Please Please Me

Please Please Me is the debut studio album by English rock band the Beatles. Produced by George Martin, it was released in the United Kingdom on EMI's Parlophone label on 22 March 1963. The album's 14 tracks include cover songs and original material written by the partnership of band members John Lennon and Paul McCartney. [Wikipedia]

Please Please Me is a song by The Beatles, written by Lennon–McCartney and led on vocal by John Lennon & Paul McCartney. Their first UK No.1 (NME/Melody Maker); George Martin: 'You've just made your first No.1.' Within the catalogue, its plea thread connects it to Love Me Do. George Martin transformed 'Please Please Me' from a slow Roy Orbison-style ballad into an up-tempo showcase redirecting the group to 'increase the tempo and work out some tight harmonies' for the re-make session. This intervention proved decisive: Martin remarked to the group after the 26 November recording session that 'You've just made your first No.1' (Lewisohn 1988, p.20, 23). The shift from ballad to rococo arrangement established a template for Beatles singles strategy.

The session work falls within the band's Beatlemania (1962–1964) period, recorded 26 Nov 1962 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. George Martin produced; Norman Smith engineered. For the session-by-session account, see Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (the 26 November re-make is logged on p. 23). Paul McCartney recalled the song's slow origins in the book's opening interview (excerpt below). The November session recording involved 18 takes before achieving a satisfactory result, with the harmonica overlay applied afterward via tape-to-tape overdub because it was difficult for John to sing, play harmonica and play guitar at once. This overdub technique, used in the era before full multitrack capability, required careful timing and tape editing, marking an early use of layering innovation (Lewisohn 1988, p.23).

The number one that George Martin predicted over the talkback was not the song the Beatles had first brought him. Please Please Me began as a slow ballad, and the version most people know is the result of a producer’s instruction to tear it up and start again. The group made a first, documented attempt at the song on 11 September 1962 — the session Ron Richards produced in George Martin’s absence, with Norman Smith engineering (Lewisohn p. 20) — but it went nowhere. “At that stage Please Please Me was a very dreary song,” Martin recalled. “It was like a Roy Orbison number, very slow, bluesy vocals. It was obvious to me that it badly needed pepping up” (Lewisohn p. 20). He told them the song could be much better “if they increased the tempo and worked out some tight harmonies” and to bring it back next time (p. 20). That slow original was never kept: “It was not customary in 1962 to keep session tapes once completed songs had been mastered … so the Orbison-like Please Please Me no longer exists” (Lewisohn p. 20). When the Beatles returned on 26 November 1962 with the song “restructured to George Martin’s specifications” (p. 23), the re-make was logged in eighteen takes, and at the end Martin leaned into the talkback: “You’ve just made your first number one.” In Lewisohn’s words, “He was not wrong” (p. 23).

The harmonica fanfare that opens the record — the phrase Martin himself had worked out at rehearsal, until Ron Richards begged him to “just play it in the gaps” (Lewisohn p. 18) — was not played live with the band. “When they started recording, it was decided that Please Please Me should be taped without the distinctive harmonica wailing. This was superimposed later, by doing a tape-to-tape overdub, because it was difficult for John to sing, play harmonica and play guitar simultaneously” (Lewisohn p. 23). Kehew & Ryan confirm the method and the medium: “Several takes were recorded to both mono and Twin-Track, and John Lennon added his harmonica via the tape-to-tape superimposition method” (K/R p. 350). That detail — the harmonica living on a separate length of tape, flown in by overdub rather than performed in the room — is the seed of everything that went wrong with the song’s stereo mix three months later.

The released Please Please Me exists in two materially different forms, and the difference is documented. A mono mix was made on 30 November 1962 (Lewisohn p. 23); it became the single, Parlophone 45-R 4983 (11 January 1963), and the mono LP. No stereo mix was made in 1962 at all. When Martin and Smith came to assemble the stereo LP on 25 February 1963, they “did a new mix, from takes 16, 17 and 18” (Lewisohn p. 23; editing of those takes is logged on p. 28) — and, as Kehew & Ryan reconstruct it, they had to rebuild the track almost from scratch because “it appears that the final master Twin-Track take from 1962 — as well as John’s harmonica overdub edit pieces — had been misplaced or destroyed” (K/R p. 365, which flags this as “mere supposition”). With the harmonica now surviving only inside the finished mono single, the engineers had to fly it back in from that mono, cueing two machines against Chinagraph marks and splicing the song together in sections because the new take and the old mono ran at “slightly different tempos” and would otherwise drift apart (K/R p. 365). The audible scars remain: “towards the end of the stereo mix John gets one line wrong, as a result of which the following ‘Come on’ is sung with a slight chuckle” (Lewisohn p. 23), and K/R note that “the syncing on the ending of the song was more than a little off” (p. 365). The mono is the clean, intended record; the familiar stereo is a 1963 reconstruction of a 1962 performance that no longer fully existed.

