Worst Beatles Song | Page 16 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

On June 22^nd, 1961 Polydor agent Bert Kaempfert (not to be confused with the blue cheese smelling like the same name) locked Paul, John, George, Pete (who was not yet Ringo) into a small German wine crate and were ordered to ‘Mach Shau! Mach Shau!’ into a small tin cup with pipe cleaners sticking out of it. After an exhausting ten minutes, the lads were dragged out and paid 300 marks to de-louse their smalls. It was released in October 1961. It reached number five in the German charts. George and Paul were the first two Beatle composers to hit the charts as songwriters. Rather than being composed though, ‘Cry For A Shadow’ was decomposed and the result was an ode to the Shadows featuring tinny whining guitar overtures that bleated its way into the hearts of drunk chair throwing krauts in the naughtiest city in Germany: Hamburg, and alongside it, a cover of ‘Aint She Sweet’ sung by John Lennon (technically speaking it was sung but arguments could be formulated that the vocal was ‘leaked’ rather than sung. The ‘harmonies’ were inferior to that of ‘In Spite Of All The Danger ’ from 1958.

I hereby rate ‘Cry for a Shadow’ and ‘Aint She Sweet’ as the two worst, musical war crimes ever inflicted on Germany ever: had it been twenty years earlier the Allies would have parachuted it into Hitler’s lap, causing ‘death by skiffle’.

I won’t comment on ‘My Bonnie ’ or the other tracks on this release, because the Beatles were only the backing band, backing an Elvis impersonator but one who had already reached the Elvis ‘Christmas Ham’ stage, and a man so damned fucking lucky that when Beatlemania broke in the states, ‘My Bonnie ’ was in the Billboard top 5, thereby setting up Sheridan for a life of, well, paid nothingness.