Please Please Me

The Beatles’ first album.

We maybe tend to forget, or did not even know, that The Beatles did something bands and performers seem not to do these days. They served an apprenticeship.

With Peter Best at the drums, John, Paul and George and maybe Stuart Sutcliffe played for hour after hour in Hamburg. True they did performances in Liverpool too, at The Cavern, but it was in Germany they became a true band of accomplished musicians.

Modern performers have it easy. They use technology to correct their singing, have synthesisers to recreate sounds, maybe even use AI to create songs. Not The Beatles. They played and they played and they learned a craft.

They did have original songs, but they needed a huge repertoire, for their sanity, for variety. They were a covers band.

So, when it came to record their first album, recorded in one long day, this is what they had. Some original songs, lots of covers, the best of their stage act chosen for variety.

It was in some ways a live recording. Yes, they had multiple takes, probably edits, definitely rehearsals and overdubs, but it does give an idea of what the band, by then including Ringo, would have been playing.

It starts with Paul’s exuberant I Saw Her Standing There and finishes with John’s raucous Twist And Shout. George gets a sing as does Ringo. Fourteen tracks including six covers. Lots of harmonies, lots of shared lead vocals.

And it has that iconic cover, much reproduced and copied.

Actually, the covers tracks are the weakest. Anna (Go To Him), Boys, Baby It’s You, but they don’t outstay their welcome. At just over 30 minutes, the album zips along.

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Beatles For Sale

Having had the extravagances of A Hard Day’s Night, there was pressure on the band to have a new album out and capitalise on their success.

Beatles For Sale is often chosen as their least good album, and we understand why. It sounds and feels lazy, a filler album.

We’re back in the leftovers from the Hamburg days. fourteen tracks of which six are covers. Sound familiar? It will.

Of the original tracks there are some killers: Eight Days A Week, What You’re Doing and I’m A Loser. But there’s also the twee I’ll Follow The Sun, McCartney doing his show tune type stuff again.

But there are some weak songs here. Ringo struggles through Honey Don’t, Words Of Love sounds like a poor man’s Everly Brothers and the album closer, Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby sung by George, is awful.

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With The Beatles

The first album had been a big success, and a second was needed for the Xmas market in 1963.

The Beatles had been touring, performing on tv and busy.

The album followed the pattern of the first. Fourteen tracks, six covers and eight originals.

It’s a fine album. All My Loving is on here, Money (That’s What I Want), It Won’t Be Long are here and stand out. Boys, Till There Was You and Don’t Bother Me are not a good fit.

But it’s fine. And it sold in bucket loads.

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