Track Listing

1. I Saw Her Standing There
2. Misery
3. Anna (Go To Him)
4. Chains
5. Boys
6. Ask Me Why
7. Please Please Me
8. Love Me Do
9. PS I Love You
10. Baby It's You
11. Do You Want To Know A Secret
12. Taste Of Honey, A
13. There's A Place
14. Twist And Shout
15. Please Please Me Documentary

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #326 in Music
• Released on: 2009-09-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .19 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Their first-ever album, Please Please Me is raw and rough and still very rock & roll. Having already scored two hits when this appeared, Lennon and McCartney were only just beginning to flex their writing muscles and so relied heavily on the cover material to see them through. Their insecurity about their own abilities seems curious in hindsight since they'd pulled the title song and "I Saw Her Standing There" (with thanks to Little Richard) out of their hats. But they were an unknown quantity, still to launch a million bands and take pop music to places it had never dreamed off. A small step for four men, a giant leap for music. --Chris Nickson

CD Description
Recorded in between a cup of tea and a cigarette, this album is raw yet dazzling. Here were four lads, highly experienced on stage, but with little or no idea of what a recording studio was like. They were subtly marshalled by the much-respected George Martin to deliver an entire album that was exactly what the fans wanted, but was still a surprise. Things were never as simple as this again, yet the genius is there.Examples are Lennon's unmatchable rasping on "Twist And Shout", McCartney's graceful ease in singing "I Saw Her Standing There", Harrison's sparse but definite Gretsch chords, andStarr's ace vocal on "Boys".

Customer Reviews

One of the Great Debuts
So, it all started here: the best band in the business, the best songwriters and the best series of pop/rock albums ever.

While the record has its share of less memorable songs (I can't stand PS I Love You) it has a freshness, energy and sheer feeling which you can still get from it at the umpteenth hearing.

There are some tough edges from the Hamburg days, in particular, George's guitar playing and John's singing on Twist and Shout, but the album is much more refined that the Hamburg tapes which were (badly) recorded a few months before this LP.

From I Saw Her Standing There - one of the all time best album openers - to John's attack to Twist and Shout, the album is a treat. It shows The Beatles' love for covering great songs (Baby It's You,Chains, Twist and Shout) and their rapidly developing songwriting (Please Please Me, There's a Place).

The sound, as with all the band's early records, is a bit strange in stereo, with the instruments basically out of one channel and the vocals from the other. The CD age didn't do the record many favours, either, with a less 'warm' presence than my old mono LPs and the clarity of the sound drawing on'e attention to the odd fluff. But then, it was recorded in just a few hours.

Not their 'best album', but essential.

Timeless classic which reshaped history
Why would you need to read a review of a Beatles' album? If you've been a fan for many years, you know exactly what you want and exactly what you're getting. If you're coming to them new, do you really want a potted history of this particular recording, locating its place in the band's development?

I don't listen to Beatles music for a cerebral or spiritual experience, nor to be able to impress anyone with the fact that I can pinpoint when and where they recorded that track - George was recovering from an in-growing toenail, Ringo had just bought a new set of drumsticks. I listen to the Beatles for the emotions I've nurtured over forty years of more. So can I convince you that my passion for a particular album or track will parallel yours? Of course not!

For me, the excitement generated by the Beatles is something I grew up with. I was thirteen when they had their first hit. The first records I ever bought were by the Beatles. I joined the Fan Club. I covered my walls in photos. I was threatened with expulsion from school because of the length of my hair. I even managed, as a teenager in a small Scottish town, to obtain copies of 'Merseybeat' - the Liverpool music paper. It says something about the dynamism of the 60's that Liverpool could have its own music paper (this was way before desktop publishing, the Internet, etc.).

"Please Please Me" was released in March, 1963, and was the Beatles first album ("With the Beatles" would follow). Inspired by the title song reaching number one in the charts, the LP was famously based on their current stage act - compare and contrast these studio recordings with the live version available on the unofficial, "Live at the Star Club" offerings.

These were the days when bands played live: they grew up on the circuit, playing pubs, clubs, and dives, hoping to establish enough of a fan base to secure a recording contract ... and a chance to record someone else's song, maybe cover an already successful US hit.

But the Beatles broke out of this restrictive process. "Please Please Me" combines cover versions of standards with numbers written by Lennon and McCartney, and marks their growing confidence as songwriters.

That was the dynamic attraction of the Beatles. Their music was - remains - raw and exciting. There was something liberating about it. Here were ordinary lads from Liverpool who could write their own stuff, not depend on professional songwriters to grind out hits for them. There was an immediacy about their words. This was the decade when the first working class kids were making their way to university. It was an age of sensed meritocracy and upward mobility. The Beatles were flying the banner for the triumph of talent over elitism, for the victory of regional accents over the sterile BBC English we were normally fed. And the Beatles had seized the baton from the USA and were now setting the cultural initiative for the rest of the world to follow.

And I knew all this at school. My mother sent me to an all boys school. I'd noticed girls. There were a couple I passed every morning who I really noticed. But I'd never talked to one! And here were the Beatles. You could imagine dancing with some mini skirted lassie in the sweaty din of the Cavern Club. These were songs of love and lust, of energy and passion, of time and place.

That's the significance of Beatles music. For a generation, it changed their world. For the future of pop, it set new standards and directions. And for the individual, it established patterns of memories and emotions which are still alive to this day.

The music of the Beatles inscribes a unique history for every fan. Songs which you associate with someone or somewhere special, songs you associate with laughter, pain, love, despair, loss or triumph, songs which provide the punctuation marks to your own life's narrative. Few other artists have come close to this.

"Please Please Me" established a yardstick for the quality of recording: here are songs which have a beat, which are well sung and provide dynamic bass lines, but they are also songs with passion and depth, songs which elevate your spirits and make you feel positive. Still melodically simple, but embodying a universal sentiment, the songs on "Please Please Me" lack artifice or pretence that they are by anyone else but the Beatles. This is assertive music, music with personality. And it's timeless.

The nearest thing to a 'live' prformance
Recorded in a mammoth 24 hour recording session, Please Please Me introduced the world to those 'loveable' moptops. The amazing thing is that 4 years later they were 'grinding' (sgt)pepper which took over 6 months to record. Essentially an album of their live set, please please me took the pop world and turned it on its head. My personal favourite is Twist and Shout which was deliberately recorded last (lennon wanted his voice raw) and stands out as one of the best cover versions of a song..however 'I saw here standing there' by McCartney IS one of the greatest Rock N Roll songs ever released.

Without a doubt one of the greatest rock n roll albums ever made.