John Lennon says Please Please Me album was an attempt to 'capture The Beatles live'
The Beatles’ debut album was an attempt to capture the band’s live appeal, according to John Lennon.
Please Please Me would be released in March 1963 and was a chance for the band to showcase their skills as a touring unit. Lennon would share the thought process behind recording Please Please Me as a way to “capture The Beatles live” in interviews given shortly after the album was released. Lennon suggested Please Please Me is the closest the Fab Four could get to capturing the essence of their live performance, though even that was missing the atmosphere of the Hamburg and Liverpool audiences. Producer George Martin had initially suggested the band record a live album as their debut release at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, though these plans would fall through. Instead, the band recorded studio album Please Please Me as an opportunity to highlight their live appeal.
Lennon said: “That record tried to capture us live, and was the nearest thing to what we might have sounded like to the audiences in Hamburg and Liverpool. You don’t get that live atmosphere of the crowd stomping on the beat with you, but it’s the nearest you can get to knowing what we sounded like before we became the ‘clever’ Beatles.”
Lennon would confirm Martin’s influence in the studio would help them find a better route through the title track too. He said: “Our recording manager (George Martin) thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler. We were getting tired though, and just couldn’t seem to get it right. In the following weeks we went over it again and again.
“We changed the tempo a little, we altered the words slightly, and we went over the idea of featuring the harmonica just as we’d done on Love Me Do. By the time the session came around we were so happy with the result, we couldn’t get it recorded fast enough.”
Later on, Lennon would share the Orbison and Crosby influence which guided the song. Speaking in 1980, Lennon says Only the Lonely by Orbison had been a big factor in his writing process for Please Please Me.
Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk
