Please Please Me
Sixties British Pop, Inside Out
Gordon Thompson
From Our Blog
On Friday, 19 May 1967, British newspapers carried the announcement that the British Broadcasting Corporation had chosen the Beatles to represent the UK in the first global television broadcast.
Posted on May 18, 2017
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The documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom (2013) gave us a glimpse of how backing singers'performers who provide vocal harmonies and responses for featured artists'have contributed to twentieth-century American popular music.
Posted on July 21, 2016
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Every major news source last week carried news of Andy White's death at 85. The Guardian's 'Early Beatles Drummer Andy White Dies at 85' represents a typical article title intended to attract readers albeit with misinformation that suggests that a particular two-minute-and-twenty-second episode from his life should be why we remember him.
Posted on November 19, 2015
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The popular music industries of the 1960s produced thousands of recordings with each studio relying on an infrastructure of producers, engineers, music directors, songwriters, and, of course, musicians. In recent years, documentaries have introduced us to instrumentalists and singers who formed the artistic backbones of America's major studios.
Posted on October 13, 2015
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Fifty years ago during their North American tour, The Beatles played to the largest audience in their career against the backdrop of a nation shattering along economic, ethnic, and political lines. Although on the surface the events of August 1965 would seem unconnected, they nevertheless illustrate how the world was changing and how music reflected that chaotic cultural evolution.
Posted on August 4, 2015
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Fifty years ago, at the height of the British Invasion, The Yardbirds released "Heart Full of Soul" (28 May 1965) and The Kinks, "See My Friends" (30 July 1965). Both attempted to evoke something exotic, mysterious, and distinctly different from the flood of productions competing for consumer attention that summer. Drawing on Britain's long fascination with 'The Orient,' these recordings started sixties British pop down a path that proved both rewarding and problematic.
Posted on July 14, 2015
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Forty-five years ago, in the spring of 1966, as swinging London and its colorful denizens attracted the attention of 'Time', the publishers of an American teen magazine found part of a recent interview with John Lennon to be of particular interest. A rapid disintegration ensued of the complex identity that the Beatles management, the media, the fans, and even the musicians themselves had constructed, setting in motion a number of dark forces.
Posted on March 4, 2011
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In the spring of 1965, The Rolling Stones could be forgiven their frustration. Even though they had scored three number-one UK hits in the past year, the American market remained a challenge. Beatles recordings had already thrice dominated the US charts since New Year's Day and Brits Petula Clark, Herman's Hermits, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, and Freddie and the Dreamers had all topped Billboard between January and May.
Posted on June 4, 2015
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In the opening months of 1964, The Beatles turned the American popular music world on its head, racking up hits and opening the door for other British musicians. Lennon and McCartney demonstrated that'in the footsteps of Americans like Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry'British performers could be successful songwriters too.
Posted on August 7, 2014
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By Gordon R. Thompson Fifty years ago, a wave of British performers began showing up on The Ed Sullivan Show following the dramatic and game-changing appearances by The Beatles.
Posted on August 6, 2014
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By Gordon R. Thompson When Pan Am flight 101, the 'Jet Clipper Defiance,' touched down at the recently renamed John F. Kennedy Airport on 7 February 1964, the grieving angst that had gripped the Western world lifted, if just a little. What emerged from the darkness of the Boeing 707's doorway was something so joyful, so deliciously irreverent that we forgot for a moment the tensions of the Berlin wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and the assassination of a young president. The sigh that North America released felt so deep that it sounded as one big exuberant scream of delight.
Posted on February 6, 2014
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For many of us in the British Commonwealth, Boxing Day can bring back memories of visiting family and friends, even as modernity transforms the date from an opportunity to exchange gifts between one another into one on which you return gifts at shopping malls. For Americans, it's an anachronism.
Posted on December 24, 2008
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By Gordon R. Thompson As the summer of 1963 drew to a close and students prepared to return to school, the Beatles released what may have been their most successful single. 'She Loves You' would top the British charts twice that year, remain near the top for months, and help to launch the band into the American consciousness.
Posted on August 23, 2013
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By Gordon R. Thompson After the success of the single 'Please Please Me' and the release of the album Please Please Me, British fans and the press eagerly anticipated 'From Me to You.' Fans had pre-ordered so many copies of the disk that when Parlophone did release R 5015 on 11 April 1963, the single immediately appeared in pop charts where it would stay for an amazing 21 weeks.
