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.
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.
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