| One of the great strengths of the Beatles was that by 1962, the year they cut their first record, they were already seasoned performers, well-versed in American soul, gospel, rhythm and blues and rock'n'roll. Most of what they knew had been learned the hard way. They knew how songs were constructed because, unable to afford sheet music, they had to decipher lyrics and work out chord changes by listening records over and over again. Having played rock'n'roll to adoring teenagers at the lunchtime Cavern Club sessions in Liverpool, as well as to inebriated German businessmen in Hamburg, they also knew how to excite, calm and seduce an audience.
John and Paul had been together for five years; George had been with them for almost as long. Ringo was a recent member having replaced Pete Best on drums, but they'd known him since 1959 and his previous position with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes meant that they had all played the same venues. At this time, the Beatles' material was standard beat group fare - the best-known songs by the best-known rock'n'roll artists. Top of their list was Elvis Presley. They covered almost 30 of the songs he'd recorded, as well as numbers by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Larry Williams, Ray Charles, the Coasters, Arthur Alexander, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers. Studying the music of these artists taught John and Paul the basics of song writing. When they came together at Paul's house to write their own material, it was a case of reassembling the familiar chords and words to make something distinctively theirs. This is how a bass riff from a Chuck Berry number came to be incorporated into 'I Saw Her Standing There', a song about seeing a girl at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton, and explains how the sound of Roy Orbison's voice came to be the inspiration behind 'Please Please Me', the Beatles' first Number 1 single. Sometimes their songs were 'about' incidents from their lives but often their words, like the chords, were borrowed from what they had gone before. At this stage, the words were important to create sounds and impressions, rather than to convey a message. The Release of the album changed the British music scene. Previously, the British album chart had been filled with fil sound-track albums, recordings of London and Broadway musicals and, with the exception of Elvis Presley and two or three other American artists, very little else. Most of it was recorded on a single session on February 11, 1963. It was released on March 22, 1963 and reached the top spot in the British charts. It contained seven Lennon-McCartney songs. In America it was titled "Introducing the Beatles", and released on the little-known Vee Jay Label. It didn't include "Please Please Me" or "Ask me Why", and failed to make the charts. |
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