Before they hit the recording studio, The Beatles had already made a name for themselves rocking out in clubs across Liverpool and Hamburg.
Their first single, the McCartney-Lennon classic Love Me Do, dropped in the UK on October 5, 1962, but only managed a peak at number 17. Nevertheless, Paul McCartney sensed something big, though, reminiscing: “In Hamburg, we clicked. At the Cavern, we clicked.
“But if you want to know when we ‘knew’ we’d arrived, it was getting in the charts with Love Me Do. That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go.” The band tossed around ideas for their second single with tension brewing between the band and their producer, George Martin, about whether to cover Mitch Murray’s How Do You Do It? or stick to their self-penned tunes.
McCartney was firm, saying: “It was symptomatic of our group that we turned down How Do You Do It? with Ringo Starr chiming in with equal conviction, commenting: “I remember us all being ready to stand up for the principle of, we have written these songs and we want to do them.'”
Opting for originality, the band went on to record Please Please Me. The track, penned by Lennon at his aunt Mimi’s place on Menlove Avenue, was initially set to be the B-side for Love Me Do.
John reminisced, “We almost abandoned it as the b-side of Love Me Do. We changed our minds only because we were so tired the night we did Love Me Do.”
He added: “We’d been going over it a few times and when we came to the question of the flipside, we intended using Please Please Me. Our recording manager, George Martin, thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler.”
John also shared, “We were getting very tired, though, and we just couldn’t seem to get it right. We are conscientious about our work and we don’t like to rush things.”
Mr. Martin himself wasn’t initially impressed with the track, recalling, “At that stage ‘Please Please Me’ was a very dreary song. It was like a Roy Orbison number, very slow, bluesy vocals. It was obvious to me that it badly needed pepping up. I told them to bring it in next time and we’d have another go at it.”
Paul reflected on the experience in The Beatles Anthology, saying, “We sang it and George Martin said, ‘Can we change the tempo?’ We said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Make it a bit faster.
“‘Let me try it.’ And he did. We thought, ‘Oh, that’s all right, yes.’ Actually, we were a bit embarrassed that he had found a better tempo than we had.”
The single, which also served as the title track for their debut album, was recorded on November 26, 1962. Mr Martin had a hunch it would be their first hit – and he wasn’t wrong.
It soared to the top of the New Musical Express and Melody Maker charts in the UK, marking The Beatles’ first number-one hit.
However, it didn’t clinch the top spot on the Record Retailer chart, which later became the official UK singles chart.
This song marked a turning point for The Beatles, catapulting them from local fame in Liverpool and Hamburg to national recognition.