Twist and Shout

(Medley/Russell)

Quick Facts

Lead Vocal	John
Recorded	Feb 1963
Length	2:32
Key	D
Noted Takes	2
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Norman Smith

Originally released on

Please Please Me (LP)

Parlophone — PMC 1202

Find on Amazon

Story

"Twist and Shout" is a 1961 song written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns. It was originally recorded by The Top Notes, but it did not become a hit in the record charts until it was reworked by the Isley Brothers for their album Twist & Shout in 1962. The song has been covered by several artists, including the Beatles, Salt-N-Pepa, and Chaka Demus & Pliers, who experienced chart success with their versions. [Wikipedia]

Twist and Shout is a song by The Beatles, written by Medley–Russell and led on vocal by John Lennon. Album closer; cut last in one take with John's voice shredded by a cold. Within the catalogue, its cover thread connects it to Anna (Go to Him), Chains, Boys; its one-take thread connects it to Rock and Roll Music, Long Tall Sally; its vocal-shred thread connects it to Oh! Darling. Originally recorded by The Top Notes and a hit for Joey Dee and the Starliters in 1962, 'Twist and Shout' was recorded 11 February 1963 with John Lennon providing a raw, high-energy vocal that captured the song's rhythm-and-blues origins. The track's immediacy and Lennon's shouted phrasing became one of the group's most recognizable concert performances, establishing the song as a centerpiece of early Beatlemania live shows (Lewisohn 1988, p.27).

The session work falls within the band's Beatlemania (1962–1964) period, recorded 11 Feb 1963 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. George Martin produced; Norman Smith engineered. For session-by-session detail, see Mark Lewisohn's account on p.11 of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (excerpt below). Take 1 was selected for the album, a rarity suggesting either a first-take performance of exceptional quality or the decision to preserve the energy of an unrehearsed, spontaneous studio approach. John Lennon's vocal, delivered at full volume in the studio, likely strained his voice for subsequent takes; the decision to use the first attempt may reflect pragmatic engineering rather than accidental excellence. George Martin's sparse arrangement kept focus on the vocal and tight four-piece backing (Lewisohn 1988, p.27).

They actually used to have to come to work in ties and suits and white coats which is lovely, like another age! But you listen to the early Beatle recordings, you listen to 'Twist And Shout', it's no less powerful than your current Curiosity Killed The…— Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p.11

What's distinctive

One of the canon’s 23 cover versions, led by John’s most famous vocal performance. Recorded approximately 13 of 67 into the Beatlemania (1962–1964) sessions. Carries the rare tag ‘vocal-shred’ — shared with only one other song. Take count: 2 — cut at the very end of the album-in-a-day marathon, take 1 the released master; take 2 was complete but John’s cold-shredded voice “had gone,” so there was no third (the pre-V12-C “16” had no documentary basis).¹

Recording

Cut last, as the final act of the album-in-a-day. Almost everything remarkable about Twist and Shout follows from one scheduling decision: it was recorded as the very last song of the marathon 11 February 1963 session that produced the whole Please Please Me album in a single day. George Martin had calculated that — “provided their voices could hold out” — the group could just about cut ten tracks in under ten hours: “there can scarcely have been 585 more productive minutes in the history of recorded music.” The voices very nearly did not hold out, and the cost was paid almost entirely by John Lennon’s, on this one song.¹
A cold, a glass of Zubes, and one usable shot. Lennon had a heavy cold, audible in his between-takes chatter. By about 10pm one song remained; over coffee in the canteen “someone suggested they do ‘Twist And Shout’… but by this time all their throats were tired and sore… John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right first time.” Lennon sucked a couple more Zubes, gargled with milk, and they went for it. “What John sang on that first take is what you hear today on record… two-and-a-half minutes of Lennon shredding his vocal cords to bits.”¹
The one-take legend, corrected. The lasting myth — a single, miraculous one-shot take — is half right. “Popular myth has the Beatles performing only one take of the song, but infallible studio documentation… proves that this is not so. They did two, and the second one was complete, not a false start or a breakdown.” George Martin: “I did try a second take of ‘Twist And Shout’ but John’s voice had gone.” Two documented takes, then; take 1 is the released master, take 2 a complete but vocally spent attempt that confirmed there would be no third.¹

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road — Studio Two (recording, 11 Feb 1963, 7.30–10.45pm); Studio One control room (mono + stereo mix, 25 Feb 1963)¹
Tape machine	“Twin-Track” (a converted BTR3 stereo machine) — two-track, predating four-track at Abbey Road; uniquely among the album’s songs it was recorded only to Twin-Track and not the parallel Delta-Mono machine; NOT the Studer J37²
Console	REDD valve desk (Studio Two control room, REDD.37 era)
Microphones	Neumann U47, U48; AKG D19 (drums); STC 4038 (overheads)
Outboard / effects	EMI RS114 valve limiter (Lennon’s vocal chain); EMT 140 plate reverb²
Guitars	Rickenbacker 325 (Lennon), Gretsch Country Gent / Tennessean (Harrison), Höfner 500/1 violin bass (McCartney), Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl kit (Starr)
Amplifiers	Vox AC30 (TB & non-Top-Boost variants)

