exclusive!
TWO NEW BEATLES
RECORDINGS FOUND
Early demo of "Love of the Loved" and first take of "Misery"

 by Rip Rense
copyright Rip Rense/ The Rip Post 2025

 
The Beatles at the empty Cavern Club, recording the newly
 discovered version of  "Misery." (photo by Mike McCartney)

           Hang on to your Beatle wigs! Two new early Beatles recordings have surfaced---a solo acoustic demo of Paul McCartney’s self-penned “Love of the Loved,” and the first recording of Lennon-McCartney’s “Misery.”
           Both turned up on Youtube Dec. 10, apparently having been taken from one of the latest in a seemingly endless series of Beatles bootleg albums.
          “Love of the Loved” previously existed only on the legendarily shaky Beatles audition for Decca Records---which they famously failed---Jan. 1, 1962. The newly surfaced demo was auctioned in 1991 by Christie's, but has never appeared until now.

          The version of “Misery,” purportedly from a Jan. 30-31, 1963 rehearsal at an empty Cavern Club (The Beatles’ early concert stronghold) was long reported to exist. A snippet of it was played by Beatles author Mark Lewisohn during his lecture tours, but this is the first appearance of the full song.
          It’s yet another dramatic and significant find in the group’s legacy, the most recent major discovery having probably been the group’s full concert at the Stowe School For Boys of April 4, 1963.
          In the Decca audition, the group (with Pete Best on anemically recorded drums), assay “Love of the Loved” with McCartney doing a deep, quasi-Elvis voice. The newly discovered demo features a clear, “normal” McCartney vocal, backed with acoustic guitars presumably played by McCartney plus John Lennon or George Harrison (or all three.) The demo is believed to have been done specifically for popular Liverpool chanteuse and Beatles’ friend Cilla Black, who released it in October, 1963.
           With arrangement help from McCartney, produced by George Martin, Black’s version of “Love of the Loved” peaked at #35 on the UK singles chart in October, 1963. Yet the song actually dated to the first half of 1959, according to Lewisohn, written during a night-time walk home, in honor of McCartney’s then-girlfriend, Dot Rhone.
          “It was one of those very early songs of mine I’d written up in Liverpool,” McCartney remembered decades later. “We performed it at our audition for Decca when they unwisely passed us up. We played the song live a few times too but didn’t ever properly record it, so the song was sitting around waiting for a home.”
           “Misery,” with full band including Ringo Starr, had been written just days prior to the newly found recording, which features different lyrics, including: “The world is treating me bad, misery/ I'm the kind of girl / who used to love the world/ The world is treating me bad, misery. . .” It was reportedly written as a request by pop star Helen Shapiro, who toured with The Beatles at the time, but she turned it down and it was released instead by one Kenny Lynch (it failed to chart.)
          Renowned authority Lewisohn, author of the exhaustive biography, “The Beatles: Tune In,” reported that Lennon and McCartney began work on “Misery” Jan. 26, likely backstage before a performance at the King's Hall, Stoke-on-Trent. It was completed a day or two later at McCartney’s Forthlin Road home.  Said McCartney at the time: "We've called it 'Misery', but it isn't as slow as it sounds, it moves along at quite a pace, and we think Helen will make a pretty good job of it."
          In separate interviews over the years, Lennon said “Misery” was more of a John song than a Paul song, “but it was written together." McCartney’s take: "I don't think either one of us dominated on that one, it was just a hacking job."
          The Beatles routinely gave songs they considered second-rate to other artists, many of whom---from Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas to The Rolling Stones---had hits with them. It's hard to imagine "Misery," now considered an early classic, and the inventive, unusual "Love of the Loved," being thought of as second rate
          The advent of the two songs also underscores widespread fan criticism of the newly released The Beatles Anthology Vol. 4, which consists largely of bonus tracks from previously issued box-set re-releases, or takes of songs that differ very little from official versions. It is well known among fans that there is a plethora of unreleased demos, outtakes, alternate versions, live recordings that could have made Anthology 4 a newsworthy release. An album of Beatles demos alone is considered  long overdue.
          “These two songs would have been a perfect fit for Anthology 4,” said Casey Piotrowski, longtime host of the syndicated “Beatles Show” radio program.  “You know, every time we think we've heard the last undiscovered music from The Beatles, someone discovers more. Hank Williams died in 1953 and they were still putting out unreleased music as late as 2014.  I think it'll be the same with The Beatles.  I don't think we'll ever run out of new music from them.”

LINKS:
Photos from the “Misery” session at the Cavern.
https://www.beatlesource.com/savage/1963/63.01.30%20cavern%20reh/63.01.30cavernReh.html

The two new songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fQ9UaGQAgk

“Love of the Loved” at the Decca audition:
https://youtu.be/2bzdN8aaNw8?si=3BaSauqSiILTMIpM

Live on BBC version of “Misery”:
https://youtu.be/g4DvEKWwxIs?si=_KLuOI6kWwxHJGjP

About “Love of the Loved.”
https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/song/love-of-the-loved/

Special thanks for the tipoffs: Wim de Lang.

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