Please Please Me - Beatles (The)

...when their first album ‘Please Please Me’ was released in the spring of 1963, rushed to capitalize on the group’s remarkable popularity with hits including the song of the same name and ‘Love Me Do’. Recorded in three, three hour sessions all in one day in late February, ‘Please Please Me’ is arguably The Beatles at their rawest, before hours would be spent fiddling and rejuvenating tracks for commercial release to include a vast array of synth and ...
...Instead, every track on ‘Please Please Me’ was recorded with the intent of being sent out to the listener in a pretty similar way to how it had been recorded, thus making it a recorded snap shot of the Beatles at their most rough and ready.

Of the 14 tracks on ‘Please Please Me’, some were covers with eight of the songs being Lennon and McCartney originals. The album really is the epitome of the Beatles’ early, but classic, rock ‘n’ ... more

Debut albums are funny things; a good debut album can make or break an artist, defining their genre, style and audience in one hit. So, imagine the weight on The Beatles’ shoulders when their first album ‘Please Please Me’ was released in the spring of 1963, rushed to capitalize on the group’s remarkable popularity with hits including the song of the same name and ‘Love Me Do’. Recorded in three, three hour sessions all in one day in late February, ‘Please Please Me’ is arguably The Beatles at their rawest, before hours would be spent fiddling and rejuvenating tracks for commercial release to include a vast array of synth and orchestral sounds. The Beatles first album included many tracks that had only being recorded in a handful of takes and because of the simple use of guitars, pianos, drums and vocals, there wouldn’t need to be a laborious amount of time being spent on each song after recording by producer George Martin. Instead, every track on ‘Please Please Me’ was recorded with the intent of being sent out to the listener in a pretty similar way to how it had been recorded, thus making it a recorded snap shot of the Beatles at their most rough and ready.

Of the 14 tracks on ‘Please Please Me’, some were covers with eight of the songs being Lennon and McCartney originals. The album really is the epitome of the Beatles’ early, but classic, rock ‘n’ roll style; bluesy, melodic and amicable all at once, ‘Please Please Me’ has its fair share of good points: it’s an album which really did define the band as excellent – if not slightly limited – songwriters with a keen ear for catchy hooks.

Yet, the band’s debut did in many ways put them in a metaphorical box for the first few years of their careers; as I mentioned in one of my previous reviews for the soundtrack of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, the band were very green at the start of their careers in terms of branching out and creating ambiguous, exciting and challenging sounding records. In fact, many of McCartney’s early songs, in particular the ballads, were scrutinised: tracks like ‘I’ll Follow The Sun’ and ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ just didn’t suit the band at that stage in their careers, as their desire was to be seen as a rock and roll quartet. Fruitier moments just weren’t a factor in the early productions of the groups work so it’s undeniable that ‘Please Please Me’ was to be made up almost entirely of songs that contained a real edge to them but at the same time, the album would still concentrate on the bands habit of singing to their sweethearts.

‘I’VE LOST HER NOW FOR SURE/I WON’T SEE HER NO MORE/IT’S GONNA BE A DRAG – MISERY!’ (Lyrics from ‘Misery’)
Kicking off the album in a blitz of electric guitars and bawdy vocals is the eternally brilliant ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, a track which was dubbed by Rolling Stone magazine as the 139th Greatest Song of All Time. Listening to ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ only strengthens the claim that it really is an exceptional track by the band; there is a real buzz about it and it’s an extremely well produced track; it’s not too light on the guitars so it does sound every bit the crazy rock song of the early sixties but the guitars are light enough so that they don’t overshadow Mr. McCartney’s excellent vocal effort. Although it’s not overly complicated lyrically, that is to be expected with many of the bands early tracks and is actually a trademark of the Beatles’ earlier numbers. Said to have been dreamt up by Macca whilst driving home one night after a show, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ is all about the rush of falling in love, particularly at a young age, and how much fun it can be to finally pursue a person. It’s one of ‘Please Please Me’s’ finest up tempo tracks because it just has such a passionate and gutsy feel to it, as if the band were just recording the song randomly one day. Perhaps the band was just recording the song randomly one day...

The Beatles were known for their droll and sarcastic sense of humour, a characteristic of the band that lives on to this very day, and the second track on ‘Please Please Me’ is an almost satirical look into the mind of a broken-hearted teenager. ‘Misery’ is one of my favourites from the group’s debut album as there is a bit of a light-hearted feel to it; the background whimpering by John is greatly contrasted to the solemn vocals at the middle-eight and how the boy is now the ‘lonely one’ without his first true love. It’s a joint vocal effort by Paul and John which really heightens the mock sadness on this occasion, especially during the chorus when the word ‘misery’ is blurted out of almost nowhere. Although it was never a song intended for The Beatles to sing themselves, Kenny Lynch had that honour but he failed to make the chart with ‘Misery’ and looking for another track for their hasty debut album, Paul and John decided on covering their own cover. And so ‘Misery’ was born!