Recording Timeline

11 February 1963 (Mon) — recording, takes 1–2 (take 1 the master), EMI Studio Two, 7.30–10.45pm — the third and final session of the album marathon. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Richard Langham. Take 1 is the released performance; take 2 was complete “not a false start or a breakdown” but vocally spent. Uniquely among the day’s songs it was “recorded only to Twin-Track and not Delta-Mono.”^1,2
25 February 1963 (Mon) — mono + stereo remix from take 1, EMI Studio One control room — 10.00am–1.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. Both the mono and the stereo masters were mixed the same session from take 1 — the source of every commercial issue; with no alternate studio take, there was no later remix.¹
22 March 1963 — UK album Please Please Me (Parlophone PMC 1202 mono / PCS 3042 stereo) — the song closes side two of the debut LP, carrying the 25 February mono and stereo masters.¹
12 July 1963 — UK EP Twist and Shout (Parlophone GEP 8882, mono) — the song lent its name to a four-track EP led by “Twist And Shout” / “A Taste Of Honey,” carrying the 1963 mono master.¹

What John sang on that first take is what you hear today on record, arguably the most stunning rock and roll vocal and instrumental performance of all time; two-and-a-half minutes of Lennon shredding his vocal cords to bits, audibly ending with a hefty sigh cum groan of relief.— Mark Lewisohn¹

Studio Notes

Two takes, not one — the documented record corrects the myth. “Popular myth has the Beatles performing only one take of the song, but infallible studio documentation… proves that this is not so. They did two, and the second one was complete, not a false start or a breakdown.” Take two failed not for a flubbed note but because “John’s voice had gone” (George Martin); take one is the keeper.¹
A live vocal, audible in the leakage. Because Lennon sang with the band in the room rather than overdubbing later, his vocal track carries ambient drum and guitar bleed; Kehew & Ryan cite “the vocal track of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ or ‘Twist and Shout’” as the example of such leakage — engineering evidence that the famous scream was a genuine live performance.²
Recorded only to Twin-Track, not Delta-Mono. Most Please Please Me tracks were taped simultaneously to a Twin-Track machine and a separate mono (“Delta-Mono”) machine, but “a separate ‘Twist and Shout’ was recorded only to Twin-Track and not Delta-Mono” — suggesting the team were “too pressed for time at the end of the session to bother with the Delta-Mono mix, or that they assumed they would have to add to the song or re-record the vocal.”²
Twin-Track on a converted BTR3 — two-track, before four-track. The song predates four-track at Abbey Road; it was cut two-track. “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” — backing on one track, vocals on the other.²
The RS114 valve limiter on the vocal. “Norman Smith made extensive use of the RS114 limiter on the Beatles’ early albums and singles,” and Kehew & Ryan name “the vocals on ‘She Loves You’, ‘Twist and Shout’, ‘And I Love Her’, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’” among its results. The unit was notoriously temperamental — “five balancing adjustments to make, and fourteen valve readings to verify” before use.²
One take, two masters; no later remix. Both the mono and stereo masters were mixed on 25 February 1963 from take one. There is no studio remake and no later remix: every commercial issue — the 1963 LP and EP, the 1987 mono CD, the 2009 stereo and mono remasters, the 2014 mono vinyl — is a master or remaster of that one take-1 performance, never a new mix.¹
“Stripped to the waist” — the room’s reaction, and the album-closer placement. Observer Cris Neal recalled Lennon “stripped to the waist to do this most amazingly raucous vocal”; George Martin marvelled, “the longer we go on the better they get.” Sequenced last on Please Please Me, the side-two finale mirrors its session role — the most physically extreme performance of the day placed at the album’s climax.¹

Releases

11 February 1963 — recording, takes 1–2 (take 1 the master), Studio Two — the third and final session of the album marathon. Take one is the released performance; take two complete but vocally spent. Recorded only to Twin-Track, not Delta-Mono.^1,2
25 February 1963 mono + stereo remix (from take 1) — both the released mono and stereo masters were mixed the same Studio One control-room session from take one — the source of every commercial issue of the song.¹
1963 UK mono & stereo LP — Please Please Me (22 March 1963, Parlophone PMC 1202 mono / PCS 3042 stereo) — the side-two closer, carrying the 25 February masters.¹
1963 UK EP — Twist and Shout (12 July 1963, Parlophone GEP 8882, mono) — the song lent its name to a four-track EP led by “Twist And Shout” / “A Taste Of Honey,” carrying the 1963 mono master.¹
US releases (1964–65) — Vee-Jay / Tollie / Capitol (US market, outside the UK canon) — in America the track appeared on Vee-Jay’s Introducing… The Beatles and as a Tollie single, and later on Capitol’s The Early Beatles (Capitol T-2309 mono / ST-2309 stereo, 22 March 1965). Per §1, the mounted sources do not detail the US disc-cutting chain; the US pressings derive from copy tapes of the 1963 masters.¹
1987 mono CD — Please Please Me (Parlophone CDP 7 46435 2, mono) — the album’s first compact-disc issue was mono-only; the digital debut therefore carried the 1963 mono mix (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 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 cut from the 1963 mono master. Same §1 caveat.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 11, 24, 26, 28, 200–201.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 141, 351, 360, 368.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Twist and Shout?

“Twist and Shout” is a cover, written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns (credited Medley–Russell); the Beatles' version is not a Lennon–McCartney composition.

Who sings lead on Twist and Shout?

The lead vocal on “Twist and Shout” is by John Lennon.

When was Twist and Shout recorded?

“Twist and Shout” was recorded on 11 February 1963 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road — the last song of the day-long Please Please Me album session.¹

How many takes did Twist and Shout require?

Two takes: take 1 is the released master; take 2 was complete but John's cold-shredded voice had gone, so there was no third. The earlier “16 takes” had no documentary basis.¹

On this page

Story

What's distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked