Beatles – You Really Got A Hold On Me

I had this scheduled for later in March but since it’s February 9…I thought I would move it up. It was exactly 60 years ago today on February 9, 1964, that The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.

This Smokey Robinson song is a great one…I really like both versions of this song. You can’t go wrong with either one. You will not beat Smokey’s voice but I like how The Beatles adapted their sound to it. Lennon did a great job on this one. This is close to what the Beatles would have sounded like in the Cavern or Hamburg.

The Beatles liked covering B sides and songs that were not hits but this one was a hit just the year before. Smokey was a huge influence on them in this time frame of 1962-63. Seven live takes of the song were first recorded, featuring all four Beatles playing their usual instruments and singing without overdubs, accompanied by producer George Martin on piano. Only four of these performances were complete (three of them being false starts), “take seven” being the keeper. The song was featured on With The Beatles released in the UK on November 22, 1963.

Smokey Robinson said he was thrilled that The Beatles would cover one of his songs. He also said that The Beatles were the first white band that came out and said they were influenced by him and other black artists. He also said they helped other black artists when they made that statement to be heard.

Later on when the Beatles toured America…it was written in their contract that they would absolutely not play in front of a segregated audience.

Robinson was influenced by Sam Cooke’s Bring It All Home To Me…which I can hear.  Cooke would sometimes perform at Robinson’s church with his group the Soul Stirrers and Robinson was a huge fan.

While recording the vocal track for the song “Woman” on the Double Fantasy album… Yoko commented that John sounded like a Beatle. Lennon corrected her by saying, “Actually I’m supposed to be Smokey Robinson at the moment, my dear, because The Beatles were always supposing that they were Smokey Robinson.”

You Really Got A Hold On Me

I don’t like you
But I love you
See that I’m always
Thinking of you

Oh, oh, oh,
You treat me badly
I love you madly
You’ve really got a hold on me
You’ve really got a hold on me, baby

I don’t want you
But I need you
Don’t want to kiss you
But I need you
Oh, oh, oh

You do me wring now
My love is strong now
You’ve really got a hold on me
You’ve really got a hold on me, baby
I love you and all I want you to do
Is just hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me

I want to leave you
Don’t want to stay here
Don’t want to spend
Another day here

Oh, oh, oh, I want to split now
I just can quit now
You’ve really got a hold on me
You’ve really got a hold on me, baby
I love you and all I want you to do
Is just hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me
You’ve really got a hold on me
You’ve really got a hold on me

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

50 thoughts on “Beatles – You Really Got A Hold On Me”

  1. Thanks for a great start to my day. Smoky and the Beatles – two of my favorites. The usual amazing Beatles harmonies, and an open appreciation of their influences and debts. I remember that Sunday evening. After seeing/hearing a bad recording on the Jack Paar show the month before, we were primed for the real thing (and I didn’t even have to get permission to stay up late, as I did for the Paar show).

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    2. I’m glad you liked it. I just noticed what day it was last night and moved it up. Those harmonies just carry this song.
      I didn’t know that about the Jack Paar show…I always thought it was ironic that With The Beatles was released in the UK on November 22, 1963. They sixties really kicked off to mass sadness and anger I would imagine and then came The Beatles.

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  3. People forget how many covers The Beatles did in their early days, and most of the acts they covered were Black. There were probably kids whose parents wouldn’t let them have records by Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson et al. who heard a lot of their songs because of The Beatles (and The Rolling Stones, and the Small Faces, and Johnny Rivers etc.)

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    1. They were the bridge in some ways to the black acts. The Beatles to more soul and the Stones to more blues…
      These harmonies are hard to beat.

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      2. Oh yea…they never tried to take credit and Lennon always named Smokey as a major influence. He wasn’t as nice to his same age peers…but Smokey, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and those guys he always spoke highly of.

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  7. Smokey has the voice that’s for sure. Motown would have had a hard time really taking off like it did ,I think without his work with the Miracles plus his writing for other artists and his apparent administrative/business sense in the office. I never knew Lennon was trying to sound like him on ‘Woman’… and on ‘Starting Over’, he tried to channel Elvis in places. Wonder if there were other songs he did that he was trying to sound like someone else.

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    1. I wouldn’t doubt it with Lennon…and he wasn’t ashamed to tell you. Funny he would bash his peer group but held the 50s guys up on a pedestal.
      I was surprised Dave that you didn’t have a Beatles thing today…you do more anniversaries than I do…I thought we would have had them at the same time lol.

