acts, most of them American pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll. And while a lot of their covers, such as ‘Twist and Shout’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’, became so famous that a lot of people still mistakenly believe they’re originals, there were some that slipped under the radar, but still held a special place in the Fab Four’s hearts.
This one track, which The Beatles played many times on their early gigs, was a favourite of Lennon’s. ‘Some Other Guy’, written by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and Richie Barrett, came out in 1962 and was later covered by the Big Three, a version which Lennon greatly enjoyed. The Beatles not only played it live, but they also recorded a cover of it for the BBC in 1964. Their cover, while greatly enjoyed by fans, eventually faded into oblivion in comparison to the Fab Four’s many other, much more successful tracks.
‘Some Other Guy’, specifically the Big Three version, was among Lennon’s favourites, so much so that the Beatle included him on the iconic ‘John Lennon’s Jukebox’. The jukebox was one that Lennon bought in 1965 and filled with 40 songs he chose to accompany him on tour. The mythical object was recently sold at an auction, and fans were thrilled to learn about the songs The Beatles liked to enjoy in private.
Lennon’s love for the song was no secret, though. While they didn’t perform it as frequently as other covers, he expressed in an interview in 1968 that he loved the song and would have wanted to write something like that: “I’d like to make a record like ‘Some Other Guy’. I haven’t done one that satisfies me as much as that satisfied me.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he mentioned the song again and praised the rock ‘n’ roll that preceded The Beatles and that they were still emulating, even after becoming the greatest band in the world. “Really, I just like rock ‘n’ roll. I mean, these (pointing to a pile of 50’s records) are the records I dug then, I dig them now, and I’m still trying to reproduce ‘Some Other Guy’ sometimes or ‘Be Bop A Lula’.”
He added, “I’m not being modest. I mean, we’re still trying it. We sit there in the studio and we say, ‘How did it go? How did it go? Come on, let’s do that.’”
The other Beatles seemed to share Lennon’s love for the track. In Anthology, George Harrison talked about discovering the song thanks to their manager, Brian Epstein, who demanded his record store carry every album that came out, before they became hits. “Before going to a gig we’d meet in the record store, after it had shut, and we’d search the racks like ferrets to see what new ones were there,” Harrison shared. “That’s where we found artists like Arthur Alexander and Ritchie Barrett – ‘Some Other Guy’ was a great song.”
Even the greatest band in the world needs influences, and part of the reason The Beatles kept getting better year after year was because of their relentless hunger to learn and discover new music, regardless of how commercially successful it was.
