Paul McCartney “All My Loving” was the song that made the immediate good first impression and that kept that huge television audience tuned in for the whole show. And, as George Harrison stated, “While the show was on, there were no reported crimes, or very few. When The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, even the criminals had a rest for ten minutes.” 
Although the romantic relationship between McCartney and actress Jane Asherdidn’t end up in nuptials as the rumor mill would have had us believe throughout the sixties, their relationship did spawn a good many songs in the Lennon/McCartney catalog. The first of such songs was “All My Loving,” which was written within a month after they had met.
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The song was written in a very unconventional way for McCartney, being that the song was actually written as a poem first and put to music later. “It was the first song I’d ever written the words first,” said McCartney, “I never wrote words first, it was always some kind of accompaniment. I’ve hardly ever done it since either.”
Songwriting History by Dave Rybaczewski (to read full article click here)
While The Beatles were on their national British tour with Roy Orbison in May of 1963, the poem came to Paul on the tour bus with Jane Asher in mind. One source says that the poem came to him while shaving which appears to be a conflict (unless, of course, they were in the habit of shaving while in the tour bus).
Nonetheless, he found a piano in the big backstage area of the next venue that they arrived at and fit the lyrics to music on the spot. Both McCartney and Lennon attest to the song being entirely written by Paul. Lennon referred to the song at two different times as being “one of his first biggies” and as “a damn good piece of work.”
Different styles of songwriting can be detected in the finished product, such as Carl Perkins and the popular girl groups of the early sixties, but McCartney claims his initial inspiration as coming through an unlikely source. “I had in my mind a little country and western song,” stated McCartney, most likely influenced by Ringo’s love for that genre of music. When interviewed during their extensive American tour in the fall of 1964, Ringo stated that country music hadn’t influenced their sound at all. Little did he know that it actually had, as evidenced in “All My Loving.”
Takes 1 through 11 were needed to create a full band run through of the song, which included McCartney’s vocals as well as all of the group on their usual instruments. This actually comprised ten takes, since there was no take five. Take 11 was considered the best. Then takes 12 through 14 were used for overdubbing Paul’s double-tracked vocals as well as his own harmony vocals on the third verse, with take 14 overdubbed onto the complete take 11. This is the complete version of this classic track as we know it.
Because stereo phonographs were rare in the 60’s, creating mono mixes were the priority. Stereo mixes were usually made very quickly and at the last minute. This being the case, the stereo mix of “All My Loving” was made inadvertently leaving in an introductory hi-hat count-in to the song. Most countries knew to omit this introduction when preparing their album, but in a few cases, such as the Dutch version of their second album, they left it in. This makes for a very rare and highly sought after album, as well as a suitable inclusion to many bootleg albums.
