George Martin accepts the challenge and extends one of his own. “I’ll tell you what, John. When you write something as good as that song, I’ll let you record it.”

That seems to be the last word, but a few days later, back in Liverpool, Brian tells them Mr. Martin wants the Beatles back in the studio. “‘Love Me Do’ will be the first Beatles single.”

They couldn’t have hoped for a better result. Now they just have to prove they were right.

George Martin isn’t altogether wrong about “How Do You Do It,” either—when Gerry and the Pacemakers record it a few months later, it goes straight to number 1.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

We all want to change the world.

—“Revolution”

On Friday, October 5, 1962, the day “Love Me Do” first goes on sale, John plays it for his aunt.

“What do you think, Mimi?”

“If you think you are going to make your name with that, you’ve made a big mistake!” she tells him.

“Remember, I said I’d be famous,” John says.

“What always worried me, John, was that you wouldn’t be so much famous as notorious,” Mimi shoots back.

Luckily for the Beatles, others are more enthusiastic.

“The whole of Liverpool went out and bought it, en masse,” Ringo marvels proudly in later years. The Liverpool fans are loyal and numerous—they flock to the record stores in such huge numbers that the rumor mill immediately begins churning out theories that Brian personally bought ten thousand copies to artificially inflate sales.

“It sold so many in Liverpool the first two days—because they were all waiting for us to make it—that the dealers down in London thought there was a fiddle on,” John recalls. “‘That Mr. Epstein feller up there is cheating.’ But he wasn’t.”

He is kicking his promotions into high gear, though. Parlophone isn’t doing much in the way of publicity, so Brian picks up the slack, and “Love Me Do” sneaks into Record Retailer’s top fifty, at number 49.

Next he books the Beatles on a bill with one of their longtime idols: Little Richard.

Little Richard—though much more restrained in 1962 than he was in his fiery 1950s persona—leaves the Beatles starstruck. “We were almost paralyzed with devotion,” says John. Conversely, though Little Richard finds John a bit crass, he deems both Paul and George “sweet.”

And he’s a bona fide fan of their music. “Man, those Beatles are fabulous!” Little Richard tells Alan Smith of the New Musical Express. “If I hadn’t seen them I’d never have dreamed they were white. They have a real authentic Negro sound.”

*  *  *

John has no idea that his band is the start of a music revolution.