Beatles album of the week: Please Please Me

[AKA]

This is the first in a fifteen-week series of Beatles polls I'm posting for each UK album.

The Beatles, still unknown in America, released their first full-length album in the UK on March 22, 1963.

The album, Please Please Me included fourteen tracks:

Side One:
I Saw Her Standing There (Lennon/McCartney)
Misery (Lennon/McCartney)
Anna (Go To Him) (Alexander)
Chains (King/Goffin)
Boys (Dixon/Farrell)
Ask Me Why (Lennon/McCartney)
Please Please Me (Lennon/McCartney)

Side Two:
Love Me Do (Lennon/McCartney)
P.S. I Love You (Lennon/McCartney)
Baby It's You (Bacharach/David/Williams)
Do You Want To Know A Secret (Lennon/McCartney)
A Taste Of Honey (Marlow/Scott)
There's A Place (Lennon/McCartney)
Twist And Shout (Medley/Russell)

From the "one, two, three, four!" countoff of "I Saw Her Standing There" to the end of the vocal-shredding "Twist And Shout," it's an album that changed rock music forever.

Here's what allmusic.com's Stephen Thomas Erlewine has to say about the record:

Once [the song] "Please Please Me" rocketed to number one [in the UK], the Beatles rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day. Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins. As the songs rush past, it's easy to get wrapped up in the sound of the record itself without realizing how the album effectively summarizes the band's eclectic influences. Naturally, the influences shine through their covers, all of which are unconventional and illustrate the group's superior taste. There's a love of girl groups, vocal harmonies, sophisticated popcraft, schmaltz, R&B, and hard-driving rock & roll, which is enough to make Please Please Me impressive, but what makes it astonishing is how these elements converge in the originals. "I Saw Here Standing There" is one of their best rockers, yet it has surprising harmonies and melodic progressions. "Misery" and "There's a Place" grow out of the girl group tradition without being tied to it. A few of their originals, such as "Do You Want to Know a Secret" and the pleasantly light "PS I Love You," have dated slightly, but endearingly so, since they're infused with cheerful innocence and enthusiasm. And there is an innocence to Please Please Me. The Beatles may have played notoriously rough dives in Hamburg, but the only way you could tell that on their first album was how the constant gigging turned the group into a tight, professional band that could run through their set list at the drop of a hat with boundless energy. It's no surprise that Lennon had shouted himself hoarse by the end of the session, barely getting through "Twist and Shout," the most famous single-take in rock history. He simply got caught up in the music, just like generations of listeners did.

See also:
With The Beatles (1963)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Beatles For Sale (1964)
Help! (1965)
Past Masters Volume One (1988)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Revolver (1966)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Yellow Submarine (1969)
The Beatles (1968)
Let It Be (1970)
Past Masters Volume Two (1988)
Abbey Road (1969)

Beatle Facts

[Brian]

I Saw Her Standing There
Please Please Me
Twist And Shout

My favorite from those three are Twist and Shout. Every time I hear it, it just gets me going. My second favorite is Please Please Me and you can guess what the third is.

[Jrnygrl]

I like everything on this album, but my favorite would have to be "A Taste of Honey." To me they really showed how talented they were with this, since it was originally an instrumental.

[Penny Lane]

"I Saw Her Standing There "
followed closely by "Anna" and "Do You Want To Know A Secret"

[dlemond]

I can't tell you how many times I played this cd when it first came out way back in the late 80s (I know the album came out in 1963).

I love the whole album but I'll pick four as a maximum.

Misery
Ask Me Why
P.S. I Love You
There's A Place

[AKA]

Originally posted by dlemond
I can't tell you how many times I played this cd when it first came out way back in the late 80s (I know the album came out in 1963).

I love the whole album but I'll pick four as a maximum.

Misery
Ask Me Why
P.S. I Love You
There's A Place

Well, it wasn't widely available in the U.S. until The Beatles' catalog was released on CD in 1987. Until then, most people in the States grew up on the bastardized "American versions" of the albums up throught Revolver. Yuck!

[dr frasier crane]

My favorite is "Twist and Shout." I just love that scene in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off,' when he sings it in the parade.

[Steve M.]

I chose "Misery" becasue it's an early indication of the Beatles's knack for introspective songs, but "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist And Shout" are in a fight for a close second.

P.S. The Beatles only released self-composed songs as singles in Englanc, but in America, covers like "Twist and Shout" were released as singles, which is why Americans think of "Twist and Shout" more as a Beatles song than as an Isley Brothers song the Beatles merely covered. But then the Fabs had a way of doing definitive versions of fifties and early-sixties oldies, didn't they?

