Skip to main content

158. The Beatles: Please Please Me (1963)

One of the joys of being a music obsessive is discovering new bands, and recently, I've come across a doozy! They're called The Beatles, and they're not new, only new to me.

In my countless trips through the used CD and LP bins, I would occasionally come across one of their albums, but I always passed them by. I wasn't into obscure music, especially obscure music from the '60s. But one day, out of boredom, I picked up an album called Revolver. And like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill, it grew from there.

Now, having investigated their entire body of work, I undertake the mammoth task of reviewing every single one of their albums. My hope is to bring them a little bit more exposure than they received in their brief, prolific career.

The Beatles introduced themselves in 1963 with Please Please Me, a lively affair dominated by harmony and energy. The band display a surprising depth of talent, with all four taking turns on vocals and two of the band members showing promising compositional skills.

At a time when rock 'n' roll bands were certainly not expected to write their own songs, The Beatles must have made a bit of a fuss, considering 8 of the 14 songs on the album are the work of bassist Paul McCartney and guitarist John Lennon. These include the opener I Saw Her Standing There, which is built on surf guitar and innuendo. Did anyone blink in '63 when these young men sang about a girl, "She was just 17 / You know what I mean"? Is it bad that I don't know what they mean? In a similar vein is the title track, depending on your definition of the word "please." "Like I please you," indeed.

Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You are strong, if minor, ditties. And Do You Want To Know A Secret finds young lead guitarist George Harrison on charming nasal vocals.

As for the covers, the boys showed themselves to have excellent taste, and a deft ability to choose material that suited them. Drummer Ringo Starr takes the stage for a raucous interpretation of The Shirelles' hit Boys. Lennon attacks Arthur Alexander's Anna (Go To Him) with a passionate lead vocal. There are also versions of songs by some of the eras most talented songwriting duos, Goffin & King's Chains and Bachrach & David's Baby It's You.

The only misstep is an overly mannered A Taste Of Honey, which Paul McCartney approaches as though he were singing it in a film. However, that is quickly remedied by the album's closing number, a take on the Isley Brothers-popularized Twist And Shout. Lennon sounds like his vocal cords will tear apart at any second as the band stomps up a storm. The girls must have loved that one.

All in all, this was a promising debut, smartly produced by George Martin. Many bands show all of their cards on the first hand, but not The Beatles. One gets the idea they were just getting started, and they knew it themselves.

Grade: B+
Fave Song: Please Please Me

Stay tuned for more reviews of albums by this great lost band.

Comments

Allen Lulu said…
hysterical.
i, too, only know of the band through a couple albums and their greatest hits work. This should be fun.
Will you do a "12" for them as well?
9:05 PM
Paul V. Allen said…
I don't know if they have enough good songs to fill the "12 by" quota, but I'll consider it!
7:38 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honoring the Legacy of REO Speedwagon

I suppose I should have known the saga of REO Speedwagon couldn't end with a whimper. Before I get into the latest developments, here's a brief review of what's happened so far: In September 2024 came the announcement that the band was effectively breaking up at the end of the year. Apparently, frontman Kevin Cronin ruled that bassist Bruce Hall was no longer fit to continue touring following back surgery in summer 2024. Hall felt otherwise. Here we learned that REO had essentially become a three-way partnership between Cronin, Hall, and Doughty (who retired from touring in January 2023) following the departure of original members Alan Gratzer and Gary Richrath in 1988. Doughty sided with Hall, so Cronin was outvoted 2-1. No Bruce Hall, no REO Speedwagon. In December 2024 Cronin revealed he would continue performing REO Speedwagon songs with the two musicians who replaced Doughty and Hall, as well as Brian Hitt and Dave Amato (who replaced Gratzer and Richrath), with the on...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Unlikely Musical Life of Tom Kelly

You may not know the name Tom Kelly, but I guarantee that you've sung along to songs he wrote.  Born in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1952, Tom moved to Effingham, Illinois when he was 11 years old, just in time to witness the Beatles' debut on Ed Sullivan. Bit by the rock music bug, he joined a local band called the Trifaris, singing and playing bass. His family moved back to Indiana in '66. When Tom finished high school, he decided to go to college in Illinois, but his choice was made based on extracurricular factors, not academic ones. "I started at Eastern [Illinois University] because there was a band,” he told the Effingham Daily News in 2011, “Then I transferred to Southern [Illinois University] because there was another band.”  Champaign, Illinois  Continuing his college hopping, Tom headed closer to home to attend Purdue, and there he had a group called The Gaping Huggers, comprised of former fellow Trifari JC Marshall on drums, and University of Illino...
Post a Comment
Read more

Billy Joel: Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

We started at the end, and now we finish at the beginning.  Billy Joel's first solo album has a reputation as a sort of curiousity in his catalog. For one, it was quite hard to find for a long while, as it was initually released on a small label called Family Productions and was very spottily distributed. Another bit of intrigue was that the album was initially mastered at the wrong speed, with the main effect being Billy's vocals - which were already much higher-pitched than what we'd become used to - being pitched up to near Alvin and the Chipmunks levels. In 1983, with Billy at the height of his commerical success, the album was remixed, and given some overdubs and edits. That stands today as the "offical" version, though neither the fans nor Billy himself are happy with it. So I suppose a caveat to this entire review is that Cold Spring Harbor is not the album it was intended to be. That said, I'm going to attempt to take it at face value, using the widel...
Post a Comment
Read more