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Meet the Beatles (Again) - Please Please Me

Posted at 2:01 AM on September 9, 2009 by The Current (1 Comments)
Filed under: Meet the Beatles (Again)

Please Please Me
Originally released in 1963

By Jim McGuinn

Please Please me 1970 might have been the end for The Beatles, but for me it was the start of a lifelong love affair. Aged four, I clearly remember being plopped down in front of the 3:30 Movie (Channel 32, suburban Chicago) and catching an entire week of The Beatles' movies. An indelible image was set on my mind - that to be young, to make music, to have people chase you in the street, and most of all, to be able to do all this with your best mates - a world of possibility opened. From that point on, rock 'n' roll would be as big in my life as baseball and Sesame Street.

That was how it started for me, but for The Beatles it all started back in March 1963 with their first album, Please Please Me. With 10 of its tracks recorded in a single day's 10-hour session, the album was essentially a live recording of the Beatles club shows of the day - closing with John Lennon's throat shredding one-take version of the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout."

Why the rush? After a relatively middling success of their first single "Love Me Do," Beatles producer George Martin pushed for the follow up 45-rpm to be a cover ("How Do You Do It?" - later a hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers), but the Beatles wanted to release their own songs.

After rearranging the title song from a slower blues to an up-tempo rave-up, Martin was convinced the group had their first hit and was proven right when the song zoomed to No. 2 in the UK Top Five in January 1963. With a full slate of touring and TV appearances, the time was now to cash in on the hit, and The Beatles had to get an album into shops in a hurry. Mixing eight originals with six cover versions, The Beatles, like hero Buddy Holly and few others before them, established themselves as a self-contained band, able to not only sing, but play on and write their own material - just the first of many music business norms The Beatles smashed through in their career.

Soon-to-be rock standards like "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Please Please Me" set a high bar for the coming British Invasion, and while the sentiments were pretty simple, moon-June romantic pleas, the music crackled with an energy, wit, and zest like nothing else before it.

With a live show honed from long nights in Hamburg and Liverpool, The Beatles were also able to deliver their own spin on covers like Arthur Alexander's "Anna," the Shirelles' "Baby It's You" and "Boys," and The Cookies' "Chains." Not unlike Elvis' famous merging of blues and country, this English take on American R&B would kick off the "'beat boom"' and influence the early releases of The Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Kinks, Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and nearly every major British band to follow in their path throughout the '60s.

I don't know what this record would sound like without a sense of history and what followed, but it's hard for me to hear it without flashing on how it changed music. The Beatles weren't more sophisticated than Cole Porter, they didn't rock as hard as Little Richard, they didn't croon as well as Sinatra or hip-shake like Elvis, but somehow their impact would dwarf all their influences and reshape the future of music. The sound of freedom, of joy, of youth - it's all here on Please Please Me.

Given that it has taken four years to digitally remaster the Beatles catalog, it's worth noting how quickly and cheaply their first album was made. With a total recording budget of around $1000, and each Beatle paid to scale, or about $62, it must be the greatest investment in rock history.

Jim McGuinn is the program director for The Current. Jim is pleased to meet you.

Comments (1)

I don't know how much info you want in this, seeing as I could go on and on about the Beatles. I'm not the hugest fan in the world, I've met many that are much more rabid about them. What I am inclined to say is that the Beatles influenced my life from day one, seeing as I was named after one of their songs, and apparently was born on the day Hey Jude was released. That said, and maybe I'll enter something else in here again, I am amazed by the influence this band has had on so many lives.

I was once driving to Indiana with a teenage boy who told me that the Beatles made him feel funny. I asked him what he meant, and also reassured him that they had affected lots of other people in much the same way. Ben was about 16 or 17 then, and he let me know that he listened to the Beatles because his father, who had died a year or so before, had loved the Beatles. It was Ben's way of connnecting with his dad. His friends weren't lslistening to the Beatles, it was a different sort of experience for him, in a good way. I don't know too many bands that would affect so many people so viscerally.

Posted by Michelle Bricker West | September 10, 2009 12:10 PM

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