One of the only things I have against ‘Misery’ is the fact that is it painfully short at only 1.47 minutes. Again, this is another characteristic of The Beatles’ earlier work in the sense that all of the tracks seemed to just be a short snippet of a person’s life. However, if ‘Misery’ really was intended to be a sardonic number, another verse would have added that kind of tension to the song and made it a bit funnier and even more sarcastic in nature.

The first of the cover versions on ‘Please Please Me’ is ‘Anna (Go To Him)’ a song that had been a hit for American soul singer Arthur Alexander a year prior to The Beatles recording. Being a big fan of the song, Lennon took the lead vocal despite of the fact that he was contending with a pretty nasty cold on the day of recording, hence the raspy, slightly off-key vocal effort. Although not technically sound vocally, ‘Anna’ proves to be one of John’s best outings on ‘Please Please Me’ because you believe the notion that he’s pleading with himself to let the girl go to her true love, although it’s not necessarily a decision he wants to make a reality. The Alexander version of ‘Anna’ is definitely more of a soul ballad whereas John makes the song his own by adding a rough, bluesy edge which makes the situation even more heartbreaking. I think this is one of the best covers on the album because it does at least sound a little different to the original, even if it is just down to the tone of John’s voice.

Harrison gets the opportunity on ‘Please Please Me’ to show off his singing talents with the first of these moments being ‘Chains’, a cover of a song by Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin. Having never heard the original, I’m not quite sure how The Beatles’ cover of ‘Chains’ compares although I do think it’s one of the weakest songs on the album. It’s not George’s vocal effort that is the problem, as I think he does actually display a more pleasant, softer side to his voice when discussing the delectable features of his lover. And it’s not necessarily the composition of individual instruments as they all seem to slot together fairly well. There is just something about ‘Chains’ that is really corny; it’s perhaps the lyrics, in which a man tells the listener and his girlfriend how she has him helpless and unable to make his own decisions. Truth to be told, I was never a great fan of the harmonica introductions on many of The Beatles’ songs as it just seemed to be a token gesture to make the band seem a little different to other types of skiffle and rock and roll musicians of the time so I was perhaps a little prejudiced against ‘Chains’ before the song really got going! Overall, ‘Chains’ is a song that you’d listen to over the course of ‘Please Please Me’ but only remember it as being the annoying little stepchild of the album.

‘I’VE BEEN TOLD WHEN A BOY KISS A GIRL/TAKE A TRIP AROUND THE WORLD’ (Lyrics from ‘Boys’)
If you were hoping that the album wouldn’t be the host to a lead vocal effort by one Ringo Starr, I’m sorry to break your hopes and dreams as ‘Boys’ is Ringo’s shining moment on ‘Please Please Me’. Actually, it’s not too bad an endeavour from the normally out of tune drummer as his voice goes into the same depth of huskiness as Johns does on odd occasions. ‘Boys’, like the two previous songs on the album, isn’t a Lennon/McCartney original and was a B-Side to an American girl group, the Shirelles, ballad, ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’. I bet you are all thinking ‘did Ringo come out of the closet and I missed that bit of vital Beatles news?’ Fear not as in actual fact, the lyrics to ‘Boys’ were altered to suit Ringo’s manliness. Phew! ‘Boys’ is a cute little track and has a good energy about it which, like with ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ you do get a great sense of finding a solid and immediate love and like the opening song, it really does sound as if the band recorded ‘Boys’ live which gives it a real authentic feel, especially with Paul screaming randomly in the background! It’s one of the funniest moments on the album because everyone sort of throws in their own harmony at one point or another, creating a really fun Beatles factor to this cover version.

‘Ask Me Why’ sees the album taking a bit of a nosedive and really exhibit’s the early Lennon and McCartney weakness of singing songs about the fairer sex and their utter love for the girl in question. The main issue I have with ‘Ask Me Why’ is the strongly contrasting backing vocals from Paul and George and I’m not entirely sure whether the intention was to sing the same or different harmonies as it all sounded so jumbled and out of shape. Said to be a track penned primarily by Lennon, and vastly influenced by songs composed by artists of the time such as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, ‘Ask Me Why’ is really one of the few terribly mediocre tracks on ‘Please Please Me’ as it just doesn’t seem to be an interesting or thorough track, either in instrumental or vocal presentation and storytelling. It just sort of drones on for nearly two and a half minutes for no real purpose; it doesn’t reveal anything about the band other than that they can sound awfully generic sometimes!

