Rain

Believe it or not, this is a song that somehow managed to fall through the cracks for me.  I do not recall even hearing this B-side when it was originally released in May of 1966; it must not have gotten much airplay, though it did hit number twenty-three on the Billboard chart.  I had already stopped buying many singles by the Beatles once I noticed that Capitol Records was in the habit of putting most - but not all - songs from singles onto albums shortly after their initial release.  Thus, I did not purchase a copy of Paperback Writer.  It was only several years later when a friend gave me some singles that he no longer wanted (yes, really!) that I discovered this mind-bending B-side.

The group began work on this composition by Lennon on the evening of April 14th, 1966, after spending the afternoon session finishing up the A-side Paperback Writer.  They only needed five takes of the backing track of Rain before arriving at the master.  This master was achieved by recording the group playing at a quicker tempo than what we know, then slowing the tape down to create a different aural texture.  The opposite was done with John's lead vocal, speeding it up on playback to make it sound slightly faster.

Much has been made over the years of the drumming on the track, most notably by Ringo himself.  Max Weinberg of the E Street Band interviewed him when compiling his book The Big Beat about drummers and their work, and Ringo told him, "I know me and I know my playing, and then there's Rain."  He proudly considers it to be the best of his career.

What happened at the end of this day's work is the stuff of legend.  As was customary at the time, John was given a tape of the track to take home, so he could listen to it and decide what more might be added.  He mistakenly played the tape backwards and was mesmerized.  (Contrary to this version, producer George Martin naturally knew that voices and instruments sounded different when played backwards, and claimed that he made this known to John.) 

At any rate, the group reconvened two days later on April 16th, with John suggesting that the entire track be played backwards.  Martin appeased him by reversing his lead vocal during the final verse as the song fades out.  Among the many overdubs added on this day were tambourine from Ringo, backing vocals by Paul and George, and double-tracking of John's vocal in the refrains.  One major overdub was of Paul's bass, replacing his bass line from the backing track in the new and improved manner that they had used for the first time only days earlier on Paperback Writer.  Before the session ended, the song was mixed for mono and ready for release.

As it turned out, neither side of the single appeared on the August 1966 album Revolver, nor on the US compilation album Yesterday...and Today.  It was not until the end of the group's career, when new manager Allen Klein struck a deal with Capitol allowing that company to assemble a compilation entitled Hey Jude, that the song made it onto an album.  For this February 1970 release, Rain was finally mixed into stereo.  This stereo version was also used when the group's catalog was issued on CD for the first time in 1988, on the collection Past Masters Volume Two.

Promotional films and videos were made for both sides of the single, with Michael Lindsey-Hogg directing.  On May 19th, 1966, a color performance video of Rain was shot specifically for the Ed Sullivan Show, then a similar black and white video was made for British television.  The next day, May 20th, a color film was produced in the gardens of Chiswick House.  Ringo gets the most exposure here right from the top as he walks toward the camera coming from an archway featuring a sign which reads "Way Out."  This film, as well as a re-edited version of the black and white video, can be viewed on the excellent collection 1+.

Though they never played the song live, the Beatles did make a rare live TV appearance on Top of the Pops on June 16th, 1966, miming to both sides of their latest single.  

The song has only gained in stature over the years, even serving as the title of a long-running touring and Broadway show - Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles.

P.S. I Love You

The music world knows that Love Me Do was the first A-side released by the Beatles but, for a short time, P.S. I Love You was considered for that all-important position, a move which would have given the public a very different impression of the unknown band from Liverpool.  McCartney's brisk crooner is a more sophisticated composition than the raw, bluesy Love Me Do, and Andy White's drumming grounds it firmly in an old-fashioned style, far removed from the rock and roll image that the Beatles were hoping to establish for themselves.

In May of 1962, John, Paul, George and Pete were in the midst of their third stint in Hamburg, West Germany, when they received a telegram from manager Brian Epstein telling them that he had secured a recording contract for them from EMI, and that they should begin rehearsing new material.  This is what prompted McCartney to compose this number, starting with the lyrics in the form of a letter to a faraway love.

The boys did, indeed, rehearse this new composition, and they had it ready when they reported to Abbey Road Studios for the very first time on June 6th.  It was among the four songs that they recorded on this date, yet it has apparently never surfaced, even on bootlegs.  Too bad.  Like the recordings of Besame Mucho and Love Me Do from this session that are available on Anthology 1, it would be fascinating to hear this earliest version with Pete Best on drums.

They did not return to Abbey Road Studios until September 4th, with new drummer Ringo Starr now in the group.  Producer Ron Richards worked with them on several songs - one of them being P.S. I Love You - before the recording session was scheduled to begin.  Again, we do not know what the arrangement sounded like with Ringo on drums, because the song was not chosen for further work on that day.

