♫ I Saw Her Standing There ♫

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, music, music history

I was struggling, between being exhausted and somewhat depressed, to come up with a song last night for today’s music post.  And then, as if by magic, my friend Jennie mentioned this one and BINGO!  A Beatles song I haven’t already played to death!  Jennie, aka Jennie Fitzkee, has been a teacher for over 30 years and in her comment on my post of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” she said, “I bring in my record player and Beatles record albums to school to play for my preschoolers. They love it! Their favorite song? I Saw Her Standing There.”  Thank you, Jennie, for giving me some inspiration!!!

This song didn’t wow the masses when it was released back in March 1963, but it did well enough in Canada (#1) and the U.S. (#14).  It did not chart in the UK, likely because it was not released as a single there.  According to SongFacts …

This is the song that fomented the songwriting partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, widely considered the greatest songwriting duo in pop music history. They started writing it in McCartney’s living room after they skipped school one day, with Paul writing the majority of this song in September of 1962.

The song runs just 2:50 but tells a cohesive story, with McCartney singing about spotting a girl at a dance who wins his heart. It has a happy ending: They dance through the night and fall in love.

McCartney’s original line was, “She was just 17, she’d never been a beauty queen,” but he and Lennon decided it worked better as “She was just 17, you know what I mean.”

“It makes more sense, even though you don’t know what I mean,” McCartney told GQ in 2018.

They didn’t like the beauty queen line because it was corny and because it suggested that the woman wasn’t beautiful, which wasn’t the song’s intent.

When McCartney wrote that line, he’d been thinking of beauty pageants held at Butlin’s camps, which are oceanfront vacation (or “holiday,” as the Brits like to say) resorts in the United Kingdom.

The Beatles often played this at the Cavern Club, where they often played between 1961-1963. In fact, it was because of the crowd reaction to their live shows that George Martin decided to have them simply record their live show in the studio for their first album. That’s why he kept Paul’s “1, 2, 3, 4” count at the beginning, which was taken from the ninth take and edited on to the first. The title was originally “Seventeen” until it was changed to “I Saw Her Standing There” for the album.

The Beatles performed this on their first two Ed Sullivan Show appearances, which took place a week apart in February 1964. Getting on the show was a really big deal because it had a huge audience. About 73 million people watched the first show, which made The Beatles household names.

This wasn’t released as a single in the UK, and in the US, it was released as the flip side of “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” which was their first hit in the America. The Beatles were famous in the UK about a year before they caught on in America.

This was one of 10 songs The Beatles recorded in one day (February 11, 1963) for their UK debut album, Please Please Me. It was the first song on the track list.

This was the last song John Lennon performed for a paid audience. He played it at Madison Square Garden on November 28, 1974 when he took the stage at an Elton John concert. Elton released this version as the B-side of “Philadelphia Freedom” the following year. This was the only live duet ever recorded between Elton John and John Lennon, who were good friends.

I Saw Her Standing There

The Beatles

Well, she was just seventeen
You know what I mean
And the way she looked
Was way beyond compare
So how could I dance with another
Ooh, when I saw her standing there?

Well, she looked at me
And I, I could see
That before too long
I’d fall in love with her
She wouldn’t dance with another
Ooh, when I saw her standing there

Well, my heart went “boom”
When I crossed that room
And I held her hand in mine

Oh we danced through the night
And we held each other tight
And before too long
I fell in love with her
Now I’ll never dance with another
Ooh, since I saw her standing there

Well, my heart went, “Boom”
When I crossed that room
And I held her hand in mine

Oh, we danced through the night
And we held each other tight
And before too long
I fell in love with her
Now I’ll never dance with another
Oh, since I saw her standing there
Oh, since I saw her standing there
Yeah, well since I saw her standing there

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

I Saw Her Standing There lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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38 thoughts on “♫ I Saw Her Standing There ♫”

  3. When I was in grade school, there was a kid who made up his own lyrics to this song. They only two lines I remember are:

    How could I dance with her mother?
    Ooh, when I saw her standing bare.

    That was pretty racy for a mid-1960s Catholic school.

    Liked by 3 people

    • 🤣 That’s funny! I used to make up lyrics to songs, mainly because being nearly deaf all my life, I could only catch snippets of the actual lyrics. I remember one that the actual lyrics were “Hey, I’ve looked all my life” and I always sang them as “Help me, Agnes, all my life”. To this day, I still sing my version!

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Pingback: ♫ I Saw Her Standing There ♫ | Filosofa’s Word | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  6. Canada #1. It got a lot of airplay. But I have to say, and I do apologize, this video is not the song thst hit #1.
    I’ve been thinking sbout it, because I know you prefer live videos, while I usually don’t. You are a visual person while I am not. I see things in my head much better than I see with my eyes. I guess I also hear better in my head, for I love the studio versions unless the video has some special adaptation. We function similarly on different wavelengths. Two different people. And that is the way it will usually be.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Heh heh … in all honesty, it was late, I was tired, and I took the first video that Google offered me! But yes, I usually prefer the live version if the quality is okay, because you get the sense of energy, or camaraderie, that you don’t get on the studio version. Yep, neither of us are likely to change at this stage of the game, but we can still share the same love of the music.

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Instant nostalgia! This wasn’t the B-side to any of their UK singles, so was just an album track for us. But what an album! They were great from the very start, even if you guys were slow to catch up.

    By the way, here in the land of Proper English we have no such thing as an “oceanfront vacation resort,” but we do have “seaside holiday resorts” 😊

    Liked by 3 people

  10. I was going to mention my favorite John Lennon song but it just left my head. Kinda like walking purposefully into a room and forgetting why you are in that room, ya know? Darn, it’s a really good song which I will probably remember about midnight when trying to fall asleep. I think I still have your phone number. Want me to call you when I remember?

    I saw that Ed Sullivan show, and a few weeks ago one of the TV channels that shows old reruns aired that Sullivan show. And I still can’t remember the name of that song. It’s going to bug me for the rest of the day. OH YEAH! “Imagine”! You’re lucky I remembered so I won’t have to call you at midnight! Anyway, I love that song. After the Beetles broke up I think, but still great meaning.

    Liked by 3 people

    • I cannot count the number of times EVERY DAY that I walk into a room for a specific thing and then cannot remember what that thing was, or I get distracted by something I see that needs to be done, then forget why I walked in there until I get back to my chair. Yes, do call me when you remember and we can have a nice long chat! You know I’m up until at least 3:00 a.m. almost every night!

      Oh DRAT! You remembered … and here I was looking forward to chatting with you in the wee hours of the morning! “Imagine” is my absolute favourite … the lyrics fit my ideology to a ‘T’! Unfortunately, I’ve played it to death here, so it’s probably too soon for a redux. Then again, sometimes I break my own rules …

      Liked by 1 person

      • “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
        ― Robert A. Heinlein

        Liked by 1 person

    • I was 6 when this song came out, I wasn’t in the Beatles target audience. That was my sister – a hormone ravaged girl entering her teens who…well, I won’t say the rest because it’s not very complimentary, but, then, my sister doesn’t deserve compliments.

      I couldn’t muster up much interest in the Beatles until Rubber Soul came out. The first album I bought for myself was the 1969 release In The Court of the Crimson King: An Observation by King Crimson, which tells you something about where my music appreciation was at back then. Also an early adopter of Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and Roxy Music. My friends had three categories of music: stuff they liked, stuff their parents liked and that really weird shit Eric listens to.

      Liked by 3 people

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