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      1. I believe you are at your most open/influenced by music in your mid teens- Lennon grew up with the sounds of the mid50s, and most of us have that moment of hearing someone or something that leaves you slack-jawed. I recall, as a wet-behind the ears crew-cut ragged arsed t-shirted kid (think ‘Peanuts’ Pig Pen-) my hearing the first riff of the Honeycombs ‘Have I The Right’ and it was a before and after moment for me music-wise. Hey, listening to Ma and Pa’s Nat King Cole, Marty Robbins and Burl Ives on the ol’ mantle radio was OK but THIS was the sh- real deal!
        How many artists of the future have put down seeing the Beatles on TV as life changing and career making? It was seismic.

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      2. I totally agree with you said. The reason it doesn’t come to mind for me at first…I was an odd ball… by my teen years I already heard those timeless sounds of the 60s and 70s…and the 80s could not compete with it…so I was a little backwards.
        Oh…little Obbverse in a Pig Pen t-shirt…you were the stylish one!

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      3. ha, yeah that’s true… I did think of it (60th anniversary of Ed Sullivan debut) but think I’d done that show at least twice before to give it a rest, so to speak, but it is truly a day that changed music over here.

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  8. First of all, I’m happy to see a post related to The Beatles, given the historical date. “Music Enthusiast” Jim reminded me about the 60th anniversary of the occasion yesterday. The date would have been “available” for another installment of my “On This Day in Rock & Roll History” feature, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to do it. Perhaps next year.

    It’s really mind-boggling what kind of impact that appearance on Ed Sullivan had. It inspired so many young people to form bands, thinking when these four young lads from Liverpool can pull it off, then maybe we can too.

    I love both Smokey Robinson’s original and The Beatles’s cover of “You Really Got a Hold On Me”.

    The Beatles would later further reaffirm their love of the Detroit label with their own Motown-inspired “Got to Get You Into My Life”, which in turn was covered by Earth Wind & Fire. When you get that seal of approval, you know you’ve done something right!

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    1. Both versions are great in their own ways no doubt…I like both and I refuse to pick one or another…they both give you something different.
      Yea…The Beatles brought attention to this music and made the writers a lot of money…in this case Smokey….and he deserves it.

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  9. Obviously, I love the Beatles version of this track but it clings very closely to the arrangement Smokey did on his version. I love them both but… and this may be blasphemy… I have always kind of liked the slowed down tempo on the version, yes, Eddie Money did on his debut. Like I said, perhaps blasphemy but someone had to say it…

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    1. No…it’s all subjective… you like what hits you at the moment!
      I sometimes like the Beatles version of With A Little Help From My Friends over the cover by Joe Cocker…not always but sometimes I want to hear Ringo.

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  10. Great song.

    Good write-up, Max. Lots of good origin story tidbits. That piano opener sounds like gospel and with the info about performing in the church, it makes sense.

    “Later on when the Beatles toured America…it was written in their contract that they would absolutely not play in front of a segregated audience.” Shameful!

    John does a good job on it, with the boys’ backup vocals.

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      5. You know I love them for their music, but now I love them for this also. Max, do you think part of the reason they wouldn’t tour in the U.S. anymore (or anywhere?) was partly or solely because of the segregation? I have to wonder, especially with Paul writing Blackbird afterwards.

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      6. I hope the way I wrote it didn’t confuse anyone Lisa…
        I don’t think so because when the promoters saw that money…and that went out the door lol. If they would have had a better sound system…they could have.
        Their contract bascially told it all…the promoters had no other choice.

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  11. As far as the artists go, each brought their own bit of flavour to it. You know Auntie Belle’s Lemon Merengue pie is going to be different than Granny Bedelia’s but you’re going to love ’em both.

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  12. Now, thanks to Obbverse, I want a lemon pie and there is nowhere to get one in Granbury. I liked the Beatles cover of the tune, they put some rawness into the production. My band played this song as late as 2019 as well as others of their early music. I date myself, but I do prefer their early efforts.

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    1. I know…that is probably the reason I stopped on the way home from work and got some lemon cookies.
      I wish we could have…we just didn’t have the voices to pull this one off.

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      2. Yea I know what you mean about sweets.
        The most ambitious song we did at one time…vocally anyway…when we had three of us that could do it was Nowhere Man.

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      3. One of their better ones. I think Harrisons guitar break is magical on his black Gretsch. I like their guitars and lately have been interested in a D’Angelico to keep my Taylor company. Instruments in closets lead a lonely life.

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  14. Who would have thought 60 years later its still thing about the Beatles being on Sullivan. Impact moment or what! Crazy thing is these guys could take cover songs and make them sound like they wrote em. Zep were good at that as well but they credited themselves haha

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    1. Everyone thought the Beatles would be gone within the year….they fooled them….songs…a five finger discount lol.

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