🎸 “Please Please Me”: The Song That Changed Everything for The Beatles 🌟

From Roy Orbison Blues to Beatlemania

In June 1962, John Lennon sat in his bedroom at his Aunt Mimi’s house on Menlove Avenue in Liverpool and wrote a song. 🏠 “I remember the day I wrote it,” Lennon recalled. “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.” 🎵

John’s original version was slow, bluesy, vocally sparse—no harmonies, no responses, no scaled harmonica intro. “It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it?” he later said. It was dreary. It went nowhere. 😴

And that’s when George Martin saved it. 💡

The Producer’s Magic Touch

When The Beatles first presented “Please Please Me” to George Martin at their September 4, 1962 session, the producer was unimpressed. “At that stage it was a very dreary song,” Martin recalled. “It was like a Roy Orbison number, very slow, bluesy vocals. It was obvious to me that it badly needed pepping up.” ⚡

So, Martin asked them to speed it up. Paul McCartney remembered being embarrassed: “We sang it and George Martin said, ‘Can we change the tempo?’ We said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Make it a bit faster. … Actually, we were a bit embarrassed that he had found a better tempo than we had.” 😅

The group recorded a faster version on September 11, but it still wasn’t quite right. They brought it back to the studio on November 26, 1962, with its arrangement radically altered. It took 18 takes.

When they finally nailed it, the magical take that would go on the record, George Martin’s voice crackled over the talkback from the studio’s control room above: “Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve just made your first number one record.” 🎯

He was right—sort of. “Please Please Me” reached number one on the New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and Disc charts. But on the Record Retailer chart (which eventually became the official UK Singles Chart), it only reached number two, stuck behind Frank Ifield’s “Wayward Wind.” The Beatles would have to wait for “From Me to You” to score their first official number one. 📊

The new version featured Lennon’s harmonica opening (similar to “Love Me Do” and “From Me to You”), and a clever vocal trick borrowed from the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown”—McCartney held a high note while Lennon’s melody cascaded down from it. “I did the trick of remaining on the high note while the melody cascaded down from it,” McCartney explained. 🎤

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Please Please Me (Remastered)

The Bawdy Hidden Meaning That Almost Killed It in America 😳

But there was something else about the new, faster arrangement that changed the song’s meaning entirely. What had been a melancholy Roy Orbison-style plea became something far more suggestive. 🔥

The chorus doesn’t mince words: “Please please me, oh yeah, like I please you.” Combined with the escalating “come on, come on, come on” call-and-response between Lennon and the backing vocals, and lines like “I do all the pleasin’ with you,” the sexual subtext became unmistakable. Many listeners interpreted it as a request for reciprocal sexual favors—specifically oral sex. 😱

Capitol Records in the US certainly heard it that way. According to multiple sources, Capitol refused to release “Please Please Me” partly due to its sexual content, which is why the small Chicago label Vee-Jay ended up with it instead. The faster tempo and urgent delivery transformed what might have been an innocent plea for emotional attention into something that sounded decidedly physical.

Paul McCartney later acknowledged The Beatles’ early talent for sexual innuendo, saying: “If they had wanted to, they could have found plenty of double meanings in our early work. How about ‘I’ll Keep You Satisfied’ or ‘Please Please Me’? Everything has a double meaning if you look for it long enough.” 😏

Whether Lennon intended the double meaning when he wrote it in his bedroom in 1962, or whether it emerged only when George Martin’s uptempo arrangement unleashed the song’s latent energy, “Please Please Me” became one of The Beatles’ first ventures into cheeky sexual territory—a hallmark that would continue throughout their career. 🎭

The Power of Television

The single was released in the UK on January 11, 1963, during one of the worst winters in British history. ❄️ Eight days later, on January 19, much of the population was snowed-in at home watching The Beatles perform the song on the Saturday night TV show Thank Your Lucky Stars. 📺

That national TV exposure, combined with the band’s unusual appearance and hairstyle, generated enormous attention. The Beatles were booked for a series of national tours—supporting Helen Shapiro in February, Tommy Roe and Chris Montez in March, and Roy Orbison in May. During breaks in the touring schedule, they performed the song on BBC radio programs. 🎙️

The touring, TV appearances, and extensive press coverage propelled the single to number one on most British charts. Much to their embarrassment, The Beatles were moved to the top of the bill on the Tommy Roe and Roy Orbison tours—the support act had become the headliners. 🌟

The Publishing Deal That Made Millions

The song’s success was nearly derailed by publishing politics. 💼 Brian Epstein had been dissatisfied with EMI’s promotional efforts for “Love Me Do” and asked George Martin to suggest a better publisher. Martin recommended Dick James, among others.

