Please Please Me (song) - Composition

Composition

The Beatles had accomplished a modest debut success with "Love Me Do", but outside of Liverpool and Hamburg they were still practically unknown. Part of the problem was that the group were committed to begin what was to be their final Hamburg season just as "Love Me Do" entered the British charts, and so were unable to actively promote it on their home soil. Nonetheless, their producer, George Martin, felt it was a promising start and decided to go ahead with a second single. "Please Please Me" has a diverse history. George Martin has stated that the original version of this song was "rather dreary", was too slow and consequently had little prospect of being the big hit the band were looking for. Martin said: "I was still thinking that we should release their recording of "How Do You Do It?"", a previously taped Mitch Murray composition that Martin insisted the Beatles record which he had seriously considered as an alternative debut single instead of "Love Me Do". The group replied that they were only interested in recording their own material. McCartney said: "It was symptomatic of our group that we turned down "How Do You Do It?". Ringo Starr commented: "I remember us all being ready to stand up for the principle of, 'We have written these songs and we want to do them'". George Martin was ultimately sympathetic to their appeals, but said later: " would still have issued "How Do You Do It?" had they not persuaded me to listen to another version of "Please Please Me".

Lennon first conceived "Please Please Me" as a bluesy, slow tempo song. Lennon recalled: "I remember the day I wrote it, I heard Roy Orbison doing "Only the Lonely", or something. And I was also always intrigued by the words to a Bing Crosby song that went, 'Please lend a little ear to my pleas'. The double use of the word 'please'. So it was a combination of Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby". Originally it was vocally sparse, did not contain any harmonies or responses, nor did it have the scaled harmonica intro. George Martin claimed he first heard it at the "Love Me Do" re-make session on 11 September and, in his opinion, it "badly needed pepping up" and asked The Beatles to consider making major changes to it, including increasing its tempo. By the time it was brought back into the studio on 26 November 1962, its arrangement had been radically altered, and it took 18 takes to record what George Martin immediately predicted would be their first major hit. In fact, if the session notes and date attribution in the 1995 compilation "The Beatles Anthology 1" are correct, a faster-tempo version sans harmonica was recorded at Abbey Road on 11 September. That track (No. 24 on "Anthology 1") was believed to have been wiped until its rediscovery in 1994 during the "Anthology" production, and Anthology notes seem to indicate that it features session drummer Andy White instead of Ringo Starr. (The point is not addressed in the Mark Lewisohn-researched "Anthology" notes, although author Lewisohn's 1988 "The Beatles Recording Sessions" quotes session engineer Ron Richards as saying, "Ringo didn't play drums at all that evening.") However, recording technician Geoff Emerick later wrote that, following White's departure, he witnessed Beatles roadie Mal Evans set up Starr's kit and the group record "Please Please Me" with Starr on drums. The unexpected rediscovery of the 11 September up-tempo recording raises the questions of when the Orbison-inspired slow version was played for Martin and whether a tape of that version might also still exist in the Abbey Road vaults, inasmuch as Lewisohn's 1988 quote from Martin ("We didn't keep outtakes then )" was later contradicted. In a 2012 BBC interview, Andy White claimed that the drumming on the hit single was his:

"From the drum sound I can tell that I was on it, because it was a vastly different sound to Ringo's drumset at that time. This was before he got the Ludwig kit. Each drummer gets an individual sound, first of all by the way they tune the drums and then by the way they play the drums."

As recorded on 26 November, Lennon's harmonica playing features prominently and, similar to other early Beatles' compositions such as "Love Me Do" and "From Me to You", opens the song. McCartney and Lennon initially share the vocals with McCartney holding a high note while Lennon drops down through the scale, a ploy they learned from the Everly Brothers UK hit song "Cathy's Clown" (April 1960). McCartney said: "I did the trick of remaining on the high note while the melody cascaded down from it". Ringo Starr asserts himself, exorcising any lingering doubts from the "Love Me Do" sessions regarding his ability. Where "Love Me Do" had been arguably parochial, relying to a large extent on their existing home fans for support "Please Please Me" would be groundbreaking, especially as The Beatles were now back in the UK and able to appear on influential national television shows such as Thank Your Lucky Stars.

• If one were to accept Record Retailer's chart positions for "Please, Please Me" and "How Do You Do It?", then George Martin's instincts for a number one hit were absolutely correct, the former reaching number two and the latter number one for Gerry & The Pacemakers.

• There are three different mixes of the song, two in mono and one in stereo. The mono mix that appears on the single is not the same as the Please Please Me album mix, as extra echo was added to the LP version. A new mix was performed for the stereo version of the album, and on 25 February 1963 Martin made one created from original takes 16, 17 and 18. This stereo version has Lennon fluffing the final verse, causing him to sing 'come on' with a slight chuckle in his voice. Also different in the stereo mix is Harrison's lead guitar line before the final verse; rather than duplicating the overdubbed harmonica exactly as he had earlier in the song, Harrison drops down a fourth for the third note, rather than continuing down by stepwise motion.

• It was credited to "McCartney-Lennon", as were all other Lennon–McCartney originals on the Please Please Me album. The songwriting credit was changed to the more familiar "Lennon–McCartney" sequence for their second album, With the Beatles.