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9.16pm
Reviewers
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1 May 2011
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Yip. Unless he access to something no one in the history of Beatledom knows about.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
10.15pm
11 November 2010
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Von Bontee said
Ah ok, thanks. So “footage” was just an silly word choice on the writer’s part.
Actually, audio footage is an acceptable term. It’s just that the term is more commonly used with video.
EDIT: But, on topic, Hold Me Tight is actually one of my favorite songs on With The Beatles .
The following people thank Necko for this post:
Von BonteeI'm Necko. I'm like Ringo except I wear necklaces.
I'm also ewe2 on weekends.
Most likely to post things that make you go hmm... 2015, 2016, 2017. 
11.35pm
10 November 2009
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Hold Me Tight was one of the first songs I heard of them, and despite the questionable ”Making love to only you” lyric, some out-of-tune and therefore rushed, along with constant clashing of vocals (while Paul says: ”It feels so right now”, John & George say: ”It feels so right so”, and that’s on every time they sing this!) and almost inaudible bass, it has a special place for me, and it’s pretty catchy. I just wonder how the Please Please Me version sounded; it could have sounded even better, but only if EMI hadn’t destroyed the tapes…
Let me take you down 'cause I'm going to...Strawberry Fields.
2.36pm
28 March 2014
Offline Doesn’t Paul say that in all his songs???? 
BEATLES Music gives me Eargasms! 
2.03pm
5 May 2014
Offline I’m not sure I would add Hold Me Tight , because I like it where it is, but I do think A Taste Of Honey is out of place. They should have replaced it with a track from Live At The BBC . Like the honey moon song.
We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians
2.10pm
Reviewers
4 February 2014
Offline I see how Hold Me Tight would fit on PPM , but I agree with what Zig said a year ago. Although VB did make a good point Revolver is (probably [you all know I hate saying favorite]) my favorite album and I love Rain SOOO much, so that would’ve been nice. But they’re perfect the way they are!
4.59pm
14 December 2009
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Would definitely prefer to hear “Hold Me Tight ” over “Love Me Do “, and maybe also “Ask Me Why ” and “Do You Want To Know A Secret ” as well.
Paul: Yeah well… first of all, we’re bringing out a ‘Stamp Out Detroit’ campaign.
11.42am
11 September 2018
Offline Ron Nasty said
The problem with leaving Hold Me Tight on Please Please Me is what would you leave off. Proper full-length tracks, they never exceeded 14 tracks on an album. So, to have HMT you’d need to drop a track. What track would you drop from PPM to include HMT?
The good (bad) thing about forums is that you can answer somebody’s question from six years ago. If they’d managed to complete Hold Me Tight on 11th February 1963 they’d have no need to record one of the following covers – Anna (Go To Him), Boys , Chains , Baby It’s You or Twist And Shout . Remember, A Taste Of Honey was recorded between I Saw Her Standing There and Do You Want To Know A Secret ?
Now, it’s difficult to know which song they’d have left off for a number of reasons. 1. None of the covers that remained to be recorded are sung by Paul, so it can’t be a straight swap and 2. The last song recorded was Twist And Shout , which I guess was always going to be left until last because of the demands it had on John’s voice.
Now we can assume that Boys would’ve been recorded still as Ringo ‘needed’ his own lead spot on the album, so that leaves either Chains , Anna or Baby It’s You . Chains was released in November 1962, so it had only been in the band’s set for three/four months at most. George already had his vocal spot with Do You Want To Know A Secret ? so there’s every chance they could’ve decided not to record Chains . However, perhaps there was always an intention to give him two songs on the record – after all, he did his fair share of singing between 1960 – 1962.
Anna (Go To Him) was released in September 1962, so had probably been in the Beatles’ set for around six months by the time it was recorded. It has been described as a ‘personal favourite’ of John’s so we can presume the band always intended to record this too. Which leaves Baby It’s You .
Baby It’s You was the penultimate track recorded for the album. It had been in their sit for longer than the previous two songs (Chains and Anna (Go To Him)) so the band were most likely to be more comfortable recording this track. That being said, they had already covered The Shirelles (Boys ) on the album, so why would they choose to cover two songs by the same artist unless they felt they needed to?
Of course, all of this is conjecture and there’s no way of actually knowing the answer.
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Von Bontee12.23pm
1 December 2009
Offline Another bad thing about forums is that they preserve your outdated 6-year old opinions! (Always in motion, the future is) Today, I would never trade AMW for HMT, much as I still appreciate the choogling forward-motion of the latter.
GEORGE: In fact, The Detroit Sound. JOHN: In fact, yes. GEORGE: In fact, yeah. Tamla-Motown artists are our favorites. The Miracles. JOHN: We like Marvin Gaye. GEORGE: The Impressions PAUL & GEORGE: Mary Wells. GEORGE: The Exciters. RINGO: Chuck Jackson. JOHN: To name but eighty.
12.40pm
11 September 2018
Offline vonbontee said
Another bad thing about forums is that they preserve your outdated 6-year old opinions! (Always in motion, the future is) Today, I would never trade AMW for HMT, much as I still appreciate the choogling forward-motion of the latter.
That’s true about the internet as a whole, as any number of ‘celebrities’ are finding their ‘outdated’ thoughts being resurrected on Twitter etc…
Anyway, I actually came on this thread to ask a general question about takes following something I read during this song on RitH.
In this song’s entry, Ian MacDonald writes: ‘Junking the first version, they recommenced at take twenty (skipping the intervening seven for luck)…’ . I take this to mean there was never a take 13-19 of Hold Me Tight , but why would this be?
10.49pm
12 December 2019
Offline It’s a funny twist; how, that title becomes one of Paul’s lines in the AHDN chorus…but: the emphasis there is put on the word tight which, is (to me) like a naughty reference to the female antagonist’s sexual talents **.
I will play the game Existence to the End ;)
2.05pm
25 November 2024
Offline Daily Beatles Song Review Day 27/213: Hold Me Tight
In general, the more I listen to a song, the more I like it. Some people are susceptible to fatigue or a song being overplayed, but with very rare exceptions, I am not. While this wasn’t overexposure, I did grow to like this song less and less as I listened to it more. It’s due to one very simple reason: The hand claps are overbearing. I fully expect that if/when we get a remix of With the Beatles, I will like this song again, but the hand claps are just too much as is.
Other than the handclaps, I would say the song is great. It’s another song following the band’s successful formula with upbeat rockers. It’s less of a rip-off than It Won’t Be Long, but it’s still clearly a descendant of She Loves You . I think this song’s vocals are good, done mostly by Paul. He kind of does his ballad voice but in a rock song, if that makes any sense.
Instrumentally the song is pretty good. Ringo’s great on drumming like he is for this whole album (pretty much). It’s also one of Paul’s very first great basslines. I think Paul eventually became one of the best bass players ever, but not until the late ‘60s and ‘70s. For most of the Beatles, he is merely a good bass player and not a legendary one. The guitar parts are also good, of course, especially the rhythm guitar part from John.
Score: 6/10. If the handclap mixing was fixed, it would be an 8/10.
Favorite cover: Count Bassie does an instrumental Big Band cover that I like.
There will be an answer; let it be.
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