Epstein scheduled meetings with two publishers on the same morning. At the first meeting, the executive hadn’t arrived yet. After waiting until 10:25, Epstein left—he refused to do business with an organization that couldn’t keep appointments. ⏰

He arrived at Dick James’ office 20 minutes early. When the receptionist phoned James, he immediately came out, welcomed Epstein, and got down to business. James listened to “Please Please Me” and declared it a number one record. Then he picked up the phone, called the producer of Thank Your Lucky Stars, played the song over the telephone, and secured The Beatles a slot on the next show. 📞

The two men shook hands on a deal that would make them—and The Beatles—extremely wealthy. 💰

America Says No (Then, Yes!)

Capitol Records, EMI’s US label, turned down “Please Please Me.” 🙅‍♂️ So did Atlantic. Eventually, the small Chicago label Vee-Jay agreed to release it on February 7, 1963.

Chicago DJ Dick Biondi played it on WLS radio, perhaps as early as February 8—becoming the first DJ to play a Beatles record in the US. 📻 But America wasn’t ready. The song peaked at number 35 in Chicago and sold only about 7,310 copies nationally.

More trivia: The first pressings featured a typo: the band’s name was spelled “The Beattles” with two t’s. (Today, those misspelled copies are valuable collector’s items indeed.) 💿

Then, everything changed after “I Want to Hold Your Hand” exploded in America. Vee-Jay reissued “Please Please Me” on January 3, 1964—the same day Beatles footage appeared on late-night TV, The Jack Paar Program. This time, it was a massive hit, peaking at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. 🚀

On April 4, 1964, “Please Please Me” sat at number 5 while The Beatles held all top five spots on the Hot 100—an achievement never matched before or since. 🏆

The Song That Started Beatlemania

George Martin’s instinct to speed up that dreary Roy Orbison imitation transformed not just a song, but The Beatles’ entire trajectory. “Please Please Me” proved they could craft genuine hits, that their own material was superior to covers like “How Do You Do It?”, and that their unusual appearance and sound could captivate audiences beyond Liverpool. 🎸

Rolling Stone later ranked it number 184 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. But the numbers don’t capture what “Please Please Me” really was: the moment four Liverpool lads became The Beatles, the moment Beatlemania began, the moment everything changed. ✨

All because George Martin told them to play it faster. ⚡

Oh, and one more bit of trivia, about “How Do You Do It?” The song was written by Mitch Murray, a British songwriter. 🎵 The Beatles recorded it, but resisted releasing as a Beatles record.

The Beatles’ version: George Martin was convinced it would be a hit and insisted The Beatles record it in September 1962. The Beatles reluctantly did so, but they really disliked the song—they felt it didn’t fit their sound and they wanted to record their own material, not “professional” songwriters’ tunes. Paul McCartney later recalled telling Martin, “Well it may be a number one but we just don’t want this kind of song, we don’t want to go out with that kind of reputation. It’s a different thing we’re going for, it’s something new.”

The Beatles’ version was never officially released during their active years. Martin came very close to making it their debut single instead of “Love Me Do,” but the band successfully convinced him to go with their own material. The Beatles recorded at least two takes of “How Do You Do It,” and a mono mix was made from take two that evening, according to The Beatles Bible. They also spent three hours rehearsing the song before the recording session.

George Martin made acetates of both “How Do You Do It?” and “Love Me Do” so he and Brian Epstein could decide which should be the debut single.

Who made it a hit: George Martin gave “How Do You Do It” to another Liverpool band he was producing: Gerry and the Pacemakers. They recorded it in January 1963, and it became their debut single. It shot to #1 in the UK in April 1963, staying there for three weeks (ironically, it was replaced at #1 by The Beatles’ “From Me to You”). 🏆

So while it was never released as a “Beatles record,” the song did leak out. “How Do You Do It?” circulated on bootlegs, then it was included on the official Anthology 1 release in 1995. According to the bootleg history, the song appeared on several underground releases:

Ultra Rare Trax - A bootleg CD series from Swingin’ Pig that started appearing in 1988, which included “How Do You Do It?” among other unreleased Beatles studio outtakes. This series was famous for providing clarity that rivaled official releases. 💿

Unsurpassed Masters - Another bootleg series from Yellow Dog Records that also emerged in the late 1980s with similar high quality.

So The Beatles were right to trust their instincts—while “How Do You Do It?” was indeed a hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers, it would have been completely wrong for The Beatles’ image and sound!

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