Thinking of Linking

From Wikipedia:

“Thinking of Linking” is one of the first songs written by English musician Paul McCartney. Inspired by a cinema advertisement for Link Furniture, McCartney composed the song in 1958. The lyric consists of only three lines, while the music is influenced by the sound of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, particularly the song “Peggy Sue Got Married“.

The predecessor to the Beatles, the Quarrymen, occasionally performed the song in the late 1950s, but no recording of this is known to exist. The Beatles played the song twice during the informal Get Back sessions in January 1969. Ex-Beatles McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded the song in June 1994 for The Beatles Anthology project. This version was not in the final documentary, but was included as a special feature when Apple Corps released the series on DVD in 2003.

Background and composition

Paul McCartney wrote “Thinking of Linking” at his childhood home, 20 Forthlin Road, likely between January and May 1958. Having written several songs, he began making a conscious effort to listen for interesting phrases that could be used in a new composition. While attending the cinema with his friend and bandmate George Harrison, a commercial advertising Link Furniture caught his attention with its concluding tagline, “Are you thinking of linking?” In a 1987 interview with author Mark Lewisohn, McCartney recalled: “I came out of there thinking ‘That should be a song. Thinking of linking, people are gonna get married, gotta write that!'”

Lewisohn writes that the only lyrics to the song are: “Well I’ve been thinking of linking my life with you / Thinking of linking a love so true / Thinking of linking can only be done by two.” In the 1987 interview, McCartney describes the song as “terrible” and the lyrics as “[p]retty corny stuff!” Lewisohn writes that, like most of the music John Lennon and McCartney were writing at that time, its style is heavily indebted to the sound of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Musicologist Walter Everett and author Richie Unterberger each suggest the Buddy Holly song “Peggy Sue Got Married” influenced the song’s composition.

Author Chris Ingham writes that the song, along with the other early compositions “Just Fun” and “That’s My Woman”, has become part of the “mythical ‘lost Beatles canon'”, while music critic Tim Riley considers it one of the “embryos of the Lennon–McCartney catalogue”, mixing “the derivative with the yet-to-come”. Author Kenneth Womack calls it “corny, but truly lovable”, while author Jonathan Gould opines that the song was “wisely consigned to the dustbin of musical history”.

Recording and release

The group which eventually became the Beatles, the Quarrymen, occasionally performed “Thinking of Linking”, though no recording of them playing it is known to exist. In the 1970s, rumours began circulating that there existed a 1962 tape of the Beatles rehearsing several early songs, including “Thinking of Linking”, but these claims are unsupported. In a 2005 interview with Lewisohn, Cliff Roberts, a singer and contemporary of the Beatles, recalled a van ride in the summer of 1962 where McCartney began singing “Thinking of Linking” and offered him exclusive use of the song. He further recalled that McCartney wrote the lyrics and chords on a piece of paper, but that he lost it and never performed the song.

The earliest recording of the song is of the Beatles during the January 1969 rehearsals for their planned Get Back project. Throughout the informal sessions, the band played several of their earliest compositions. On 3 January, while Lennon sang Irving Berlin’s “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody”, McCartney and Harrison began to sing “Thinking of Linking”. The song stopped after one line because McCartney either forgot the words or lost interest. The song was next played on 29 January; while Lennon sang “Peggy Sue Got Married”, he forgot the lyrics and instead substituted those of “Thinking of Linking”.