Documented mix variants (4 mix lineages)

• 11 September 1962 — the original “Orbison-like” slow version — recorded, never kept, no longer exists — Attempted at the very end of the session Ron Richards produced (P: Ron Richards, E: Norman Smith), this is the slow, “very dreary” ballad George Martin walked in on and judged “like a Roy Orbison number” (Lewisohn p. 20). Kehew & Ryan log it as “an early rejected attempt at Please Please Me … recorded to mono” (K/R p. 350). Because outtakes were not retained in 1962, this lineage survives only as testimony — the tape is gone (Lewisohn p. 20).
• 26 November 1962 re-make — takes 1–18, to both mono and Twin-Track — the source of every released version — The up-tempo re-make “restructured to George Martin’s specifications” (Lewisohn p. 23), recorded in Studio Two, 7.00–10.00pm (P: George Martin, E: Norman Smith). The basic track was taped without harmonica, which was added afterward as a tape-to-tape superimposition; “including the harmonica edit pieces the song was recorded in 18 takes” (p. 23). Kehew & Ryan: “Several takes were recorded to both mono and Twin-Track” (K/R p. 350). Every subsequent mix descends from this night.
• 30 November 1962 mono mix — the single (Parlophone 45-R 4983, 11 January 1963) and the mono LP (PMC 1202) — “Mono mixing: Please Please Me (from unknown take number)” (Lewisohn p. 23). This mix carries the harmonica intact and is the canonical record; it led the second single, backed with Ask Me Why (Lewisohn p. 24) and opens side one’s closing run on the mono Please Please Me LP (Parlophone PMC 1201, released 22 March 1963 — Lewisohn p. 32). It reached number one in the Melody Maker, NME and Disc charts, though only number two in Record Retailer (Lewisohn p. 24).
• 25 February 1963 stereo mix — from edit of takes 16, 17 and 18 — the stereo LP (Parlophone PCS 3042), a 1963 reconstruction — No stereo existed until the LP demanded one. Martin and Smith built it “from takes 16, 17 and 18” (Lewisohn p. 23; editing logged p. 28), apparently because the 1962 master and harmonica edit pieces had been lost (K/R p. 365, flagged as supposition). The harmonica was flown in from the mono single and the mix spliced together section by section to defeat a tempo drift between the two sources (K/R p. 365). It is the only version with John’s end-verse vocal slip and the chuckled “Come on” (Lewisohn p. 23), and its ending is audibly out of sync (K/R p. 365). The stereo LP, Parlophone PCS 3042, followed on 26 April 1963 (Lewisohn p. 32).
• 1987 mono CD — Please Please Me (Parlophone CDP 7 46435 2, mono) — the album’s first compact-disc issue was mono-only; Lewisohn catalogues it as “CDP 7 46435 2 (mono compact disc)” (Lewisohn p. 200) — the first four Beatles albums were issued on CD in mono.
• 2009 stereo remaster — Please Please Me (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI) — a 24-bit Abbey Road remaster of the 1963 stereo master (Allan Rouse project-coordinated; Guy Massey / Steve Rooke / Sean Magee), with no remixing. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain, this reissue post-dates the Lewisohn 1988 / Kehew & Ryan 2006 primary-source canon and is documented in official Apple/EMI release metadata.
• 2009 mono remaster — The Beatles in Mono (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI) — the 1963 mono master remastered for the mono box set. Same §1 caveat.
• 2014 mono vinyl — The Beatles in Mono vinyl box (2014, Apple/UMe) — an all-analogue vinyl cut from the 1963 mono master. Same §1 caveat.

Recording techniques (10 bullets, primary-source-verified)

