Please Please Me

Story

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

• 11 September 1962 (Tue) — original slow “Orbison-like” attempt (rejected, never kept), EMI Studio Two — P: Ron Richards. E: Norman Smith. Attempted at the end of the session Richards produced in George Martin’s absence; the slow, “very dreary” ballad Martin judged “like a Roy Orbison number.” Because outtakes were not retained in 1962, the tape no longer exists.^1,2
• 26 November 1962 (Mon) — up-tempo re-make, takes 1–18, to both mono and Twin-Track, EMI Studio Two — 7.00–10.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. The re-make “restructured to George Martin’s specifications”; the basic track taped without harmonica, which was added as a tape-to-tape superimposition. “Including the harmonica edit pieces the song was recorded in 18 takes.” At the end Martin leaned into the talkback: “You’ve just made your first number one.”^1,2
• 30 November 1962 (Fri) — mono mix, EMI Studio Two control room — “Mono mixing: Please Please Me (from unknown take number).” This mix carries the harmonica intact and is the canonical record — the single (Parlophone 45-R 4983, 11 January 1963) and the mono LP.¹
• 11 January 1963 — UK single released (Parlophone 45-R 4983) — b/w Ask Me Why; it reached number one in the Melody Maker, NME and Disc charts (number two in Record Retailer).¹
• 25 February 1963 (Mon) — stereo mix from edit of takes 16, 17 and 18 (a reconstruction), EMI Studio Two control room — No stereo existed until the LP demanded one. Martin and Smith rebuilt the track “from takes 16, 17 and 18,” flying the harmonica back in from the mono single and splicing the mix section-by-section to defeat a tempo drift. It is the only version with John’s end-verse vocal slip and the chuckled “Come on,” and its ending is audibly out of sync. The stereo LP (Parlophone PCS 3042) followed on 26 April 1963.^1,2

Studio Notes

• 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.” Putting the harmonica on its own length of tape made it both possible and, later, perilously separable.^1,2
• 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”; for the re-make, “several takes were recorded to both mono and Twin-Track” simultaneously. The parallel capture is exactly why two divergent masters later existed to be mixed differently. “Twin-Track” itself was a converted stereo machine — “by changing its headstack, the stereo BTR3 machine could be converted into a ‘Twin-Track’ BTR3.”²
• The 1962 Studio Two control-room signal chain. The room was built around the valve REDD.37 console (eight inputs, four outputs, two echo sends and returns), 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. This is the chain that printed both Please Please Me masters.²
• 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.” The rhythm-left / vocals-right image of early Beatles stereo is an artefact of the mixer, not an aesthetic choice.²
• A stereo rebuilt from a lost master, with the harmonica flown in from the mono. 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 1962 master and harmonica edit pieces had been “misplaced or destroyed” (flagged as supposition). With the harmonica surviving only inside the mono single, the new twin-track take and the 1962 mono were each cued to the song’s start, marked with a Chinagraph pencil on separate machines, and run together “with fingers crossed” until they played back in sync.²
• A section-by-section splice, and its audible signature. Because the new take and the old mono “had been performed at slightly different tempos,” the mix “had to be created in separate sections which would later be spliced together.” The flaws are the fingerprints of the 1963 rebuild: “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), and the ending is “more than a little off” in sync (Kehew & Ryan).^1,2

Releases

• 11 September 1962 — the original “Orbison-like” slow version — recorded, never kept, no longer exists — Attempted at the end of the session Ron Richards produced (E: Norman Smith), this is the slow, “very dreary” ballad Martin judged “like a Roy Orbison number”; Kehew & Ryan log it as “an early rejected attempt… recorded to mono.” Because outtakes were not retained in 1962, this lineage survives only as testimony.^1,2
• 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,” recorded in Studio Two (7.00–10.00pm). The basic track was taped without harmonica, added afterward as a tape-to-tape superimposition; “including the harmonica edit pieces the song was recorded in 18 takes.” Every subsequent mix descends from this night.^1,2
• 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).” This mix carries the harmonica intact and is the canonical record; it led the second single, backed with Ask Me Why, and opens the closing run of side one on the mono Please Please Me LP (released 22 March 1963). Number one in the Melody Maker, NME and Disc charts; number two in Record Retailer.¹
• 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,” apparently because the 1962 master and harmonica edit pieces had been lost; the harmonica was flown in from the mono single and the mix spliced together section by section to defeat a tempo drift. It is the only version with John’s end-verse vocal slip and the chuckled “Come on,” and its ending is audibly out of sync. The stereo LP (PCS 3042) followed on 26 April 1963.^1,2
• 1987 mono CD — Please Please Me (Parlophone CDP 7 46435 2, mono) — the album’s first compact-disc issue was mono-only; the first four Beatles albums were issued on CD in mono.¹
• 2009 stereo remaster — Please Please Me (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI) — a 24-bit Abbey Road remaster of the 1963 stereo master (Allan Rouse / 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 1962 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 1962 mono master. Same §1 caveat.