#3: Thank You Girl by the Beatles

City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CJCA
Peak Month: June 1964
Peak Position in Edmonton: #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #35
YouTube: “Thank You Girl”
Lyrics: “Thank You Girl”

Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates  George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio. On July 15, 1958, John Lennon’s mother died in an automobile accident.

John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool in 1940. His middle name was after Britain’s current Prime Minister Winston Churchill, during World War II. In 1957, Lennon wrote his first song titled “Hello Little Girl”. It became a Top Ten hit in the UK in 1963 for the Merseybeat band the Fourmost. George Harrison was born in Liverpool in 1943. His father bought him his first guitar in 1956 when Harrison was 13 years old.

Richard Starkey was born in Liverpool in 1940. As a child he was sick with appendicitis, peritonitis and finally tuberculosis. The latter illness had him spend two years in a sanitorium from 1953 to 1955. Out of school for this duration, Starkey remained at home after his return from the sanatorium. He got involved with a skiffle band initially called the Eddie Miles Band which morphed into Eddie Clayton and the Clayton Squares. Starkey next joined Al Caldwell’s Texans which eventually became Rory Storm & The Hurricanes. By the fall of 1959, Starkey changed his professional name to Ringo Starr and his drum solos during their concerts were billed as ‘Starr Time.’ Beginning October 1, 1960, Rory Storm & The Hurricanes began a gig at the Kaiserkeller club in Hamburg, Germany. They alternated sets with The Beatles. On October 18, 1960, with Pete Best on an errand to find drumsticks, Ringo Starr stood in for Best to play a set with McCartney, Lennon and Harrison. This was the first time the Fab Four performed together.

The Quarrymen went through some name changes, including Johnny and the Moondogs. In January 1960, Stuart Sutcliffe joined the band and suggested they name themselves the Beatals as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets. The name changed to the Silver Beetles in May and in August 1960 they became the Beatles. The name was a cross between the insect cousin of a cricket and a nickname for rock ‘n roll: ‘the beat’. That same month the Beatles hired Pete Best to become the bands drummer. Now a five-piece band, they headed to Hamburg, Germany, on August 17, 1960, for a three-and-a-half month stint. In early 1961 Sutcliffe left the Beatles as they continued to return for more engagements in Germany. On June 22, 1961, Bert Kaempfert produced “My Bonnie”, “Ain’t She Sweet” and eight other songs. Later in 1961, “My Bonnie” climbed to #4 on the Hamburg pop charts and #32 on the German pop charts.

Meanwhile, the Beatles were developing a following back in Liverpool. Between February 9, 1961, and August 3, 1963, the group played at The Cavern Club 292 times. The group got a recording contract with EMI’s Parlophone label in the UK. At the June 6, 1962, studio session, producer George Martin objected to Pete Best remaining with the Beatles due to his poor drumming skills. In August Ringo Starr from Rory & The Hurricanes accepted Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s invitation to became the Beatles new drummer. The first EMI Parlophone single “Love Me Do”/”PS I Love You” climbed to #17 on the UK charts in the fall of 1962. “Please Please Me” climbed to #2 on the UK pop charts in early 1963. And in April 1963 “From Me To You” became the bands first #1 hit on the UK charts staying on top for seven weeks in a row. It became the first Beatles song on the Vancouver pop charts was in June 1963. It charted on C-FUN together with the cover version by Del Shannon. The song stalled at #116 on the Billboard Hot 100, but the Beatles climbed to #14 in Vancouver in July ’63.

Beatlemania – the frenzy for all things related to the Beatles from their records, to appearances –  officially reached North America with three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.

In 1964 in Edmonton, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, “She Loves You”, “All My Loving”, “This Boy”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, and “A Hard Day’s Night” topped the CJCA charts. In the midst of this chart-topping achievement, “Thank You Girl” reached number-one in Edmonton in June ’64.

This Lennon-McCartney composition is about a guy who is eternally grateful for the true love the ‘girl’ he’s found offers him. In the ups and downs of life, he affirms “you made me glad when I was blue.”

“Thank You Girl” climbed to #1 in Edmonton, Denver, Phoenix, Providence, RI, Des Moines, IA, New Haven, CT, Pittsburgh, Cedar Rapids, IA, Cincinnati, OH, Endicott, NY, Philadelphia, and Springfield, MA, #2 in Boston, Richmond, VA, Detroit, Manchester, NH, Columbus, OH, Akron, OH, Sacramento, CA, #3 in El Cajon, CA, Buffalo, Butte, MT, Lansing, MI, and Tucson, AZ, #4 in Ontario, CA, Saint John, NB, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, #5 in South Bend, IN, #6 in Ottawa, #7 in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dayton, OH, and Winnipeg, MB, #8 in Seattle, and Fort Worth, TX, #9 in San Jose, CA, and #10 in Davenport, IA.

