Recording
The song was recorded at EMI Studios on 11 February 1963, as part of the marathon recording session that produced 10 of the 14 songs on Please Please Me. The Beatles were not present for the mixing session on 25 February 1963. It was not common practice for bands to be present at such sessions at that time.
On the album, the song starts with a rousing "One, two, three, four!" count-in by McCartney. Usually, these count-ins are edited off the final audio mix. However, record producer George Martin wanted to create the effect that the album was a live performance: "I had been up to the Cavern and I’d seen what they could do, I knew their repertoire, and I said 'Lets record every song you’ve got, come down to the studios and we’ll just whistle through them in a day'". Martin took the count-in from take 9, which was considered 'especially spirited' and spliced it onto take 1. Music journalist Richard Williams suggested that this dramatic introduction to their debut album was just as stirring as Elvis Presley's "Well, it's one for the money, two for the show…" on his opening track, "Blue Suede Shoes", for his debut album seven years earlier. In addition it also made the point that the Beatles were a performing band as, at that time, they opened their live set with this song. On the first American release of the song, issued on Vee Jay Records, the count was edited out—but the "Four!" is still audible.
The full take 9 version of the song appears on the Free as a Bird CD single as a B side, released for the first time.
Read more about this topic: I Saw Him Standing There
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)