One week later, on September 11th, they were summoned back down to London for yet another attempt at finishing off their first single.  They were all taken aback when they saw that drummer Andy White had been brought in for the session.  Ron Richards produced the recordings on this day, and he allowed Ringo to play maracas alongside White, which smoothed over the situation somewhat.  Ten takes were recorded before the song was perfected, and everyone was so happy with the result that talk turned to making it the A-side.  However, Richards knew that another song of the same name had been released in recent years, plus principal producer George Martin was now favoring Love Me Do, so P.S. I Love You would have to be the B-side.

When the song was added to the album Please Please Me, a mock stereo mix was prepared, with treble in one channel and bass frequencies on the other.  In America, the song first appeared on early copies of the VeeJay album Introducing...the Beatles, but it was soon removed due to legal complications.  Once a settlement was reached between VeeJay and Capitol Records, VeeJay released it as the B-side to Love Me Do on the small Tollie label in April of 1964.  The American appetite for anything by the Beatles was so strong at this time that P.S. I Love You actually reached number ten on the Billboard chart.

In the UK, the song appeared on the EP All My Loving.  Capitol finally released it in the US in March of 1965 on the album The Early Beatles.  And P.S. I Love You closes out the 1977 compilation album Love Songs.

Though the Beatles heavily promoted both sides of many of their later singles, such was not the case with their first, nor was this B-side featured much in their live act.  They did play the song on BBC Radio on three occasions.  The third, from June of 1963 for their program Pop Go the Beatles, can be heard on On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2.  Ringo does a nice job of recreating Andy White's drumming style.  And, unlike on the record, George finishes the performance with a strummed guitar chord.  This may have been the final time they ever played the tune. 

Polythene Pam

This odd little character sketch by Lennon will always be paired with Mean Mr. Mustard for multiple reasons.  They were both written in India in early 1968, they were both overlooked for the "White Album" even though demos for both were recorded before sessions for that album commenced, they were both revived and sequenced back-to-back in the big medley on side two of Abbey Road, and they were both uncharacteristic pieces for Lennon as a composer.

There were a few possible inspirations for Lennon's portrait of the kinky Polythene Pam according to Steve Turner in his book A Hard Day's Write.  The question for me is why would either an old polythene-eating fan from Liverpool or a woman from a one-night stand involving beat poet Royston Ellis even come to mind to Lennon as he was studying Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh?  And why would he then feel compelled to write such a song?

It was previewed at George Harrison's house in May of '68 when the Beatles met to record demos of the many songs they had written during their time in India.  John double-tracked both his acoustic guitar and his vocals, with a few variations from the finished lyrics we know.  As the song only consists of two verses, he repeats them one and a half times before concluding with an "Amen."

When McCartney came up with the idea for a medley of mostly unfinished song snippets for Abbey Road, Lennon offered up this tune.  They decided beforehand that this song would be linked to McCartney's She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, and that they would be recorded as one.  With John on guide vocal and acoustic guitar, George on electric guitar, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums, it required thirty-nine takes for the band to get the backing track perfected on July 25th, 1969.  Even then, John was unhappy with Ringo's drumming on the track, sarcastically remarking at one point that it sounded like Dave Clark.

Ringo continued working on it, however, with Paul's assistance, later telling John that he felt he finally got it right, but John brushed him off, saying that Ringo could do it as an overdub if he wanted, but they weren't going to play the entire track again.  This rather shoddy treatment of Ringo is related by engineer Geoff Emerick in his book Here, There and Everywhere.  In addition to Ringo's drum overdub, Paul re-recorded his bass part and John added his lead vocal line to the master take.

They returned to this section of the medley three days later, on July 28th.  Ringo added tambourine, maracas and cowbell, George overdubbed more electric guitar, and John re-recorded his lead vocal.  Paul also reportedly added acoustic and electric piano parts, but I am not able to pick these out in the mix.  The final session for the song, on July 30th, involved John, Paul and George adding backing vocals to both Polythene Pam and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.

Despite John's treatment of Ringo at the initial session for the song, Geoff Emerick felt that the group was playing and sounding like the Beatles of old, and he said so to producer George Martin in the privacy of the control room.  Martin's response was, "You're right.  You'd never guess that the four of them actually can't stand each other."     

Please Please Me

In an alternate reality, The Beatles give in to producer George Martin and release the song of his choosing as their second single.  They have a brief but undistinguished career, are remembered fondly by some Britons as a one-hit wonder, and the face of popular music over the last fifty-plus years is dramatically different from what we have known it to be.  This easily could have come to pass - except for one song.