‘I DO ALL THE PLEASIN’, WITH YOU IT’S SO HARD TO REASON (Lyrics from ‘Please Please Me’)
Reaching the number two spot in the UK charts is one of The Beatles’ most celebrated earlier songs ‘Please Please Me’, a track that prior to being reinvented by producer George Martin would not have seen the light of day; dubbed by the producer as too dreary and self-pitying, he felt that the song need to up its beat to make it more pleasing on the ears, instead of being a slow ballad. In fact, Martin was dead against ‘Please Please Me’ being released as a second track at all and wanted the bands cover of the Mitch Murray song ‘How Do You Do It?’ to be promoted instead. However, after some significant rejuvenating, including dismissing an overtly bluesy, down-and-out feel to the song, ‘Please Please Me’ became a much more enjoyable track to listen to with Martin predicting it would be the Beatles’ first of many hits.

One of the great things about ‘Please Please Me’ is its fantastic bass line that really separates the chorus and makes the demands from the guy to the girl of pleasing him like he did her seem more genuine but at the same time amusing, highlighting The Beatles’ cheeky sense of humour once again. Ranked by Rolling Stones mag as the 184th Greatest Song of All Time, ‘Please Please Me’ is one of the first of many classics by the lads; along with its great bass line and up tempo feel, there are the simple lyrics that don’t necessarily seem to be blatantly repetitive (in spite of the facts that the lyrics really are quite recurring) and really exemplifies a little bit of the haughty humour that the band were famous for.

Next up is another famous early track by the band. ‘Love Me Do’, although it was not a massive hit upon its first release in 1962, only peaking at number 17 in the UK charts. ‘Love Me Do’ became a firm favourite with fans but not necessarily with the band or their loved ones; Cynthia Lennon in her autobiography ‘John’ expressed how she found the song to be a little dull, and her husband at the time was said to have felt the same way. ‘Love Me Do’ really is the only track which has a favourable use of the harmonica or else it would have sounded a bit like the other Beatles love songs in the way that it’s mainly just a repetition of coos and the word ‘love’ and it was on the strength of the harmonica opening that George Martin decided to release the track at all; ‘Love Me Do’ offered a slightly different sound based purely on the harmonica opening at all. Said to be mainly composed by an adolescent McCartney, who had decided to skip school to pen a future classic, with John having a little bit of input with the middle eight, the best thing about ‘Love Me Do’ is that it’s a light sing-along anthem for the band; it’s got a great shadow and light quality with it because of the harmonica being included in moments of the chorus too and McCartney’s vocals dip to a lower pitch against the slightly higher verses that he shares with John.

Whilst ‘Love Me Do’ doesn’t have the deepest meaning in the world and the lyrics aren’t overly imaginative, the song is one of those few timeless songs that I can listen to and love for its face value alone.

‘TREASURE THESE FEW WORDS UNTIL WE ARE TOGETHER’ (Lyrics from ‘P.S I Love You)
‘P.S I Love You’ was the B-Side to ‘Love Me Do’ and is a track that strongly demonstrates one of the bands earliest influences; Paul sings the this song in a similar way to how Roy Orbison sings a lot of his ballads with a deep, baritone quality which in turn makes the song seem quite serious but also quite sincere. ‘P.S I Love You’ isn’t exactly an impressive song either lyrically or musically but it has a nice concept of a young man writing to a loved one whilst away from them. The idea of it being a love letter holds romantic connotations too but also makes such romance seem a little dated; now-a-days the way to a girl’s heart is through a naughty text! Or apparently so...anyway, the strongest thing about ‘P.S I Love You’ is McCartney’s flawless, velvet vocals; they really are incredible pitch perfect and because of that, it almost doesn’t matter just how bland or slow the tune is as his voice is incredible pure here. Even as early on as ‘Please Please Me’, it’s clear that McCartney has an extensive vocal range, managing to give a very concise baritone performance on some tracks but also an incredibly jazzy, raw recital on others which shows his diversity as a songwriter for being able to craft two such extremes and performing them so well and so convincingly.