In June the band released the film and soundtrack album A Hard Days Night. The theme song from the film climbed to number one in August. The B-side in North America to “A Hard Day’s Night” was “I Should Have Known Better”. (In the UK the B-side was “Things We Said Today”). Then in July the Beatles released Something New. The album contained the following single releases: “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You”, “I’ll Cry Instead“, “Things We Said Today”, “Matchbox”, “Tell Me Why”, “And I Love Her”, and “If I Fell“.

In 1965 the Beatles had two number-one hits to start off the year: “Eight Days A Week” in March, and “Ticket To Ride” in May. In the summer of 1965 the Beatles kept on releasing number-one hits. “Help!” had a B-side titled “I’m Down“. The next release, “Yesterday”, was also a number-one hit.

On October 1965, the Beatles were back on top of the pop charts with “Yesterday”, and “Day Tripper”/”We Can Work It Out” in December. In early 1966 the Beatles were back in the Top Ten with “Michelle”/”Norwegian Wood”. Their next chart-topper was “Nowhere Man”.

In March 1966, John Lennon had an an interview with Evening Standard reporter Maureen Cleave. Lennon commented, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink  … We’re more popular than Jesus now—I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary.” The comment was yawned at in Britain, but it caused a furore when it was reported in Datebook’s August edition in America. Suddenly there were protests that involved the burning of Beatles records. The Ku Klux Klan staged protests against the Beatles and nailed their albums to a wooden cross. There were also death threats against Lennon. This development was a catalyst for the band’s decision to cease touring. On August 19th two concerts were scheduled in Memphis, Tennessee. Both were cancelled by the city council who wouldn’t let municipal facilities be used by people who were trying to “ridicule anyone’s religion.” Meanwhile, the Fab Four had more hit records including “Nowhere Man” and “Paperback Writer”.

Next up, the Beatles released “Yellow Submarine”/”Eleanor Rigby”. In 1967 the band enjoy Top Ten hits with “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields”, “All You Need Is Love” and “Hello, Goodbye”/”I Am The Walrus”. That year the band released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which topped the Billboard 200 Album charts for 15 weeks. From the album a number of non-single album charts made a few Top 40 AM radio markets based on listener requests. One of these was “When I’m Sixty-Four”.

In early 1968 the band had another hit single with  “Lady Madonna”. The Beatles would become the most influential rock ‘n roll band of the 20th Century. They have sold over one billion records. They began recording upbeat love songs like “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and later composed more complex songs, including on their award-winning 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles were on the cusp of whatever was new and were often the trend-setting reason for the next new thing. In 1967 they got involved with Transcendental Meditation. When they released “Hey Jude,” they had one of those rare singles that was longer than 7 minutes climb to the top of the charts. At the time, the standard formula for singles was around two to three minutes in length.

In 1969, the Beatles had more hit records with “Get Back” and “The Ballad of John & Yoko”. The B-side for the latter was “Old Brown Shoe”.

The band’s final hit singles were “Something”/”Come Together”, “Let It Be” and “The Long And Winding Road”. The Beatles split in 1970 after the release of the Let It Be album. Paul McCartney told Howard Stern in 2018 that John Lennon walked into a room one day in 1970 and announced that he was leaving the Beatles.

For more information about the Beatles after the 1970 breakup, see my other articles on the band.

January 3, 2024
Ray McGinnis

Resources:
David Fricke, “Paul McCartney Looks Back: The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, August 10, 2016.
Ben Quinn, “Paul McCartney ‘saw God’ After Taking Drugs During Beatles Heyday,” Guardian, September 2, 2018.
Stephen Rodrick, “Being Ringo: A Beatle’s All-Starr Life,” Rolling Stone, April 15, 2015.
“Interview: John Lennon and Ringo Starr in Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1964.
Mick Brown, “A Conversation With George Harrison: The ‘Fab Four’ is Done For, and George Couldn’t be Happier Doing his Own Thing,” Rolling Stone, April 19, 1979.
Dave Laing and Penny Valentine, “George Harrison: The Most Handsome but Underrated Beatle, he Came into his Own as a Solo Artist and Film Producer,” Guardian, December 1, 2001.
“John Lennon Died 35 Years Ago Today: Read Original Associated Press Story,” Billboard, December 8, 2015.
Johnathan Cott, “John Lennon: The Last Interview: Three days before he died, John Lennon talked with ‘Rolling Stone’ for nine hours. For the first time, we present this extraordinary interview,” Rolling Stone, December 23, 2010.
Barry Miles, Beatles in their Own Words, Putnam Pub. Group, 1978.

CJCA-930-AM, Edmonton (AB) Top of the chart | June 21, 1964