The Beatles - Please Please Me (1963)

It wasn't supposed to be a big deal. In 1963, the Beatles had issued a single, "Please Please Me," that topped the charts in three of the four British music weekly magazine charts (though it only got up to number two in the fourth, the Record Retailer chart now accepted as the standard in the U.K. just as the Billboard singles chart is the standard in the U.S.). They were doing what every British pop artist did at the time - capitalize on a number one single by quickly putting out an album of the same name, which had primarily been just a way to get the kids to buy the same song twice. Nobody cared to listen to these LPs' other tracks, most of which were mediocre covers of old pop standards. But who cared, as long as the kids would buy anything? The problem was, the Beatles had been among those kids when they were honing their skills as rock and roll musicians in Liverpool, and they'd bought many albums with one good song and lots of rubbish. The band and their producer George Martin had different ideas.

Released in Britain fifty years ago this past Friday (on March 22, 1963), Please Please Me is a revolutionary album, as revolutionary as any of the other albums the Beatles would release in their short but incredible partnership. It was an album that fans could actually listen to, from start to finish, and find as many surprises on as they did with the group's first two singles, the primitive but earnest "Love Me Do" (included on this album) and the exuberant, direct title song. George Harrison cuts his way through crisp lead guitar lines, while Ringo Starr provides a backbeat that's more workmanlike than flashy in the Buddy Rich style. John Lennon and Paul McCartney drive the rhythm hard with their respective combination of rhythm guitar and bass, and their vocals are as unencumbered as their material.

And what material! Lennon and McCartney - or McCartney and Lennon, as they were credited here - were already astonishing listeners with the fact that they wrote their own songs, from the opening dance number "I Saw Her Standing There," with its relentless sexual energy, to carefully constructed ballads like "P.S. I Love You" (the B-side of "Love Me Do"), as well as personal laments like "Misery" and consciousness-expanding rockers like "There's a Place." But the energy and passion to which the Beatles bring to the covers on this record are just as big a statement; the exuberance they bring to the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout" and the heavy R&B feel they command on Arthur Alexander's "Anna (Go To Him)" show their ability to turn a rock and roll standard into a song of their own.

Please Please Me, excepting the four songs comprising their first two singles, was recorded in ten hours during a marathon recording session at a time when the Beatles were still a live band with local audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg; the record is essentially their stage act from Liverpool's Cavern. George Martin simply let the Beatles do what they did best - play live (there were few overdubs), with the energy making up for the rough, unfinished nature of the band. Please Please Me captures the a band discovering the possibilities of their music but still living in the moment, offering up a sense of immediacy and excitement; it's so innocent and (for the most part) joyous. For those of us who didn't catch them live before they became famous (i.e., most of us), this is as close an we'll ever come to the experience. But with two guitars, a bass and a drum kit, with recording equipment considered primitive by today's standards (and maybe even by the standards of the time in America), the Beatles changed the trajectory of popular music and would soon take control of it. Not bad for an album that only cost £400 (then the equivalent of US$1,000) to make.