A lot of people said ‘Michelle’ would have made a good single. There are songs which we like but we wouldn’t like to have out as singles. ‘Cause it’s a very funny thing about putting a single out. We always used to think for a single we’d have to have something pretty fast. I don’t know why. They always sounded like the singles. So when we did ‘Michelle,’ we all thought it was okay, but we just didn’t want it out as representative of us at the time.

— via Beatles Ebooks

All my first songs were written on the Zenith, songs like “Michelle” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” It was on this guitar that I learnt “Twenty Flight Rock”, the song that later got me into the group The Quarry Men.

— via Beatles Ebooks

There used to be a guy called Austin Mitchell who was one of John’s tutors at art school and he used to throw some pretty good all-night parties. You could maybe pull girls there, which was the main aim of every second; you could get drinks, which was another aim; and you could generally put yourself about a bit. I member sitting around there, and my recollection is of a black turtleneck sweater and sitting very enigmatically in the corner playing this rather French tune. I used to pretend I could speak French because everyone wanted to be like Sacha Distel or Juliette Greco…So I used to sit around and murmur. It was my Maurice Chevalier meets Juliette Greco moment: me trying to be enigmatic to make girls think, ‘Who’s that very interesting French guy over in the corner?’ I would literally use it as that, and John knew this was one of my ploys. […] Michelle’ was a tune that I’d written in Chet Atkins’ finger-picking style. There is a song he did call ‘Trambone’ with a repetitive top line, and he played a bass line whilst playing a melody. This was an innovation for us; even though classical guitarists had played it, no rock ‘n’ roll guitarists had played it. The first person we knew to use finger-picking technique was Chet Atkins…Based on Atkins’s ‘Trambone,’ I wanted to write something with a melody and a bass line on it, so I did. I just had it as an instrumental in C.
- Via Beatles Ebooks