Please Please Me
Please Please Me is the debut studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Produced by George Martin, it was released in the UK on EMI's Parlophone label on 22 March 1963. The album is 14 songs in length, and contains a mixture of cover songs and original material written by the partnership of band members John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
For other uses, see Please Please Me (disambiguation).
The Beatles had signed with EMI in May 1962 and had been assigned to the Parlophone label run by Martin. They released their debut single "Love Me Do" in October, which surprised Martin and reached number 17 on what would become the official UK singles chart. Impressed with the band, Martin suggested they record a live album and helped arrange their next single, "Please Please Me", which topped multiple unofficial charts. Finding the Cavern Club, the band's home venue in their native Liverpool, unsuitable for recording, Martin changed the plan to a simple studio album. Other than the material already present in their singles, the Beatles recorded Please Please Me in one day at EMI Studios on 11 February 1963, with Martin adding overdubs to "Misery" and "Baby It's You" nine days later.
The album was well-received in Britain, where it remained in the Top 10 for over a year, a record for a debut album that stood for half a century. The presence of several songs written by band members Lennon–McCartney (credited as "McCartney–Lennon" at the time) was unusual and marked the emergence of a "self-contained rock band". On the other hand, the album was not released in the US, where the band sold poorly for most of 1963; after the stateside emergence of Beatlemania, Vee-Jay Records released a mild abridgment of the album as Introducing... The Beatles in early 1964, while EMI's American label Capitol Records divided the material from Please Please Me across multiple albums. Other countries also received different versions of the album, which continued until 1987, when the entirety of the Beatles catalogue was brought to CD and internationally standardised to the UK albums.
Please Please Me remains critically acclaimed; it was voted 39th on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2012, and number 622 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums in 2000.
Background[edit]
The Beatles originated in the skiffle scene of Liverpool in the late 1950s, and by 1961 had solidified their lineup with John Lennon on rhythm guitar, Paul McCartney on bass, George Harrison on lead guitar, and Pete Best on drums. The band mostly played cover songs, although Lennon and McCartney had a budding songwriting partnership that also contributed material. They returned to Liverpool in late 1961 after a stint in Hamburg backing English singer Tony Sheridan and releasing their first single, "My Bonnie", on which they had been credited as "The Beat Brothers". Shortly after their return they were approached by Brian Epstein, a music store manager who recognized the group's local popularity and became the group's new manager. After a failed audition at Decca Records at the beginning of 1962, Epstein was eventually able to sign the group to EMI that May.
EMI offered the Beatles a recording contract on its Parlophone label run by George Martin. Though Martin was drawn to the Beatles' personalities and charisma, he was initially unconvinced that they could write hit songs.[5] Their first session, on 6 June, with Best on drums, resulted in no recordings suitable for release.[6] Martin reacted negatively to Best's presence and insisted on the use of a session drummer in his stead; although this was standard procedure at the time, the band took this as a cue to drop Best in favour of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes drummer Ringo Starr. Their second session, on 4 September and now with Starr on drums, produced "Love Me Do", which became their first single several weeks later, and an early version of "Please Please Me".[7] On 11 September, the band re-recorded "Love Me Do" with session drummer Andy White and recorded "P.S. I Love You", which became the B-side to "Love Me Do".[8] They also recorded a sped-up version of "Please Please Me", which Martin believed had hit potential but required more work.[7]
Martin doubted the commercial appeal of "Love Me Do" and was surprised when it reached No. 17 on the British charts in November.[9] Now convinced that the Beatles could write hits, Martin met the Beatles on 16 November and made two suggestions for their upcoming work. First, he suggested that they re-record "Please Please Me" and issue it as the Beatles' second single. Next, he proposed that they record a full album—a recommendation Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn deemed "genuinely mind-boggling" because the Beatles were so new to the music scene and because the album market was dominated by adult buyers, not teenagers.[10] On 26 November, the Beatles held another session for "Please Please Me" (to be backed with "Ask Me Why"), after which Martin predicted that they had just made their first number one record.[11]
As the Beatles had extensive stage experience and a large following of local fans in Liverpool, Martin proposed the band could record a live album, primarily of Lennon–McCartney songs at their resident venue, the Cavern Club, in December.[12] Martin planned to attend the Beatles' 18 November Cavern concert to gauge its suitability for recording, though he postponed this visit until 12 December.[5] Upon his visit to the Cavern, Martin decided the acoustics would be unsuitable and decided to record a traditional studio album in February 1963; as the Beatles had already recorded four songs for release, they would record another ten to complete the album.[13] In the meantime, Martin also solicited the Beatles' input for album names; McCartney suggested Off the Beatle Track.[14]
The single "Please Please Me" was released on 11 January 1963 and reached number one on the NME, Melody Maker, and Disc charts.[15] In early February, the group undertook their first national tour, and they planned to record their album during a break in the tour on 11 February.
Artwork and packaging[edit]
George Martin was an honorary fellow of the Zoological Society of London, which owns London Zoo, and he thought that it might be good publicity for the zoo to have the Beatles pose outside the insect house for the cover photography of the album. However, the society turned down Martin's request, and instead, Angus McBean was asked to take the distinctive colour photograph of the group looking down over the stairwell inside EMI's London headquarters in Manchester Square.[28] Martin was to write later: "We rang up the legendary theatre photographer Angus McBean, and bingo, he came round and did it there and then. It was done in an almighty rush, like the music. Thereafter, though, the Beatles' own creativity came bursting to the fore."[31] In 1969, the Beatles asked McBean to recreate this shot. Although the 1969 photograph was originally intended for the then-planned Get Back album, it was not used when that project saw eventual release in 1970 as Let It Be. Instead, the 1969 photograph, along with an unused photograph from the 1963 photo shoot, was used in 1973 for the Beatles' retrospective albums 1962–1966 and 1967–1970. Another unused photograph from the 1963 photo shoot was used for The Beatles (No. 1) (EP released 1 November 1963).
The Beatles' press officer Tony Barrow wrote extensive sleeve notes, which included a brief mention of their early 1960s rivals the Shadows.
According to Ian MacDonald and Mark Lewisohn:[79]
The Beatles
Additional musicians and production
