Released 1963
I Saw Her Standing There
Misery
Anna (Go To Him)
Chains
Boys
Ask Me Why
Please Please Me
Love Me Do
P.S. I Love You
Baby It's You
Do You Want To Know A Secret
A Taste Of Honey
There's A Place
Twist And Shout
Buddy Holly. Chuck Berry. Heard it all before, Brian. Guitars. On their way out, Brian. (fictitious record executive in the 1980 film, "Birth of the Beatles")
I never thought he said fuck, but it did sort of sound like it, didn't it? More importantly, what a great way to kick off the first song on your first album. Even better that the song that kicks off that first album is one thrilling ride. The great albums always let you know you're getting into something special within their first few seconds. Wham! If you'd never heard the group before, that opening 2:54 would let you know instantly you were into something good. Greil Marcus once referred to the Beatles as practicing "rock group dynamics so fluid and intelligent that for years they made nearly everything else on the radio sound faintly stupid." That concept is hard to articulate, but listen here and you can hear it. Paul's fluid, melodic and inventive bass (he's the most underrated bass player in rock), Ringo's in the pocket rapid-fire drums, George's razor-sharp licks and the way all of the above coalesces together. It's breathtaking. And it rocks. I challenge you to sit on your ass when Please Please Me kicks off. I dare you. I double-dog dare you.
Amazing to me now is how fully-formed they sound. In those just under three minutes, you can hear almost every card The Beatles had to play. This is not because The Beatles didn't have a full hand - it's because "I Saw Her Standing There" is that loaded. A hologram of their music.
What I hear, listening to Please Please Me, is the amazing mix, the lightning in a bottle that was The Beatles. Skill. Absolute mastery as musicians - never flashy, always tasteful, and always immaculate - and at the same time, never lacking an iota of depth or feeliing. They had the emotion, the passion, the feel that every raw roots and punk-rocker strives for and they could play and sing brilliantly by any standard. Not only had they mastered the playing, they'd mastered the genres. Listen to Please Please Me and you hear a band who've assimilated rockabilly, soul, r&b, doo-wop, fifties and sixties pop, folk music, girl groups, Buddy Holly, the Everly brothers, Motown, Arthur Alexander and showtunes - the whole of popular music of their era - and brewed these forms into a single, identifiable style that is always completely their own. The earliest Beatles records (i.e. this one and a handful of contemporaneous singles) do not show a band in their childhood. This is a fully-formed, mature artistic unit at the height of their powers. That they would not only evolve beyond this, but so far beyond this, is the truly amazing part.
Swinging right into "Misery," something of a Buddy Holly/Everly Brothers pastiche - yet (again) wholly their own. And then Arthur Alexander's "Anna," a bittersweet lost-love kissoff ballad (Alexander must have been popular in the UK - The Stones covered him, too). This was John's first moment in the sun. Paul, George and Ringo were the outstanding musicians. John's great gift (aside from songwriting and challenging the status quo) was as a singer. He had a good, not conventionally pretty, but more accessible than, say, Dylan, singing voice. But it was passion that he brought to it. He may not be able to cut Arthur Alexander here, but he can hold his own - the depth of feeling is all there. It's one of Alexander's best songs and one of Lennon's best performances. "Chains" is George's first moment, "Boys" Ringo's. Both are minor girl-group numbers (though "Chains" was, I believe, a hit for The Cookies). They show both the breadth of the Fab Four's reach for repertoire. More importantly, they show how they could make a song their own. "Chains" is pure rockabilly, driven by George's steely guitar. "Boys" is more of the same, only downer, dirtier, and hitting even harder, riding on the massive beat. Ringo slams the music home, driving it forward. His muted, underplayed vocal somehow only brings the power of the beat even more into focus. "Ask Me Why" is a minor, very standard romantic number with good lyric rhymes - even their throwaways were always polished - and a nice Buddy Hollyesque vocal. It only sets the stage for the title track. "Please Please Me" is where they really hit their stride - Buddy Holly lyric cues ("I don't want to sound complaining but you know there's always rain in my heart"), but it's the call and response - Come On (Come On)... Come On (Come on) ... Come On (Come On)...! Come On (COME ON)!!! - that give the song its power, roaring it forward like a speeding train.
"Love Me Do" is a minor fab four number that mostly gets by on its considerable charm (like most minor Beatles songs). It has a nice Everly Bros meets Jimmy Reed feel. "P.S. I Love You" is similarly minor but has nice harmony vocals. "Baby It's You" is the Smokey Robinson song and, like "Anna", Lennon gives it his all in deeply felt vocal. It shows again how The Beatles, one of the whitest rock bands imaginable, could adapt pure soul to their own idiom, giving it their own sound and sheen, without sacrificing depth of feeling. Lennon's vox here and on "Anna" are some of the finest he would ever turn in, yet without any of the histrionics he would later bring in his post-Beatles music. With the Beatles, less was always more.
"Do You Want To Know A Secret" is another small number, very much in the mode of some of Buddy Holly's slighter, sweeter songs. Again, it gets by mostly on charm. "A Taste Of Honey," cribbed from the film of the same name. On the surface, a sop to middlebrow fans who wanted showtunes. Look deeper. A folk melody - the sort of the thing the Beatles always integrated, assimilated into their music (just as they did everything else) while still making it distinctly their own (just as they did everything else).
The album's been getting soft for a while now, but "There's A Place" shifts it back into gear. A shimmering, incandescent number, it anticipates the more sophisticated songwriting of A Hard Day's Night and beyond, and the musical waves of The Byrds with its ringing, symphonic guitars (a generations worth of jangly pop bands in the 80's would strive for this sound - and miss).
With great albums, you know when the end has come. Here you know it when the band kicks into "Twist and Shout", another soul thumper they made their own - so much so that few remember the Isley Bros original (much less the Top Notes). No reason they should. The Isley's version was a throwaway. The Beatles' - a last stand. With the band riding another powerhouse Ringo beat (the rhythm kicks so hard you don't even notice the song is actually pretty slow-tempo) and Lennon cutting loose with a spoon-size shredded vocal (the next time someone complains about singer with less-than-pretty voices being unable to sing, slap this on) as they tear up each chord, each lick, each drumroll, building up to the mounting series of "aaaaaah -aaaaaaaah-AAAAAAAH-AAAAAAAWOW!"'s that drive the chorus back into the verse time and again. When they slam into the final crash of drums`n'chords, you know you've heard something final.
