#34 The Beatles- Please Please Me

Meet The Beatles…

(Parlophone)

Released: 22nd March 1963

Topped the chart:

5th May 1963 (for 30 weeks)

Thirty weeks total.

“There can scarcely have been 585 more productive minutes in the history of recorded music.”- Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.

“I don’t know how they do it. We’ve been recording all day but the longer we go on the better they get.”- George Martin, 1963

It’s fair to say that quite a lot has been written on The Beatles over the last 60-plus years. As a result, it’s very difficult to find a new angle in this year of 2025.

Compounding the issue is the fact that the stories from the recording of their debut album, Please Please Me, have passed into hoary legend. Ten songs recorded in a single day? Check. Ringo never forgiving producer George Martin for sticking session man Andy White on drums for Love Me Do? Present and correct. John Lennon stripping to his waist to shred his vocal cords to closer Twist & Shout? Heard it before, mate.

So, let’s turn to the album’s unsung hero: producer George Martin. The plummy-voiced working-class naval man who piloted The Beatles’ musical direction through the 60s, he rightly gets credit for achieving the sounds that only existed inside The Beatles heads from 1966’s Revolver onwards, but in these more straightforward early days, he was every bit as important at ensuing The Beatles would be the biggest band in Britain from their very earliest sessions.

Indeed, Martin’s hands are all over the sequencing and arrangements of Please Please Me. Both sides begin and end with a banger and are the best four tracks on the album (even Love Me Do, which is almost puerile in its simplicity compared to what came later, is extraordinarily tight in its structure). And though the quality of the music varies wildly across the record, each track features something memorable and exciting. Misery, Boys and A Taste of Honey won’t be high on anyone’s Beatles song ranking, but they kick it up a gear with a thrilling piano trill at the start (played by Martin himself), Ringo’s shout of “Alright George!” and a mystical double-tracked change of tempo for the chorus respectively.

That energy is better served on other tracks, however. I Saw Her Standing There and Twist and Shout need no introduction, exploding the album in and out like nuclear bombs of joy and good times. Ask Me Why and the title track are lifted by particularly tender Lennon vocals, and Baby It’s You is the pick of the covers that aren’t called Twist and Shout.

As sweet and addictive as that youthful energy is, it’s not quite enough to put Please Please Me into the tier of truly great debut albums alongside, say, Elvis. Despite having hundreds of live hours under their belts (indeed, the album was originally scheduled to be recorded in The Cavern to capture their raw glory, but Martin balked at the idea of the sheer amount of condensation in the venue making its way into his precious equipment), The Beatles certainly weren’t up to scratch as a studio band yet, something Martin was all too aware of. In places, the guitars definitely feel a touch out of tune, hampered by the bum note here and there and the presence of catarrh in several of John’s vocals.

While there are some great songwriting moments here and there (“You know what I mean on I Saw Her Standing There; Lennon’s Roy Orbison leap on the title track), the leftover originals just aren’t up to scratch with the best of the early Beatles- There’s A Place remains something of a slog, Do You Want to Know a Secret isn’t the strongest Harrison vocal on disc (improved considerably on Billy J Kramer’s hit cover), and PS I Love You is at best rudimentary.

We could continue digging into the issues with tunings and colds, but when 14 tracks come together (no pun intended) to create something as fresh as a Mersey breeze, who cares? As history shows, that was the attitude of George Martin as well. If he hadn’t overlooked their musical shortcomings and embraced the “four-headed monster” as they were christened by Mick Jagger, none of what we’re about to dive into would have happened?

All hail the Fifth Beatle. The other four are pretty good too.

Score: 7/10

Track Listing:

SIDE A

1.      I Saw Her Standing There

2.      Misery

3.      Anna (Go to Him)

4.      Chains

5.      Boys

6.      Ask Me Why

7.      Please Please Me

SIDE B

8.      Love Me Do

9.      PS I Love You

10.  Baby It’s You

11.  Do You Want to Know a Secret

12.  A Taste of Honey

13.  There’s a Place

14.  Twist and Shout