"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"

Yester-day, I was thinking about Del Shannon's "Hats off to Larry."  The first line is "Once I had a pretty girl."  I realized that the first line of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is very similar:  "I once had a girl."  According to the liner notes of the Del Shannon compilation album I have, "In 1963 Shannon became the first American to record a cover version of a Beatles song.  He appeared with the group, then still unknown in America, at London's Royal Albert Hall in April of that year and was so impressed by them that he told John Lennon he would cover 'From Me to You' to publicise their cause back in the States."  "Hats off to Larry" is from 1961, so it precedes this event, but I don't know if the Beatles had any familiarity with it, so the similarity of these initial lines may be just coincidental.