People adore The Beatles, and even the people who don't adore them mostly don't seem to have a problem admitting their influence and legacy on world music. Since some point in late 1963/early 1964 they have basically reached Apotheosis and been made Gods in the eyes of men, and let's be honest, I'm just as guilty of worshipping them as anyone, and I don't care.
But, 50 years ago to the day, they weren't "The Beatles - musical game-changing most successful band in the history of all time". They were just four young friends coming off the back of a near tortuous regime of playing soul-shredding shifts of rock and roll in a German red light district. Four boys who kept getting told they had no future in music.They were really, some would say, in their own version (albeit not a fully understood one) of the last chance saloon.
So, they recorded their album in 585 minutes on February 11th, 1963. It's been described as a "charming start" rather than a clear sign that the musical landscape was about to be re-shaped, and I think that's right. There are only really three truly "stand-out" moments in my opinion. The first track, the incomparably energetic "I Saw Her Standing There", the hit single, the catchy "Please Please Me" and the genre redefining final scream of "Twist and Shout". The other songs range from charmingly delivered (Anna), catchy but substanceless originals (Misery, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Ask Me Why) through to fairly dire renditions of clumsily chosen covers (A Taste of Honey, Baby It's You) and finally, their first "hit", a slightly bored sounding skiffle dirge in 'Love Me Do', which hasn't aged at all well.. It's solid, if unspectacular.
My love for the Beatles isn't one that knows no bounds, and nor is it unconditional, but it is huge and all encompassing. My favourite aspect of The Beatles story though is not all that musical development, amazing though some of it was, it's not the Shea stadium gig, groundbreaking though it was, it's not the films, charming though they are (mostly) and it's not the cool-dude, bohemian drug taking 60s icons that they became.
No. What I love about The Beatles is that for all their sharp-suit wearing moptoppage once they broke onto the scene, they knew how to knock out rock and roll so powerfully it could leave people breathless. The stories you hear about their times at the Cavern and in Hamburg are thrilling, powerful, youthful, raw, dirty and magical.
Proper rock and roll has always enthralled me ever since I was a kid and heard The Beatles music mixed with Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and all of the great names in the genre. The same feeling came over me when I first heard Oasis in the early 90s. It was something almost primeval that spoke to a part of me I didn't understand. Growing up in a nice middle-class house in a nice part of Leeds in a relatively economically prosperous historical period, going to an expensive and not always particularly eye-opening school doesn't exactly prep you to truly understand the real guts behind a rock and roll band. Still, if music was my church, rock and roll was my denomination, and The Beatles were my prophets.
When I listen to the Beatles later work, I can always appreciate the genius in it. It's beautiful, but in the same way that I love listening to Rachmaninov or Beethoven. When I REALLY love The Beatles is when they are playing something that sounds like it was produced by the grime of northern England mixed with the excitement of a dawning sexual revolution in America. Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Long Tall Sally, Kansas City, Slow Down, Money, there are so many recordings that make my hair stand on end, and they are always the true rock and roll numbers.
So I do love the Please Please Me album, in part because there's nothing truly awful on there, well, except for Love Me Do, PS I Love You, and Baby It's You, which I've never cared for. But mostly, I love it because of the energy and raw power of the songs which do hit the note. And, capturing a special place in the heart of all Beatles fans, and particularly this one, is Twist and Shout.
The stories are famous now. The band played for about 10 hours, and had to record one more song. Lennon's voice was ruined, having already been suffering from a cold (very audible on some of the songs) and having been sung into the ground almost, so George Martin knew they wouldn't get many takes. The idea of the four Beatles putting their tired voices, and bodies to one side to give everything one last time to a song that was so familiar to them it must have felt like an old friend is a thing of beauty to me. Lennon, in an act of rebellion against Brian Epstein's "cleaning up" of the band, took his shirt off, slung his guitar on, and got on with it.
One take. Live.
At the end, it's reported that the engineers said that nothing like that had ever been recorded in a British studio before, and it's not hard to believe. The effect is unbelievable. You can tell they all know it is their one shot at this song, and Lennon's vocal sums it up perfectly. He has no voice left. There's no technical brilliance on display, no vibrato, no training, no incredible breath control, just a raw shell of a man still somehow brimming with power, ambition and (in this author's humble opinion) a desire to set the record straight.
He must have known. Nobody was more proud of the band's early work than Lennon. He publicly stated on more than one occasion that their best work was never recorded, the nights on Preludin in Hamburg, reaching places they didn't realise they had, rocking and rolling at full speed, reaching extremes other bands didn't reach, achieving a tightness that other bands didn't achieve. Lennon once said that "when we played straight rock and roll, there was nobody to touch us. Not in Liverpool, not in London, not anywhere." This song is the only really true remaining evidence that he probably had a point.
Up to this point in the recording, this kind of spirit, this kind of raw, sticking your fingers up to everyone, passionate, blood-curdling rock and roll just hadn't been present. Lennon MUST have known it, and he must have realised that in the heat of trying to fit one more song onto the record, here was the band's chance to show what they were really made of. For me, the song is the musical equivalent of a shot from the half-way line in the 90th minute, or the half-court shot, hail mary in basketball that sinks through the net with no hint of backboard and sends the crowd into a frenzy. You're not just listening to a band play a song. You're listening to four people throw everything at the wall...and it all sticks. You can hear Lennon cough at the end, as McCartney almost cheers a job well done, and they were finished. How could they have topped that?
After this album, things got considerably more user-friendly. Head shaking, suit wearing, hand-shaking, balcony waving, smiling politely, charming press conferences and the rest. Nothing wrong with that, but for me it doesn't come close to explaning why I love The Beatles.
I know I go on about things, and have a tendency to assign more meaning, depth, emotion and analysis to things that don't always need them, but listening to Twist and Shout still sends shivers down my spine. I would go so far as to say those two and a half minutes or so are perhaps the most important in the Beatles' entire career, if not the musical landscape of this country in the 1960s.
Listen to it again. It's less than three minutes of your life, after all. Hear it. Hear Lennon's 22 year old voice summon up depth and power and rawness like you've never heard before. Hear rock and roll.
Enjoy.