[Steve M.]

One other thing - Please Please Me was quickly recorded the way it was because the way you capitalized on a number-one hit in early-sixties Britain was to rush-release an album of the same name. This was just a cheap way of getting kids to buy the same song twice, because the other songs on the album were wimpy pop-standard covers no one really listened to. George Martin was wise enough to see the Beatles as the talented band they were and have them record an LP in which every song was as good as the single. So they played their stage act.

The idea of injecting as much care in a pop album as in the single was, in 1963, a radical idea.

[Steve M.]

Originally posted by AKA
Well, it wasn't widely available in the U.S. until The Beatles' catalog was released on CD in 1987. Until then, most people in the States grew up on the bastardized "American versions" of the albums up throught Revolver. Yuck!

I got all the original British LP's on vinyl before they were released on CD in America. Back when vinyl was all record stores sold, they had import bins where you could pick up British versions of Beatles, Stones, and Elvis Costello albums, as well as albums from British bands that were not well known in the U.S.

[AKA]

Originally posted by Steve M.
I got all the original British LP's on vinyl before they were released on CD in America. Back when vinyl was all record stores sold, they had import bins where you could pick up British versions of Beatles, Stones, and Elvis Costello albums, as well as albums from British bands that were not well known in the U.S.

I'm slowly acquiring original '60s Parlophone presses of Beatles albums for one reason: the CDs suck (a fact that's hard to ignore), especially the first four albums. I love mono, but these albums were poorly transferred to CD.

You should never transfer mono using a stereo playback system, but that's exactly what they did. It caused an awful, tinny sound.

The best the Beatles have ever sounded on CD is the "EP Collection," released in 1992. Whoever mastered this did a great job.

[AKA]

Fact: The Beatle originals on Please Please Me are credited to "McCartney/Lennon" instead of what would become the traditional "Lennon/McCartney."

Fact: "Love Me Do" was recorded on September 11, 1962 with Andy White on drums (at George Martin's insistence) and not Ringo, who had been hired to replace original drummer Pete Best just weeks earlier. Ringo plays tambourine here.

A studio version of "Love Me Do" with Ringo on drums (recorded September 4, 1962) can be found on the 1988 compilation Past Masters Volume One. The first recorded version, with Pete Best on drums (recorded June 6, 1962), is available on the 1995 album The Beatles Anthology 1.

Love Me Do
(Lennon/McCartney)
Lead vocals: Paul

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
so please, love me do
oh, love me do

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
so please, love me do
oh, love me do

Someone to love
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone like you

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
so please, love me do
oh, love me do

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
so please, love me do
oh, love me do
Yeah, love me do
Oh, love me do

[Penny Lane]

John was supposed to sing the lead vocals on Love Me Do. But the producer (George Martin?) wanted John to play the harmonica so he wanted Paul to sing(the middle of the song) . Paul sang the song but was so nervous that he claims that he was SO nervous that his vocals sounded that way. He says that nobody really noticed but he was a nervous wreck! He says he was terrified! He sounds just great! IMO

[crystals]

Twist and Shout is by far my most favorite, but I also like a few of the other songs by the Beatles, as well: I Saw Her Standing There and Love Me Do.

Has anyone heard the song I Saw Him Standing There by Tiffany? It's the same song as the Beatles version except she changes the lyrics she and her in the song to he and him.


There's a lot of other songs by them I like. Paperback writer, A Hard Day's Night, Eight Days a Week, Here Comes the Sun, Hey Bulldog (redone in the 1997 I Know What you Did Last Summer soundtrack by a band called Toad The Wet Sprockett), Happy Birthday, Ticket To Ride, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Hello Goodbye, and a lot of others I can't think of right now.

Yeah, I love the Beatles music. They're my most favorite band. I even have a poster of all the front covers of their albums that I bought at HMV. Recently I asked my dad for the A Hard Day's Night DVD for my birthday. It's too bad that John and George have passed on because even though the Beatles split in I think it was 1970, I think of other bands like the Rolling stones that got back together after some time and I think it would be cool if all the Beatles had gotten together for like a 40 year anniversary 1964-2004 and had a tour, but that will never happen since both George and John passed on.

[EricIdlefan]

Please Please Me
A Taste of Honey
There's A Place
Boys
Twist & Shout
Love Me Do
PS I Love You