The John Lennon song from 1965 that the Beatles never released

By the time the Beatles called it a day in late 1969, they’d recorded and released more than 200 songs — most of them originals — and left dozens more in the vault. While the bulk of those unissued tracks ranged from rough demos to jams, several were completed recordings that, for one reason or another, they rejected.

Among them was a song that was the first ever written expressly for drummer Ringo Starr: “If You’ve Got Trouble.” Composed by John Lennon for inclusion on 1965’s Help!, the song was a riff-driven rocker built around the I-IV-V chords common to blues and rock. In many respects it bears similarity to a few other Beatles tracks from this period, including “She’s a Woman,” “I’m Down” and “I Feel Fine,” another Lennon-composed riff rocker, albeit one with a great deal more sophistication than “If You’ve Got Trouble.”

From the start of the Beatles’ recording career, Starr was given a vocal spot on each of their albums (except for 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night) in order to please his rabid fan base. It may be hard to fathom today, but for at least the first year of Beatlemania, Starr was the most popular Beatle, certainly in America, where his friendly, down-to-earth demeanor made him a favorite. It’s little wonder he got his own sizable scene in the Beatles’ debut film, A Hard Day’s Night, and was the main focus of its followup, 1965’s Help!

Because Starr wasn’t a songwriter, he sang either covers — “Boys,” on 1963’s Please Please Me, and “Honey Don’t” on 1964’s Beatles for Sale — or inferior cast-offs composed by Lennon and McCartney, such as “I Wanna Be Your Man,” a throwaway from 1963’s With the Beatles, and “What Goes On,” from 1965’s Rubber Soul.

Source: guitarplayer.com/Christopher Scapelliti

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