Yes, it's fairly safe to assert that without the song Please Please Me we never would have heard of the Beatles.  Their second single had to be a breakout hit for the Parlophone label to have any faith in them and allow them to record an album, or even a follow-up single.  But the fact that it improbably shot up to number one only sped up the process of their meteoric rise to national fame.  (And it was a number one.  Read any accounts from the time in early 1963.  None of them say otherwise.  Only retroactively has it lost that claim due to the fact that it stalled at number two on one of the four accepted British charts.)

John Lennon wrote the song shortly after the group had its first meeting with George Martin on June 6th, 1962.  He told them that they would have to come up with better material than what they had presented on that day if they hoped to record any of their own compositions.  Lennon conceived it as a bluesy Roy Orbison number, with a play on the word please inspired by a 1932 Bing Crosby hit entitled Please, which contained the line "please lend a little ear to my pleas."

The Beatles reported to EMI Studios on September 4th, 1962 to record the Mitch Murray composition How Do You Do It, which Martin had picked to be the A-side of their first single.  The B-side would be chosen from their own material.  Martin listened to Lennon's song, but felt it was too slow and far too short.  While he did tell them to speed up the tempo and offered some tips for a better arrangement, he wasted little time on the number, choosing to record Love Me Do for the B-side.

As luck would have it, there were some issues with the publishing companies regarding How Do You Do It, so the band returned to London a week later on September 11th to make another recording.  Love Me Do would now be the A-side of the single, but Martin had been unhappy with Ringo's drumming on the track, so he brought in session drummer Andy White for a remake.  A new B-side would have to be recorded, as well, and Lennon took the opportunity to push for Please Please Me again after they had recorded McCartney's P.S. I Love You.  The band had taken Martin's notes from the previous week and rehearsed the song with the new tempo and arrangement.  Martin felt that it still wasn't quite right, but they did record it with Andy White on drums, as can be heard on Anthology 1.  George plays the distinctive riff on guitar a bit unsteadily, and White has a little drum break in the bridge, but otherwise it is close to the finished product.  Martin wisely passed on it at the time, saving it from being buried as the group's first B-side.

After the moderate success of Love Me Do, Martin was determined that the September 4th recording of How Do You Do It would be the group's second single, but Lennon and McCartney were now equally determined that only their own compositions should be released as singles.  On November 26th, Martin let the Beatles have another shot at Please Please Me.  Wanting to establish a signature sound for the group, Martin suggested that John should play the song's distinctive riff on harmonica as an overdub in addition to George playing it on guitar.  It took eighteen takes before the producer made his legendary announcement, "Gentlemen, you've just made your first number one."

While the harmonica does provide a link back to Love Me Do, this performance is already miles ahead of that relatively tame number.  The excitement is palpable from the outset with the brisk tempo, Paul's pulsing bass line, and John's building call-and-response vocal section with Paul and George.  A confident Ringo is back behind his drumkit with Martin's blessing, faithfully reproducing much of Andy White's work from the September 11th recording.

With manager Brian Epstein sitting in his office, music publisher Dick James got the group booked on the television program Thank Your Lucky Stars by playing the song to that show's producer over the telephone.  That appearance occurred in January of 1963, within the first week of the single's release, and snowed-in Britons gathered around their TV sets to watch a little-known group from the North mime to their latest record.  As a result, sales immediately took off, the group was rushed into the studio a month later to record their first album, and the rest, as they say, is history.

(In this shot from that appearance, note the old logo on Ringo's drumkit, before the iconic lettering had been designed in a London music shop at Epstein's request.)

As the big hit, it naturally became the title song of their first LP, and later appeared on the EP The Beatles' Hits.  It was their first song to be released in the US, although the small VeeJay label did little to promote it outside of Chicago.  When Beatlemania crossed the Atlantic a year later, VeeJay rereleased it and it went to number three on the Billboard chart.  It also appeared on the second iteration of the VeeJay album Introducing...the Beatles, and Capitol Records issued it on the album The Early Beatles in 1965.

They promoted the song heavily in the first half of 1963 during their relentless schedule of live shows and television appearances.  Please Please Me was also featured on twelve BBC radio broadcasts.  The eleventh can be heard on On Air - Live at the BBC Volume Two from their own program Pop Go the Beatles.  Note that George plays the distinctive riff alone on guitar.  John apparently did not attempt to play harmonica whenever the group performed the song.

Though the song was a lock for the Red Album in 1973, its status as a number one was already coming into question by 1982, keeping it off of 20 Greatest Hits, and, sadly, off of the collection 1 in 2000.  It did, however, make it onto the second DVD of the video collection 1+, featuring their performance of the song for their third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was actually recorded in the afternoon before their first appearance on that show on February 9th, 1964.  The tempo on this occasion is even faster than on the record, perhaps driven by the excitement of the moment.

Please Please Me was finally retired after being played as part of a medley of the group's hits for their television special Around the Beatles in mid '64.