Similarly to ‘P.S I Love You’, ‘Baby It’s You’ doesn’t exhibit an energetic or highly charged melody but instead allows John to take a step back and show off a softer, more refined side to his voice with this cover of the 1961 hit by the Shirelles. Although it’s not the most exciting track on the album to listen to, there is something easily endearing about ‘Baby It’s You’; John’s vocals sort of swoon over the ‘sha-la-la-la-las’ from George and Paul and it all engages together in a way that makes the song even more affectionate. Like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ it’s a song about the rush of falling in love with someone who is a little more than remarkable but ‘Baby It’s You’ takes this love to the next level as the lover is saying he doesn’t care what people think of the new couple: they love each other and that’s all that matters. John’s vocals, considering some of his other performances on the album have been a bit scratchy but on the tenth track he really excels and his vocals sound incredibly mature, reminiscent to a lot of his solo stuff, explicitly ‘Jealous Guy’. The melody only emphasises the defiance of the relationship because the switch between the major and the minor notes within the song create the metaphor of the couple sticking together through thick and thin, no matter what.

‘DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET? DO YOU PROMISE NOT TO TELL?’ (Lyrics from ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’)
‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ is the second song on the album ‘Please Please Me’ which allows Harrison to take on the task of lead vocals. Written as a joint project by both Lennon and McCartney, the song was inspired by an old Disney song that John’s Mother used to sing him when he was a lad, which focused around the idea of promises and not breaking them for the sake of another who has put their trust in you. There isn’t really a lot to love about ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’; it just plods on in its own sweet way for its whole 1.56 minutes, with it’s fairly average display of acoustic guitars and light drum beats. It’s got a nice idea behind it and makes it seem as if the lads had a reason to tell someone they love them other than for the fact that they’re pretty but it’s just not a song you’ll come away from listening to the album and remembering.

Although John had taken many of the lead vocals on both covers and Lennon/McCartney originals on ‘Please Please Me’, the reason why he let George have a crack at singing ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ because it was a rather less complex track than many of the other numbers on the album; the tune only switched between a couple of notes, and Lennon later remarked that the tune was as limited as Harrison’s vocal range – ouch! Apparently, Harrison’s voice did get better with age but that still doesn’t change the fact that I thought it was John singing upon a first listen! Oppps...

From one rather disappointing song to another, we head back into covers territory with McCartney taking the lead vocals on the song ‘A Taste of Honey’, a track initially written as an instrumental for the play of the same name. Written by two American songwriters, Ric Marlow and Bobby Scott, the main flaw of ‘A Taste of Honey’ is just for how dated it sounds; granted, many of the Beatles songs from this album sound very much like numbers you would expect from the decades of the 1950s/1960s in the sense that the instruments took a backseat in favour of gushing vocals and sweet love verses, but ‘A Taste of Honey’ just sounds very corny and trapped in a time warp. Perhaps the band weren’t expecting a 19 year old in the year 2009 to be scrutinising every song that they ever recorded but now we’re here, it’s time to address one of the major issues with the song: it sounds lifeless. There is no energy there at all and it just seems as if Paul recorded it because some of his own fruiter tracks just couldn’t quite have been fashionable at that time. John couldn’t have sounded more bored if he’d tried on backing vocals - perhaps by this stage of the day he was taking coma inducing flu medicine? ‘A Taste of Honey’ is one I always skip as like its predecessor, it’s a song that just goes at a rather dull tempo and seems to just be a song included to take ‘Please Please Me’ up to the fourteen track mark.
The only thing ‘A Taste of Honey’ did for anyone was the fact that a line from the play of the same name spawned the song ‘Your Mother Should Know’ for the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ soundtrack about four years later.

‘There’s A Place’, the albums penultimate track, starts off on dodgy ground and does get a bit better as it progresses...well, it gets marginally better anyway. The lead vocals are shared between John and Paul and it meshes together sort of well; Lennon’s natural vocal tone is lower than McCartney’s and the lead vocal sharing really emphasises their tonal differences on ‘There’s A Place’ although, it has to be emphasised just how out of place Harrison’s backing vocals are here; as is the case with many of the bands earlier work sometimes with all three of the lead singers providing their voices, it seems to inadvertently clutter the song and make everything seem a bit weary. ‘There’s A Place’ is all about finding peace of mind when you’re down in the dumps and the hopes that you shall always have that corner of your mind to go and escape to when in times of trouble...everyone cheer for a non-love song!

One of the things that makes ‘There’s A Place’ one of the weakest tracks on ‘Please Please Me’ is the fact that the tune doesn’t stand out at all; there doesn’t seem to be any pace there at all and the guitars and drums just seem to walk rather than run or amble at points, which would have made the track a little more interesting to listen to. The harmonies do get stuck in your head for quite a while and the ‘feel good’ factor of the lead vocal effort does save the thirteenth track from being absolutely dire.

‘C’MON AND TWIST A LITTLE CLOSER NOW AND LET ME KNOW THAT YOU’RE MINE’ (Lyrics from ‘Twist and Shout’)
The final track of the album is the Beatles’ incomparable version of ‘Twist and Shout’, a raucous rock ‘n’ roll classic to many fans and critics. Everything about ‘Twist and Shout’ is perfect; it’s got a great deal of energy to it, several layers of well performed instrumentals and exceptionally gravelly yet memorable vocals provided by John. As well as being the last song on ‘Please Please Me’, ‘Twist and Shout’ was the last song of the day to be recorded; producer George Martin realised that with the song being an up-tempo number, it would require a forceful, gutsy vocal performance from the sick John whose voice was nearly wiped out from the rest of the days recordings. The first – and apparently only vocally legible – recording from February 1963 was used on the album and, in many people’s eyes, it the personification of Beatlemania; like many of the tracks on the album but particularly with the opening and closing tracks, there is a real live vibe to ‘Twist and Shout’ which possibly saves John from any scrutiny over the few bum notes when higher notes are not quite reached because of his voice being in such a difficult position.

If John’s voice was in such a terrible state, why didn’t the band let Paul have a crack at the lead vocals on ‘Twist and Shout’? First and foremost, Lennon was very much the leader of The Beatles back in the earlier days, long before Yoko Ono came along or he got bored and wanted to sleep all day. Singing the lead vocals was a natural choice for John anyway, because the song does require a slightly gruffer approach to it than perhaps Paul could deliver. McCartney’s natural singing voice has a purer sound to it which although is very recordable, it may not have boded as well as Lennon’s attempt on such a raunchy rock single. More importantly, when you consider ‘Twist and Shout’ next to a track like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, both of the songs are quite similar; catchy, up-tempo numbers which thrust the guitars into the spotlights as a way maximise the vocal, rather than compliment them. It could have been a fatal error to let McCartney sing on ‘Twist and Shout’ because it could have come away losing a lot of its rough and ready appeal that made it such a fantastic track by John and also it could have made ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ seem more like a fast ballad than a serious contender for classic rock song.

OVERALL: DOES THE BEATLES’ FIRST ALBUM REALLY ‘PLEASE PLEASE ME’?
Overall, ‘Please Please Me’ really is an epic debut album from The Beatles; there is a fairly good variety of up-tempo and slightly slower tracks, with the album really beginning and ending on high notes with impeccable performances by both John and Paul on lead vocals with music that really defines them as a rock ‘n’ roll band at heart.

Although there are a lot of cover songs on ‘Please Please Me’, I admire The Beatles for covering fairly contemporary hits of the time and attempting to make them their own. This was particularly noticeable on ‘Anna (Go To Him)’ where the track was once a soul ballad but was transformed very well into a rockier, slightly sombre track with impressively soft vocals from John. ‘Baby It’s You’ also altered nicely into a loving and affectionate track from a guys perspective which wasn’t aggressive but really endorsed the notion of sticking by a lover in times of difficulty.

The Lennon/McCartney numbers (or McCartney/Lennon songs, as they were known as before their second album ‘With The Beatles’) in hindsight reflected the bands budding talents; considering many of the tracks on ‘Please Please Me’ were written when Paul and John were playing truancy, it’s incredible that they managed to make their thoughts either in the form of romantic whispers to their girl or imploring for joy to be replenished in their lives, seem so thorough and mature for young lads. Of course it doesn’t always work in their favour; although ‘There’s A Place’ really exhibits The Beatles at their most thoughtful, the tune nearly didn’t make this as memorable and the same can said for ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ too which may have been more memorable with a more impressive arrangement with textured sounds rather than a simple guitar riff and a couple of falsetto vocals here and there.

However, if you’re not a fan of The Beatles’ earlier music, ‘Please Please Me’ may not be for you; it’s not a trippy, overly imaginable record but it does very much stick with the classic bluesy rock sound of the late fifties and early sixties whilst displaying Lennon and McCartney to be good songwriters in the making. George Martin’s direction was invaluable here as I could never imagine the title track being a slow number at all and the upbeat feel really started things rolling for the group.

‘Please Please Me’ was a great starting place for the band (especially when you consider it was recorded in just one day) and I’ve always said it’s remarkable to consider just how far The Beatles came as musicians from the period of 1963 to 1970. For that reason alone, ‘Please Please Me’ is worth every penny and to really understand why John, Paul, George and Ringo were legends in the making!

QUICK STATS
Year: 1963
Tracks: 14
Length: 32.45 minutes
Buy at: Amazon.co.uk for £9.98 (eligible for free super saver delivery!) 

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