The Beatles' Whirlwind Debut: How 'Please Please Me' Changed the Course of Rock Music in Just 12 Hours

Welcome back to This Month in Liverpool Music History. Any account of Liverpool music history wouldn’t be complete without mention of one of our most enduring exports, The Beatles. In fact, every article could be entirely dedicated to what may be the most documented popular music group in the world, but I’ll try keep a lid on it. Our first event isn’t universally agreed upon, but based on his own testimony of the events, it was in the month of February that George Harrison first met with the Quarrymen, the band that would later become The Beatles. Dated to the 6th of February, 1958 by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, George recalls the meeting taking place at Wilson Hall, opposite the bus depot in Garston; ‘I’d been invited to see them play several times by Paul but for some reason never got round to it before.’ 

Five years, nearly two-hundred-and-fifty Hamburg shows and one Ringo Starr later, the Beatles would go in to record ten of the fourteen songs that would appear on their debut LP, ‘Please, Please Me’ over the course of a single day; 11th February 1963. Originally booked for two sessions at Abbey Road on that day, a third was added later on, taking over twelve hours and keeping the staff at the studio almost an hour after they were supposed to close. When the first session wrapped up at 1pm it was time for some scran, but tape operator Richard Langham recalls that John, Paul, George and Ringo had other plans; ‘we told them we were having a break but they said they would like to stay on and rehearse, [...] when we came back they’d been playing right through. We couldn’t believe it. We had never seen a group work right through their lunch break before.’ Famously, the final track to be recorded on the day was the album’s closer, ‘Twist and Shout’, John’s vocals immortalising the strain that had been put on everybody that day; ‘The last song nearly killed me. My voice wasn’t the same for a long time after; every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper.’ Needless to say, the hard work paid off. The album would take the top spot on the UK album charts for thirty weeks, only losing its place to the band’s next record, ‘With the Beatles’.. 

By next February, they were asserting their phenomenon status with an American tour that had the popular music publications of the time utterly saturated with Beatles content. While this period of Beatlemania is well documented, it’s not as often remembered just how much attention this all put on Liverpool. In 1968, music journalist Bob Dawbarn wrote that; ‘So great was the fascination of Liverpool that even Manchester groups like Freddie and the Dreamers and the Hollies tended to get lumped in the same category and musicians who had never been within 100 miles of the city assumed scouse accents when talking to promoters, bookers or record executives.’ It seemed everyone was clamouring to capitalise on this ‘Liverpool sound’ that had sent such reverberations through the world. According to a 2nd February 1964 issue of the magazine Melody Maker, four out of the top five best selling records were bands from Liverpool. Besides two Beatles albums at the very top were The Searchers and Gerry and the Pacemakers, with the only exception being the soundtrack for West Side Story at number three. Less than a week after this album chart was published, The Beatles landed in America on February 7th, 1964. Two days later they would make their earth-shattering first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show to seventy-three million people, breaking almost every television record in the book. The ‘Liverpool sound’ had already seized Britain, it was time for it to go international. 

I’ll leave you with a more novel anecdote. On the 15th of February, 1965, the band would start recording their fifth album ‘Help’, with the sessions beginning that afternoon. A little earlier in the day, however, John passed his driving test. He was the last of the band to obtain his license, being chauffeured to and from recording sessions by his driver, Les Anthony. John was a notoriously bad driver, reportedly being utterly inattentive to other cars and very bad at navigating roads. Shortly after this date John would crash his car. He didn’t drive much after that. 

So that’s some of what The Beatles were getting up to in the month of February, grafting hard and taking names. The unprecedented success of The Beatles clearly owed a lot to the unprecedented hard work and commitment from the band. I think I speak for most doctors when I say that a twelve hour recording session is not the best thing you could resolve to do if you’ve found your ambition stirred by this account, but if you do have any stagnant projects on the go, now may be the time to get in the zone and drag them over the finish line. It might just change the world.

Join us next week where we’ll take a look at the Frankie Goes to Hollywood single, ‘Watching the Wildlife’ and the surrounding chaos that made it the last they would ever release.

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