The day after they began writing ‘She Loves You’ in a Newcastle hotel room, John Lennon and Paul McCartney finished the song in the dining room of McCartney’s family home at 20 Forthlin Road, Liverpool.
We sat in there one evening, just beavering away while my dad was watching TV and smoking his Players cigarettes, and we wrote ‘She Loves You’. We actually just finished it there because we’d started it in the hotel room. We went into the living room – ‘Dad, listen to this. What do you think?’ So we played it to my dad and he said, ‘That’s very nice, son, but there’s enough of these Americanisms around. Couldn’t you sing, “She loves you. Yes! Yes! Yes!”?’ At which point we collapsed in a heap and said, ‘No, Dad, you don’t quite get it!’ That’s my classic story about my dad. For a working-class guy that was rather a middle-class thing to say, really. But he was like that.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Page last updated: 7 June 2022
Just my theory but could some of the lyrics of She Loves You have been subconsciously inspired by the Bob Wooler incident?
The reason I say so is that it was six days previously i.e before writing commenced, that Lennon was ordered by Epstein to send a telegram apology to Wooler. Check out the lyrics:
“You know it’s up to you
I think it’s only fair
Pride can hurt you too
Apologize to her”
Also..
She said you hurt her so
She almost lost her mind (Lennon actually said he was out of his mind)
And now she says she knows
You’re not the hurting kind
The whole theme of the song is of reconciliation. I think the fact that the events were so close and that it really shook Lennon up (he said he thought he was close to killing Wooler) it can’t be coincidence. Or perhaps McCartney wrote those words in the third person with the events in mind.
Sadly, he often *was* “the hurting kind.” I think you’re onto something there!
The Wooler incident was pretty significant since it happened at Paul’s 21st birthday party. I’ve often wondered what Jim McCartney thought of that scene. He already disliked John. And Wooler had been a great friend and ally to the band.