• A producer’s “speed it up” rebuild — the central arrangement decision — The defining feature of the record is that it is not the song the band wrote. Martin found the slow original “very dreary … like a Roy Orbison number” and sent them away to “increase the tempo and work out some tight harmonies” (Lewisohn p. 20); Kehew & Ryan put it plainly — “George Martin suggested that the group speed it up, give it some energy” (K/R p. 350). The 26 November re-make is that instruction made audible.
• Recorded to both mono and Twin-Track in the same pass — As with all the group’s 1962–63 work, “all songs during this period were recorded to either Twin-Track tape or straight to mono” (K/R p. 351); for the re-make, “several takes were recorded to both mono and Twin-Track” simultaneously (K/R p. 350). The parallel mono and twin-track capture is exactly why two divergent masters later existed to be mixed differently.
• The harmonica is a tape-to-tape superimposition, not a live part — “It was decided that Please Please Me should be taped without the distinctive harmonica wailing. This was superimposed later, by doing a tape-to-tape overdub, because it was difficult for John to sing, play harmonica and play guitar simultaneously” (Lewisohn p. 23; corroborated K/R p. 350). Putting the harmonica on its own length of tape made it both possible and, later, perilously separable.
• The 1962 Studio Two control-room signal chain — The room was built around the valve REDD.37 console (“eight inputs, four outputs and two echo sends and returns,” with two channels patchable to make ten effective inputs), with a pair of EMI RS124 compressors on Main Channels I–II, a pair of RS114 limiters on III–IV, and Altec 605A monitors powered by repackaged Leak amplifiers (RS141) (K/R pp. 350–351). This is the chain that printed both Please Please Me masters.
• “Twin-Track” was a converted stereo machine, not a multitrack — George Martin’s preferred format came from the EMI BTR machines lining the control-room wall: “by changing its headstack, the stereo BTR3 machine could be converted into a ‘Twin-Track’ BTR3, the format preferred by George Martin for most of the Beatles’ work during this period” (K/R p. 351). Two tracks — backing and vocal — was the whole canvas.
• Why the stereo is hard-panned left/right — the desk had no pan — The REDD.37’s tape-return channels 1 and 2 “were fixed as a Left/Right pair … Track 1 of the Twin-Track tape was automatically panned hard Left by default, and Track 2 was panned hard Right. The desk — designed primarily for classical music — had no panning controls for those channels,” only a width control called the “Spreader” (K/R p. 365). The rhythm-left / vocals-right image of early Beatles stereo is an artefact of the mixer, not an aesthetic choice.
• A stereo rebuilt from a lost master — When the stereo LP forced a stereo mix in February 1963, “the song had to be re-edited … from different takes than had been used on the mono mix,” apparently because “the final master Twin-Track take from 1962 — as well as John’s harmonica overdub edit pieces — had been misplaced or destroyed” (K/R p. 365). Kehew & Ryan flag the cause as “mere supposition,” but the consequence is documented: Smith and Martin “cobbled together a new version of the song … from different takes” (p. 365).
• Flying the harmonica in from the mono single — With the harmonica now existing “only on the final mono mix … used for the single,” it had to be flown in: the new twin-track take and the 1962 mono were each cued to the song’s start, marked with a Chinagraph grease pencil on separate machines, and run together “with fingers crossed” until they played back in sync (K/R p. 365). This is an early, documented instance of the manual fly-in that would become routine on later Beatles sessions.
• A section-by-section splice to beat a tempo drift — Because the new take and the old mono “had been performed at slightly different tempos … even if the intro were synced perfectly, the tracks would quickly drift out of sync. For this reason, the mix had to be created in separate sections which would later be spliced together” (K/R p. 365). The flown-in mono-with-harmonica was panned fully Right and bounced down with the vocal in the final stereo (p. 365) — a hand-built mix, not a single pass.
• The audible signature of the reconstruction — The two mixes are tellingly different at the end. Lewisohn: “towards the end of the stereo mix John gets one line wrong, as a result of which the following ‘Come on’ is sung with a slight chuckle” (p. 23). Kehew & Ryan independently note that the compiled twin-track edit “did contain an audible lyrical mistake on the last verse” and that “the syncing on the ending of the song was more than a little off” (p. 365). The flaws are the fingerprints of the 1963 rebuild.

In the canonical discography it appears on the LP Please Please Me; on the EP The Beatles' Hits; on the single Please Please Me. Documented alternate versions include Anthology 1 (1995). Mono and stereo histories vary by era — see the dedicated section below. At 2m 0s, it occupies the 14th percentile of canon duration (among the shortest), and features John Lennon and Paul McCartney in dual lead vocals, a configuration shared by only 20 canon songs total, with 14 in the Beatlemania era. Its E major key connects it to 39 canon songs across the entire catalog. Scoring a No.1 on the NME chart and high placements on Melody Maker, it remained their strongest early chart position and crystallized Beatlemania momentum (Lewisohn 1988, p.23-24).

• Rolling Stone 500: Rolling Stone ' s list of the " 500 Greatest Albums of All Time " in 2012, and number 622 in the third edition of Colin Lark
• Rolling Stone 500: Rolling Stone ' s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Recognition mentions extracted from the Wikipedia article. Verify against the linked source before quoting.

Other recordings sharing era, vocalist, writer, key, studio, or producer with this one. Higher scores indicate stronger overlap on documented attributes.

• Little Child (score 13)
• There's a Place (score 13)
• A Hard Day's Night (score 11)
• Baby's in Black (score 11)
• Eight Days a Week (score 11)
• From Me to You (score 11)
• I Want to Hold Your Hand (score 11)
• I'll Get You (score 11)