“Do You Want to Know a Secret?”

Editor’s Note: John Lennon Series author Jude Southerland Kessler explores the second Lennon song on The Beatles’ Please Please Me LP in this CultureSonar series, focusing on the intrinsically melodic and clever songs of John Lennon.

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A Lennon gem from 1963’s Please Please Me LP, “Do You Want to Know a Secret” demonstrates John’s affinity for double entendres – this time demonstrated not in artful wordplay, but in the very topics that inspired the song.

Newly-married to Cynthia Powell (who, according to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, was to be utterly concealed from the public) and living in the Liverpool 8 flat that manager Brian Epstein had temporarily gifted the Lennons, John’s song cleverly alludes to not one but three crucial Beatle-centric secrets. First, in August of 1962, “Leader Beatle” John had become a married man. This event was shocking enough. But additionally, his bride was expecting a baby. Furthermore, the couple’s temporary flat at 36 Falkner Street was owned by Brian Epstein and had for some time served as the clandestine location for Epstein’s gay trysts. In Britain of the early 1960s, “homosexuality” was still illegal. Had even one of this song’s three secrets been revealed to the press or The Beatles’ fan base, the fate of the rising young band might have taken quite a different turn. “Do You Want to Know a Secret” is an ode to confidences closely guarded, intensely personal, and emotionally charged.

Lennon’s composition was inspired – as were many of John’s songs – by his musical, banjo-playing mother, Julia Stanley Lennon, who used to croon the 1937 Disney ballad, “I’m Wishing” (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) to the little boy. In the spoken introduction to “I’m Wishing,” Snow White addresses a covey of doves perched around a wishing well. She asks:

“Want to know a secret?

Promise not to tell?”

One can just imagine three- or four-year-old John sitting cross-legged and listening intently, captivated by Snow White’s promise that her song is going to reveal great secrets. Obviously, the toddler was also drawn to other elements in the song: echoes that would later be incorporated into John’s music as “calls and repeats,” subtle pauses that would become “Listen (pause) do you want to know a secret?”, and the magic of a haunting, minor lead line.

But later influences also shaped the development of “Do You Want To Know A Secret.” In I Want to Tell You, author Anthony Robustelli quotes George Harrison as saying that “Do You Want To Know A Secret” was modeled after an American song, “I Really Love You” by the Stereos. The Stereos’ song is faster and less tuneful, but Lennon adopts the 1950s “doo-wop” sound. He also borrows and then builds upon the Stereos’ chord progression. Throughout his life, John absorbed music of all sorts – music he could completely transform into something different.

Robustelli praises “Do You Want to Know a Secret” for giving the listener “an intro that does not reappear in the song,” a rather unique technique. He also points out that despite John’s lifelong protestations that he didn’t care for jazz, the song has a jazzy aura. Robustelli applauds Lennon’s adoption (probably borrowed from The Beatles’ cover of “Till There Was You”) of the chord change from a “minor ii to a minor iv.” This is something, Robustelli says, that John would employ again in “All I’ve Got To Do” and “Across the Universe.” Once John had discovered an effective technique, he was wise enough to use and reuse it.

In Tell Me Why, Tim Riley asserts that “‘Do You Want to Know A Secret’ is among the better-crafted early songs” of The Beatles and points out that “the hook…in the downward chunk-a-chunk motion of the [rhythm] guitar…is echoed in the back-up vocals on ‘doo-wa-doo.’” Furthermore, Riley notes that Lennon’s unusual “sung/spoken” introduction captivates the listener just as Snow White’s introduction once captivated John. Riley says, “The short introduction where George [Harrison] pleads ‘You’ll never know how much I really love you / You’ll never know how much I really care’ starts off in E minor and passes through G major to prepare for E major, the key of the verse.” In The Beatles As Musicians, Walter Everett agrees, calling the intro chords “colorful” and memorable with “a melodramatic effect.” Remember that John Lennon was only 22 years old when he wrote this song, and yet, the composition is intricate.

In June of 1963, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas took the song all the way to Number One. But to many, The Beatles’ version was (and still is) the most memorable. George Harrison’s heavily Scouse-laden vocals sent fans swooning over the boy’s back-of-the-throat pronunciation of “secrrrret” and “close-ah.” And the grit in Harrison’s “I’m in love with you” was dubbed “irresistible.”

On 11 February 1963, when The Beatles were given one day off from the Helen Shapiro Tour to record their first LP, “Do You Want to Know A Secret” was handily dispatched. It took 4 complete takes (and two false starts) to create a backing track of which the boys approved. Superimpositions followed – including tight harmony to John’s lead vocal, provided by John, George, and Paul singing together, as well as additional percussion, including Ringo tapping two drumsticks together. These were added on Tracks 7 and 8.

Paul McCartney notes that he contributed to the bridge. In 1962-63, both young songwriters filled gaps in the tracks. But as Wilfred Mellers points out in Twilight of the Gods, “Do You Want to Know a Secret” was “written by John for George.” And because of what Mellers calls “a painful appoggiatura” on the words, “I’m in love with you,” we are graced with an unusual and confessional song quite typical of Lennon’s later works. “Do You Want to Know a Secret” reveals a relationship that is not supposed to be…but is. Whether that relationship was John’s hidden marriage to his new bride or Brian Epstein’s clandestine love affair or the long-repeated story of John’s longing for “the girl in a million, my friend,” whom he had lost, the ache and the passion are there.

Furthermore, George Harrison – who believed that he had sung the song poorly – delivers just the right dose of sincerity and insecurity. Even his lapse into the Scouse expression “for the week or two” (instead of “for a week or two”) makes this song authentic and charming. “Do You Want to Know a Secret” is a simple ballad. Nonetheless, it is lovely and melodic.

-Jude Southerland Kessler

Photo: John Lennon and George Harrison (Getty)