Bad To Me

The songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the song, “Bad To Me”. However, they gave the song to Billy J Kramer with The Dakotas who took it to number one in the charts.

Here at the Cavern Club and Beatles Forum we concentrate on the works of the Fab Four, including the songs that they gave away to other artists. Indeed,”Bad To Me” was one of those songs.

Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas was a British group from the 1960’s. They released the single “Bad To Me” with the B-side being another Lennon-McCartney composition “I Call Your Name” (26th July, 1963 in the UK and May, 1964 in the US). This became a number one hit in the UK while in America it got to a respectable number nine in the charts.

Incidentally, this wasn’t the first Lennon-McCartney song to chart by another artist in the US. The first of those was by Peter & Gordon with “A World Without Love” then there was Mary Hopkin with “Goodbye”.

There is a recording of John Lennon singing a demo version of the song but as yet it in not commercially available. However, it did become an iTunes downloadable song in December 2013 as part of “The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963”.

Recording Studio

John Lennon recorded “Bad To Me” on the 31st May, 1963, as an acoustic demo. Although we hear John Lennon singing throughout, there does appear to be an attempt at harmonies at the end. This could be Paul McCartney but we simply can’t tell.

The bootleg recording itself is not of particularly good quality but with modern-day technology this could easily become a decent sound. After all, they did a good job with “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird” and they were possibly worse quality.

Obviously if there ever does come an official commercial release of the song, the Cavern Club and Beatles Forum will announce that here.