Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
Catalogue Number: 82416
Barcode: 094638241614
Genre: Beat / Rock & Roll / Pop Rock
Label: Parlophone / Apple Corps / EMI / Capitol
Originally Released: 22 March 1963
Reissue Released: 12 November 2012
Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
Condition: New & Sealed
Description
Please Please Me is the debut studio album by The Beatles, released on 22 March 1963 on Parlophone, and one of the most consequential first albums in the history of recorded music. Produced by George Martin, it was recorded — almost in its entirety — in a single extraordinary session at EMI Studios, Abbey Road on 11 February 1963, running from 10am to just after 10pm. The Beatles had already recorded four songs for the album across two earlier sessions; the remaining ten were captured that day, with the session ending on Lennon's famously ferocious two-take performance of "Twist and Shout" — a take achieved only by handing him a box of Zubes throat lozenges between run-throughs, his voice nearly gone from nine hours of continuous recording. Martin is reported to have told the band at the session's close that he didn't know how they did it — the longer they worked, the better they got.
The album's 14 tracks — eight Lennon-McCartney originals and six carefully chosen covers — present the Beatles at the peak of their Hamburg and Cavern Club-forged live power: taut, joyful, and of fierce ensemble precision. The covers are a revealing document of the band's influences: the Shirelles' "Boys" (taken by Ringo), "Anna (Go to Him)" by Arthur Alexander, "Chains" by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, "Baby It's You" by Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Barney Williams, and Meredith Willson's "A Taste of Honey" — all delivered with an authority and commitment that few of their British contemporaries could match. The originals are, even at this early stage, astonishing: "I Saw Her Standing There" opens the album at full throttle; "There's a Place" anticipates the introspective writing of Rubber Soul; "Do You Want to Know a Secret" launched Billy J. Kramer's career before the Beatles had even released it themselves; and the title track "Please Please Me", already a chart-topper, remains one of the tightest pop records ever made. The album spent 30 consecutive weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart, a record that stood for years.
This reissue is part of the landmark 2012 Beatles Stereo Albums series — the first time the remastered catalogue was made available on vinyl individually and worldwide, following the 2012 limited-edition stereo box set. The lacquers were cut at Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee, using the non-limited 2009 24-bit digital masters sourced directly from the original analogue master tapes — the same remasters overseen by Guy Massey and Steve Rooke that Rolling Stone described as giving the catalogue more bass and greater rhythmic clarity than any previous pressing, with previously buried detail in the rhythm guitar and low-end now plainly audible. The digital files were cut to lacquer in chronological album order; Magee used the full 24-bit remasters rather than the 16-bit versions prepared for CD, and applied surgical EQ corrections to address inner-groove distortion and sibilance issues that affected the original pressings. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl and housed in a faithful replica of the original Parlophone sleeve.
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