Searchers – Needles and Pins

This song to me is a pre-power pop song. You have the jangle, harmonies, and the melodic touches throughout it. It inspired later artists, including The Byrds and Tom Petty, with its chiming guitars.

Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono wrote this song. Nitzsche was a producer who worked on a lot of movies. Bono married Cher, but before he was known as her husband, he was a record producer who made a name for himself working with Larry Williams on songs like “Bony Maronie” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzie.” Jackie DeShannon first recorded the song in early 1963. Her version stalled out on the charts because it didn’t get play in the US then.

This song peaked at #13 in the Billboard 100, #1 in the UK, and #14 in Canada in 1964. Great song and the first time I really noticed it was when Tom Petty did a live cover of it.

The Searchers heard British performer Cliff Bennett sing this at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany and wanted it to be their next single. Two 6-string guitars are playing in unison in the intro – it sounds like a 12-string guitar because an engineer accidentally left the echo switch on but liked the result.

Many artists have covered Needles and Pins, including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Stevie Nicks, Smokey, Ramones, and many more.

Needles and Pins

I saw her today, I saw her face, it was a face I loved, and I knew
I had to run away, and get down on my knees and pray that they’d go away
But still they’d begin, needles and pins
Because of all my pride, the tears I gotta hide

Hey I thought I was smart, I’d won her heart
Didn’t think I’d do, but now I see
She’s worse to him than me, let her go ahead
Take his love instead, and one day she will see
Just how to say please, and get down on her knees
Hey that’s how it begins, she’ll feel those needles and pins
A-hurtin’ her, a-hurtin’ her

Why can’t I stop and tell myself I’m wrong, I’m wrong, so wrong
Why can’t I stand up and tell myself I’m strong

Because I saw her today, I saw her face, it was a face I loved, and I knew
I had to run away, and get down on my knees and pray that they’d go away
But still they’d begin needles and pins
Because of all my pride, the tears I gotta hide

Oh needles and pins, needles and pins, needles and pins

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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.

37 thoughts on “Searchers – Needles and Pins”

  5. There is some ambiguity over the writing credits of this song with Bono stating that he sang along with Nitzsche’s guitar-playing, when they created this tune and the lyrics, however, Jackie DeShannon claims that the song was a collaborative effort between the three of them, but she never got any writing credits.  Jackie maintains that being a woman during this time period was not easy, as she had to agree with the publisher, the producer, and the writer, about the vision of the song.  Things would get changed around in the studio and if she said anything, they would think that she was being difficult, so it was hard to get that respect.  Jackie said the song was written at the piano, and that she was a full participant in the song’s creation.

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      2. Yea a lot of them were…you did have some like… oh Jim…whats her name…oh Sharon Sheeley but I’m glad it’s changed now…now women dominate in music….grammys and the top ten.

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  7. a fine song, a bit ahead of its time, though I mostly know it from hearing Tom Petty’s version (or one of them?) in the ’80s or early-’90s. There was more to Sonny than it seemed actually.

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  8. No wonder Petty covered it, a template for anyone wanting his sound.

    Never knew it was in part a Bono song. I never would have put the brit Searchers and All American Sonny together.

    Looking at Wiki they covered Jackie’s ‘When You Walk In The Room’ so that is something for her I guess.

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  11. I always loved “Needles and Pins.” The first version I heard of the song was by English pop rock band Smokie who were very popular in Germany during the ’70s. You may have heard of “Living Next Door to Alice”, their highest of the few charting singles they had in the U.S. While Smokie’s cover of “Needles and Pins” is okay, I much prefer The Searchers and even more so Tom Petty.

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  14. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this was one of the first pop songs I really loved. It was on a 60s compilation tape my parents used to play in the car. The harmonies, the melancholy, the middle eight… I know now that it was a cover, and that the Searchers more of a covers band, but it’s still one of the decade’s best songs for me (in a decade with a lot of competition!)

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