In 1994, in anticipation of their upcoming project The Beatles Anthology, the three remaining ex-Beatles, McCartney, Harrison and Ringo Starr, planned to record a version of “Let It Be“. On 23 June, they assembled at Harrison’s Friar Park home, playing in his home studio, FPSHOT (Friar Park Studio, Henley-On-Thames), while being recorded on video with a two camera setup. They abandoned the idea of recording “Let It Be” due to Lennon’s absence, instead opting to play several rock and roll oldies, including “Ain’t She Sweet“, “Love Me Do” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky“, among others. They recorded what they could remember of “Thinking of Linking”, playing on two acoustic guitars and brushes. The performance did not feature in the finished Anthology documentary series, but was included as a special-feature when Apple Corps released the series on DVD in 2003. McCartney played the song on an acoustic guitar for American record producer Rick Rubin in the 2021 Hulu docuseries McCartney 3, 2, 1. […]

From Early Beatles Songs:

In spring 1960, at around the time the home recordings were taking place, McCartney and Stu Sutcliffe were both writing letters to local journalists and promoters, to try and get some group publicity. A few survive, including one written by McCartney to an unknown intended recipient, named only as Mr Low.

The letter is particularly interesting in that it mentions by name several very early Lennon-McCartney songs, a few of which are scarcely known. (In fact it is the only place we come across a song called “Keep Looking That Way”.) McCartney also claims that, “John and Paul have written over fifty tunes, ballads and fast numbers”, a writing tally which should be qualified by his later admission in the book The Beatles Anthology that, “Most of what we called our first hundred was probably our first five – we would lie our faces off then to get anyone to notice us.”

What survives of the letter can be read below:

Dear Mr Low,

I am sorry about the time I have taken to write to you, but I hope I have not left it too late. Here are some details about the group. It consists of four boys: Paul McCartney (guitar), John Lennon (guitar), Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and George Harrison (another guitar) and is called…

This line-up may at first seem dull but it must be appreciated that as the boys have above average instrumental ability they achieve surprisingly varied effects. Their basic beat is off-beat, but this has recently tended to be accompanied by a faint on-beat; thus the overall sound is rather reminiscent of the four in the bar of traditional jazz. This could possibly be put down to the influence of Mr McCartney [Senior], who led one of the top local jazz bands (Jim Mac’s Jazz Band) in the 1920s.

Modern music, however, is the group’s delight, and, as if to prove the point, John and Paul have written over fifty tunes, ballads and faster numbers, during the last three years. Some of these tunes are purely instrumental (such as “Looking Glass”, “Catswalk” and “Winston’s Walk”) and others were composed with the modern audience in mind (tunes like “Thinking Of Linking”, “The One After 909”, “Years Roll Along” and “Keep Looking That Way”).

The group also derive a great deal of pleasure from rearranging old favourites (“Ain’t She Sweet”, “You Were Meant For Me”, “Home”, “Moonglow”, “You Are My Sunshine” and others).

Now for a few details about the boys themselves. John, who leads the group, attends the College of Art, and, as well as being an accomplished guitarist and banjo player, he is an experienced cartoonist. His many interests include painting, the theatre, poetry, and, of course, singing. He is 19 years old and is a founder member of the group.

Paul is 18 years old and is reading English Literature at Liverpool University. He, like the other boys, plays more than one instrument – his specialities being the piano and drums, plus, of course…                          

[surviving text ends here]

I remember once sitting with Paul in the cinema on the corner of Rose Lane, not far from where he lived, near Penny Lane. They showed an ad for Link Furniture: “Are you thinking of Linking?” Paul said, “Oh, that would make a good song”, and he wrote one that went, “Thinking of linking my life with you”.

George Harrison – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

Like, we were sitting around and we remembered this thing Thinking of Linking’. And I mean, to me, that’s a huge rich dream of memory. A cloud of memory. Because we always used to go to the local cinema together to watch whatever film, and the ads were always quite intriguing. One we always used to know and identify with was for Strand, the cigarette, where there’s a strange-looking guy in a trilby walking by the Embankment smoking a cigarette: ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’. We’d remember that and we’d joke about it. And this other one was an advert for Link Furniture, and it said, ‘Thinking of linking? Then get Link Furniture!’ So we had this little song… And it was only me and George who knew that. So that was the kind of thing that Anthology threw up all those sorts of memories you hadn’t had any reason to think of for so long.

Paul McCartney, from the Flaming Pie Archive Collection, 2020

Bootlegs

Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.

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