Originally published October 2012, revised May 2016.
Rolling Stone rated Please Please Me the 39th best album of all time.
It wouldn’t even make my Top 10 Debut Album List if I had one.
I’m such a bitch.
The inflated rating is a classic example of Baby Boomers allowing their devotion to the Beatles to distort the process of assessment. The postwar generation has a marked tendency to view anything that happened to them while they were growing up to possess greater historical significance than anything that happened in any other generation. Since the music on Please Please Me is generally insignificant, it would appear that the evaluators at Rolling Stone placed it in such a lofty position because of their perception of its historical significance.
They did so while ignoring the evidence. Please Please Me had virtually no impact outside the borders of the United Kingdom at the time of its initial release. The album was altered and repackaged as Introducing the Beatles in the United States by Vee-Jay Records, but due to legal hassles, wasn’t released until nearly a year after its British release—a few weeks after the appearance of Meet the Beatles, the chopped-up American version of With the Beatles.
In other words, Please Please Me played a minor role in what was the most important historical event in the early years of the Beatles: the conquest of America. What made that possible was the combination of Ed Sullivan, a slew of singles (especially “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You”), Brian Epstein’s marketing strategy, the Beatles’ charm and wit during their first press conference, and the album Meet the Beatles. In the buying frenzy that followed the appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, when nearly everything the Beatles released shot to #1, Introducing the Beatles was the rare exception: it peaked at #2 (behind Meet the Beatles) and stayed there.
Fact: If the Beatles hadn’t conquered America, they would have remained a uniquely British novelty, very much like Cliff Richard (whose name fails to ring a bell with the vast majority of Americans). Fact: If the Beatles hadn’t conquered America, its citizenry would never have experienced The British Invasion in full force, an event that made it perfectly normal for British artists to appear regularly on AM station rotations. It’s not an understatement to say that the Beatles’ conquest of America made possible the extraordinary development of rock ‘n’ roll we saw in the 1960s, for America is the center of the universe when it comes to money and media reach. And the album that contributed most to that blessed event was Meet the Beatles, not Please Please Me.
Fortunately, the few people who still bother to read Rolling Stone seem to think their ratings are ludicrous, so only true Beatle fanatics will object to the following review.
I do like the album very much. Well, most of it, anyway. Except for “Boys” and “Twist and Shout,” the cover songs are a waste of good vinyl and two-track tape. The McCartney-Lennon songwriting duo (yes, the names were reversed) hasn’t quite found their stride. “P. S. I Love You,” “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” and “Ask Me Why” could have been written by any songsmith locked up in the Brill Building.
What I like is the energy of the album. Sometimes they sound a little nervous and uncertain, but when they forget about the strange and sterile studio and start channeling Cavern club energy, you almost wish that George Martin’s original thought—to record their stage show in the Cavern—would have come to fruition.
“I Saw Her Standing There” is a great opener, right from the opening countdown. Do you know that the geniuses at Vee-Jay Records cut the countdown from the record because they felt it was superfluous? It would be interesting for a forensic accountant to analyze Vee-Jay’s books to figure out how much money they saved with that travesty. The countdown makes this sucker go, for fuck’s sake! Thank God they didn’t mess with the falsetto crescendos, where time seems to freeze in a glorious display of raw energy.
It was also good to follow up that song with “Misery,” if only just to show that the band had range and an exceptional gift for harmonic touches. Those tiny moments where John and Paul harmonize on the word “misery” are absolutely delightful. The mood sinks with two pedestrian covers of “Anna (Go to Him)” and “Chains,” but Ringo gets us back in the groove with a strong lead vocal on “Boys.” The three covers do demonstrate something curious about the Beatles: unlike the other British Invasion bands (The Kinks, The Stones, The Yardbirds, The Animals), the Beatles did not have a foundation in the blues. The Beatles did covers of soul singers and African-American girl groups but never really ventured into blues territory until much later (with the perfectly dreadful “Yer Blues.”) I point this out because although the Beatles had a great rhythm section, I consider very few of their songs sexy, and the only Beatles song I ever place on my fuck-time playlists is “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” The Beatles’ energy was more exuberance than eroticism . . . at least for me. I certainly would not have been one of the screamers—I would have been the one trying to get all those little girls to shut the fuck up so I could hear the fucking band!
“Ask Me Why” comes next, an original that only confirms that McCartney-Lennon had a long way to go to become a great songwriting team. But thanks to the staid George Martin’s wise advice to speed it up and the application of the harmonic technique from the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown,” “Please Please Me” is a tremendous song that makes me wish I’d hit my teenage years in 1960’s Britain instead of 1990’s America because it was the song that kicked off the amazing phenomenon we know as Beatlemania.
The only noteworthy aspect of “Love Me Do” is that it was the Beatles’ first single and I’m surprised that it made it into the Top 20. It’s bo-ring. As is “P. S. I Love You,” a song very reminiscent of something Brian Hyland might have done. We get another meh Shirelles cover with “Baby It’s You,” followed by the obligatory George vocal, the horribly sweet “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” The Beatles’ version of “A Taste of Honey” doesn’t even rank with Herb Alpert’s.
“There’s a Place” is an interesting little piece, sort of thematically reminiscent of the Beach Boys’ “In My Room,” but with a significant difference. The Beach Boys’ retreat is the physical space of a teen bedroom in Southern California in the 1960s, whereas the less-affluent Beatles chose to retreat into the mind. They describe the experience as timeless, though in the somewhat awkward language of the unseasoned songwriter (“And it’s my mind/And there’s no time/When I’m alone”). The harmonies overshadow the melody, a phenomenon that was common in early Beatles songs. As a listener who wants to sing along, this means you often have a hard time figuring out when to follow Lennon and when to follow McCartney. You’ll experience this on “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Baby’s in Black,” “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” and more. I think this gives Beatle songs a huge advantage for those who want to accompany them in the morning shower: you have multiple access points and lower chances of hitting a wrong note. And since both the melodic and harmonic lines are usually strong, you can’t lose!
The album ends with Lennon’s heroics on “Twist and Shout.” While I appreciate what it took for him to sing this as well as he did with a bad cold (saved by milk, cough drops and cigarettes), and while the energy on the song is undeniable, people tend to rank the song too highly on the list of “The Best John Lennon Rock Vocals.” I’ll take his vocal on “Money” over “Twist and Shout” any day of the week and “Slow Down” as well. The layered harmonies are just as impressive and important to “Twist and Shout,” and it’s still one of the most flat-out exciting songs in the Beatle’s catalog.
The importance of Please Please Me is that it gave the Beatles more experience in the studio and more awareness of the possibilities of recording (as opposed to preparing songs for the stage). Lennon and McCartney still had a lot to learn about songwriting but they would prove to be quick studies. And though I don’t think Please Please Me is a great album in its own right, I appreciate it as the first chapter in a long novel. The characters have piqued my interest and I’m very curious to see where these boys will wind up.