Nobody I Know

From Wikipedia:

Nobody I Know is a song written by Paul McCartney (attributed to Lennon–McCartney) which Peter and Gordon recorded in an April 1964 Abbey Road Studio session: Peter and Gordon had had a UK/US #1 hit with the McCartney composition “A World Without Love” and McCartney wrote “Nobody I Know” with the specific intent of providing a follow-up hit for the duo. The track reached #10 UK and #12 US.

A French rendering entitled “Partir, il nous faut” was recorded by Petula Clark and issued on a 1965 EP headed by her hit “Dans les temps”.

The story starts soon after Gordon and I recorded “A World Without Love.” Sometimes, for any artist, finding a follow-up song to a big hit can be really difficult. There’s a sense in which one is trying to live up to one’s previous achievement and expectations, and we had just had a record that was No. 1 all over the world, so that was kind of scary. But when one is following up a big hit, one gets sent an awful lot of songs—and numerous songwriters sent us songs they hoped would be our next single. Luckily, one of those songwriters was Paul McCartney, who had written a song called “Nobody I Know,” which he played for me as soon as we returned from our first U.S. visit—and I loved it.

John and Paul took their songwriting duties seriously. They understood the responsibilities of being successful songwriters, which meant knowing how to get the right song to the right artist at the right time. If you wrote a big hit, you wanted the follow-up to also be written by you. You didn’t want someone else cashing in on your brilliant success. So when we came back from America after our first tour, Paul had already written “Nobody I Know” specifically for us. If you look at the Beatles’ early interviews, they were often asked, “What are you going to do when this is all over?” Indeed, this was one question which we could all count on being included in every interview. There existed a universal and confident assumption that a rock and roll career would last two years at most. John and Paul always responded, “Oh, we’ll be songwriters.” They wanted to follow in the mold of Leiber & Stoller, Goffin & King, and the other great songwriting teams whom they admired so deeply.

As for Gordon and me, we were delighted to record “Nobody I Know,” the arrangement extensively featuring the big, beautiful, red sunburst acoustic twelve-string guitar that Gibson had recently made for me. It became a hit, and we sang it on the road, and that was it, thank you very much.

Peter Asher – From “The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour“, 2019

Lyrics

Officially appears on

Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.

steve freedman • 6 years ago

Chris • 3 years ago

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