THE WHO, WHAT, WHERE AND HOW OF 'WHY'

The song Why has a significant place in music history because it was one of the tracks the fledgling Beatles recorded with Tony Sheridan in 1961 before making a recording debut in their own right. But few people know of an earlier, 1958 recording of the song made by Sheridan, which recently surfaced on a 10" acetate. Beatles scholar Hans Olof Gottfridsson tells the story of a song that would later attain immortality by association.

- Hans Olof Gottfridsson

The Tony Sheridan and Bill (William) Crompton-penned song Why (Can't You Love Me Again?) is one of two original compositions that Tony Sheridan and The Beatles recorded for Polydor and Bert Kaempfert in Hamburg, Germany, before The Beatles made their proper record debut for Parlophone back home in the UK in October 1962. (The other was the instrumental Cry For A Shadow, written by John Lennon and George Harrison, and recorded by The Beatles without Sheridan.)

What is considerably less known is that Tony Sheridan also made a private demo recording of the same song back in 1958. This recording was long believed to have been lost forever, but against all odds it was rediscovered by chance a few years ago at a car boot sale in Studley, South Warwickshire, England. Of course it reappeared with a scratch or two, as you would expect after decades on the road, but it was in good condition overall and still fully playable.

This article tells the full story for the first time of Sheridan's 1958 recording of Why and the demo record he made at the time.

The article also presents three unique discs containing the Sheridan/Beatles recording of the song from 1961. In addition, the largely unknown story of Sheridan and Crompton's songwriting partnership is told and a second song that may have been written by them - or possibly by Shakespeare (!) - has been unearthed from the archives.