Paul McCartney wrote the song on his own, likely around January 1958 and possibly at George Harrison's family home in Upton Green.

[8] Lewisohn writes that, though McCartney wrote the track on his own, it is heavily based on the melody of Elvis's "Tryin' to Get to You", which also includes the similar lyric, "[in] spite of all that I've been through.

[16] Lennon, McCartney and Harrison all played guitar,[nb 3] John "Duff" Lowe the piano and Colin Hanton the drums.

[nb 4] Lewisohn writes, "anecdotes have Percy Phillips waving his arms at them, hurrying them to a finish, because he could see the disc-cutting lathe reaching its ultimate point, almost at the center label.

In a 1977 interview, Phillips recalled that the group initially only paid 15 shillings and someone returned a few days later with the remaining amount and to buy the record.

McCartney had engineers restore as much of the record's sound quality as possible and then made approximately 50 copies of the single that he gave as personal gifts to family and friends.

[citation needed] "In Spite of All the Danger" was not released to the public until it appeared on the 1995 compilation album Anthology 1 along with "That'll Be the Day",[24][25] though the former was shortened to 2:42 from its original 3:25 runtime.

[2] He further writes that the record "[is] not representative of their sound at any time other than this moment, which was a long way from the rough skiffle scuffle of tea-chest bass, washboard and banjo that was its start.

A recording of McCartney's concert at The Cavern Club in 2018, which featured a performance of the song with his touring band, was broadcast on Christmas Day 2020 on BBC One.

A plaque above the door of the house, unveiled in 2005, gives a precise session date of (Monday) 14 July 1958, but how this was arrived at has never been convincingly demonstrated; it could have been a month or two earlier.