Retro top 10
THIS WEEK IN 1964
1 A World Without Love Peter and Gordon 2 Can’t Buy Me Love The Beatles
3 I Believe The Bachelors
4 Don’t Throw Your Love Away The Searchers 5 My Boy Lollipop Millie
6 I Love You Because Jim Reeves
7 Tell Me When Applejacks
8 Not Fade Away The Rolling Stones
9 Little Children Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas 10 Just One Look The Hollies
The influence of the Beatles dominates this top ten from 55 years ago this week.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, written by Paul McCartney, was on its way back down from number one. The sixth Beatles single in the UK, it was the Fab Four’s fourth consecutive chart topper.
‘A World Without Love’, the song that replaced it at the top, was also penned by McCartney - at the tender age of just 16.
In 1963 he moved into the London home of then girlfriend Jane Asher, sharing a room with her brother Peter who, with Gordon Waller, had just signed a record deal as Peter and Gordon. Asher liked ‘A World Without Love’ and McCartney, who didn’t think it good enough for the Beatles, readily agreed when asked if Peter and Gordon could use it. The duo’s first single, it topped the charts in the UK and the US, as well as Ireland, New Zealand and Canada.
• Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas’ ‘Little Children’ had also already visited the No. 1 spot at the time of this top ten. Kramer and The Beatles shared a manager, Brian Epstein, and he had offered the Lancashire singer a Lennon and McCartney tune ‘One and One Is Two’. Kramer turned it down, found ‘Little Children’ and as it turned out made the right decision.
• ‘Tell Me When’ was the debut single of ‘Brumbeat’ group Applejacks. Soon after this chart success, they met the Beatles during rehearsals for a TV show and Paul McCartney offered them one of his songs ‘Like Dreamers Do’.
It would become Applejacks’ second single in the summer of 1964, reaching number 20, but the tune is probably more famous now as one of the songs performed by the Beatles during their infamous, unsuccessful audition for Decca Records on New Year’s Day, 1962.