Posted on April 11, 2013
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With Northern Songs (their publishing company) established, the Beatles needed a song for their next single and, flushed with the success of 'Please Please Me' and the emerging ecstasy at their performances, they again brought together elements from different songs in their repertoire to create something new and fresh. George Martin scheduled a recording session for Tuesday 5 March, towards the end of their first national tour when they served as a warm-up act to British singer Helen Shapiro.
Posted on March 5, 2013
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Songwriting had gained the Beatles entry into EMI's studios and songwriting would distinguish them from most other British performers in 1963. Sid Colman at publishers Ardmore and Beechwood had been the first to sense a latent talent, bringing them to the attention of George Martin at Parlophone. Martin in turn had recommended Dick James as a more ambitious exploiter of their potential catalogue.
Posted on February 22, 2013
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By Gordon R. Thompson Although 'Love Me Do' had been the Beatles' induction into Britain's recording industry, 'Please Please Me' would bring them prominently into the nation's consciousness. The songwriters, the band, the producer, and the manager all thought that they had finally found a winning formula. An advertisement in the New Musical Express proclaimed that the disc would be the 'record of the year,' even as it raised a chuckle among industry insiders; but the hyperbole would prove prophetic.
Posted on January 11, 2013
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The Beatles were unlikely successes on London's record charts in December 1962. Northerners with schoolboy haircuts who wrote and performed their own songs, their first record 'Love Me Do' had risen slowly up British charts, despite lack of significant promotion by their publisher and record company, and without an appearance on national television.
Posted on December 27, 2012
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By Gordon R. Thompson As a regional businessman and a fledgling band manager, Brian Epstein presumed that the Beatles' record company (EMI's Parlophone) and Lennon and McCartney's publisher (Ardmore and Beechwood) would support the record. This presumption would prove false, however, and Epstein would need to draw on all of the resources he could spare if he were to make the disc a success.
Posted on December 26, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, on Monday 22 May 1961, London's constabulary attempted to terminate a British musical tradition. For as long as most of them could remember, musicians had gathered Monday afternoons on the short stretch of pavement between Rupert Street and Great Windmill Street in Soho to collect their pay from previous engagements and to pick up work for the coming week. A local merchant had probably complained about the disparate crowd blocking the street, so the police
Posted on May 20, 2011
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By Gordon Thompson To many adolescents fifty years ago, the future seemed bleak: the 'King' had become preoccupied with refurbished Italian schmaltz while the world drew closer to Armageddon. But hope buzzed in the heart of an ungrounded amplifier in a West German high school. Goodwill had floundered between the recently elected American president, John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union's premier, Nikita Khrushchev over the Soviet blockade of Berlin and America's support of the failed
Posted on June 23, 2011
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By Gordon Thompson
Posted on September 13, 2011
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By Gordon Thompson The transformation of the Beatles from four musicians with humble roots into British cultural icons (second only to Shakespeare in some minds) began in Liverpool, even if a recent decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office may attempt to shape how we remember those roots in the future. Ironically, that decision comes shortly before a relevant anniversary in Beatles history.
Posted on November 9, 2011
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By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago in December 1961, Brian Epstein made a leap of faith that he could change his life and the lives of four young musicians. He could not foresee that he would change Western civilization. A few weeks earlier, the Liverpool businessman had heard the din of the Beatles in a claustrophobic former vegetable cellar and had seized upon the idea of transforming the band into something the world could embrace. He seems to have had few second thoughts about his decision, even as he allowed that he might fail.
Posted on December 14, 2011
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By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago in January 1962, British popular music crept toward the brink of success. Notably, the coming months would see Britain's Decca Records release the UK's first international rock hit Telstar created by the quirky iconoclast Joe Meek with his studio band the Tornados. That recording declared Meek's infatuation with the first telecommunications satellite and proved that London's recording industry had the potential to compete in the United States.
Posted on January 10, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson On a cold winter's day in early 1962, Brian Epstein and the Beatles huddled together contemplating their failed bid for a Decca recording contract and the bitter aftertaste of rejection that left emptiness in their stomachs. But hunger can feed ambition. Disappointments would ensue, but almost immediately Epstein would be the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time and meet a string of people who were looking for something not quite exactly unlike the Beatles.
