It was 50 years go today....

(Chubby Cat breaks new ground with this post to celebrate an important cultural anniversary.  I couldn’t let it pass)

Fifty years ago this month,  yet another new band hit the big time,  probably to burn brightly for a few months, a year or two if they were lucky, and then just become another golden oldie on the juke box.

The band were called the Beatles, and in January 1963 their second single, Please Please Me,  was released with some anticipation and fanfare, but with little hint that the world was watching the birth of a Twentieth Century cultural phenomenon.  For those who looked closely enough, though, there was enough there to suggest that maybe the Beatles were a bit different.

The Beatles first release had kicked around in the UK charts for a couple of months at the end of 1962, peaking just inside the Top 20.   A jaunty two-and-a-half chord number called ‘Love Me Do’,  it hadn’t exactly created a stir, but for a while it had refused to go away and it got the Beatles their first national recognition.  

Nevertheless, to have heard of the Beatles by the beginning of January 1963, you would probably have to have been a particularly keen follower of popular music or a music industry insider.  Despite this, the Beatles released Please Please Me with some optimism,  buoyed up perhaps by George Martin’s throw away remark at the end of the recording session the previous November; ‘Boys, you’ve just made your first Number 1’.   The fact is the Beatles always thought they were the best and that success was only a matter of time. 

The song itself was a step up in sophistication from Love Me Do, although there are lots of similarities musically and lyrically.  This is the point at which it might have looked as if the Beatles career would follow a formula;  the simple chord sequence, the catchy opening harmonica riff, the two part vocal harmony.  Even the lyric is again about a young man pleading with his lover. 

In Love Me Do it is a simple plea for affection (“Love, love me do. You know I love you. So please love me do”).   Listen to the lyrics carefully and you realise the song is about a boy on the prowl (“Someone to love. Somebody new”)  but otherwise it comes across as the kind of non-threatening  stuff that in 1962 you would be happy to have your teenage daughter listen to.

In Please Please Me,  the whole theme suddenly becomes more adult (“You know you never even try, girl. Please please me, like I please you”). According to Ian MacDonald,  Capitol records in the US wouldn’t release the record partly because they thought it was about fellatio- and you have to say that although the words aren’t explicit, they don’t provide  much room for ambiguity.

Please Please Me was also cleverly equipped with an ascending chord sequence that added extra drama to the insistent pleading (“Come on, come on, come on, come on”), something that Love Me Do never got round to.  There was also an exponential increase in the chord count.  Already in their second release, you could hear that the Beatles were on a musical journey. 

While we may now think of the Beatles early output as twee and unsophisticated, it never was the case.   The band had been professional musicians for a number of years (even George, who was still only a teenager in January 1963) and they had been exposed to everything that a life on the road, a growing band of adoring girl fans and three residencies in Hamburg’s red light district could offer.  That could hardly fail to come through in the songs, with the result that the band could appeal simultaneously both to teenagers and to a slightly older, more experienced audience and, crucially, to boys as well as to girls.

The Beatles ended 1962 by finishing up at the Star Club, Hamburg and then returning to Liverpool for more dates at the Cavern and a tour of small venues around Britain during January,- venues such as the Town Hall Ballroom, Whitchurch and the Assembly Hall, Mold,  with the nightly battle through one of the worst winters on record.  Please Please Me was their first single released in the US, where it made absolutely no impression at all.   As plans for world domination go, Brian Epstein’s was getting off to a slow start.

But something about the Beatles captured the imagination. There was nothing particularly ambitious about the songs- not at this stage - but they were clever and sounded fresh; nothing great about the band in terms of musicianship, but they were tight and far more energetic than a lot of  similar outfits;  nothing particularly prepossessing about the boys- the good looking one, the drummer,  had recently been dropped in favour of  a short bloke with a big nose- but they were charming and funny and the media liked them.   The package came together during the course of 1963 and by October the term ‘Beatlemania’ had been coined.

And it may be a cliche, but the rest, as they say, is history.