Posted on February 13, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson On this spring morning fifty years ago, Brian Epstein climbed the front steps and passed through the simple entrance of the EMI Recording Studios in St. John's Wood, London, placing him on the other side of the looking glass. As a retailer, he had sold recordings made in these studios by Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Thomas Beecham, and, more recently, Cliff Richard and the Shadows. The neophyte manager of the Beatles now eagerly anticipated the possibility of watching through the control room window as his 'boys' joined that exclusive club.
Posted on May 9, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, the Beatles recorded for the first time in a building that would eventually bear the name of their last venture. On Wednesday, 6 June 1962, the most important rock band of the twentieth century auditioned at the EMI Recording Studios in Abbey Road, London.
Posted on June 6, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson For the Beatles first visit to EMI, George Martin (the director of Parlophone Records) asked his associate Ron Richards to serve as the artist-and-repertoire manager, which involved rehearsing the band and running their session. Pop groups represented a normal part of Richards' portfolio and clearly the Beatles didn't rank high enough on Martin's list of responsibilities to warrant his presence. That would eventually change, but on 6 June 1962, the Beatles presented only a blip on his radar.
Posted on June 7, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson Perhaps the most significant unresolved controversy surrounding the recording of the Beatles first single 'Love Me Do' rests on the question of whether or not EMI had finalized a contract with them. To wit: on 6 June 1962, were the Beatles auditioning or were they already under contract? Documentation and personal memories conflict such that no single answer can claim to be definitive, even as the evidence suggests a nuanced social interplay between Parlophone's George Martin and Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
Posted on June 18, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, in one of London's busiest shopping districts, the Rolling Stones stepped onto a stage for the first time, full of adolescent confidence and probably not a little performance anxiety. On this Thursday night, a crowd of friends and the curious came to support this muddle of middle-class English adolescents ambitiously exploring a relatively esoteric niche of American music. But everything about this first gig would portend a band that would be, a band that parents would hate and teens love, a band that would be ruthless in its pursuit of success.
Posted on July 12, 2012
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By Gordon R. Thompson Fifty years ago, the Beatles entered EMI's recording studios on Abbey Road for their first official recording session. Their June visit had gained them a recording contract, but had cost Pete Best his position when artist-and-repertoire manager George Martin winced at the drummer's timing. With little ceremony, Lennon, McCartney, and especially Harrison recruited the best drummer in Liverpool ' a mate who sometimes subbed for Best ' and left the firing of Best to manager Brian Epstein. Thus, Ringo Starr ascended to the drummer's throne.
Posted on September 11, 2012
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The Beatles' dream of releasing a record came to fruition fifty years ago today when Parlophone issued the band's first disc, 'Love Me Do.'Â That night, EMI played the song on its own London-produced weekly radio program Friday Spectacular, broadcast on Radio Luxembourg. In the Beatles' Anthology, George Harrison recalled that, 'First hearing 'Love Me Do' on the radio sent me shivery all over.
Posted on October 5, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, the Beatles recorded their arrangement of 'Please Please Me,' a lilting lover's complaint transformed into a burst of adolescent adrenaline. On 26 November 1962, after repeated attempts to capture just the right balance of frustration and anticipation, George Martin informed them over the studio intercom that they had just recorded their first number-one disc. But the path to the top of the charts would not be easy.
Posted on November 26, 2012
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Many describe the 1964 arrival of the Beatles in New York as the beginning of the 'British Invasion,' but UK rock and pop had begun culturally infiltrating our consciousness much earlier. Indeed, a London instrumental group topped American charts in the fall of 1962 with a recording that celebrated the first telecommunications satellite. Launched from Cape Canaveral on 10 July,
Posted on August 17, 2012
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By Gordon Thompson Forty-five years ago, at the beginning of April 1966, on the almost anniversary of a London dentist surreptitiously spiking his and George Harrison's coffees with Lysergic acid diethylamide, John Lennon visited Barry Miles' Indica Books and picked up a copy of Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert's The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In its pseudo-mystical prose, Lennon found partial inspiration for one of the most audacious recordings the Beatles would ever attempt.
Posted on April 6, 2011
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By Gordon Thompson
Even in the storm's dawning, both fans and defamers alike recognized magic in the Beatles' ability to collaborate and to adapt in pursuit of a shared vision, and at the heart of this quest lay the desire to make great recordings. In the beginning of their career with EMI, their willingness to subvert their individual identities to a common cause (and the joy with which they did so) contributed to their success. In the
Posted on April 8, 2011
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