Let me say this at the outset: if you think that the release of 14 remastered Beatles albums is some sort of marketing gimmick, think again. If you can’t hear the difference in sound quality, you’ve either never heard the original versions or you should be visiting an audiologist soon. This set of stereo remasters instantly takes its place as the holy grail of Beatles music. Nothing that has come before can possibly do for the true fan anymore.

The Popdose staff split up the duties on this project, and I was lucky enough to have first choice of what I wanted to cover. I took the first Beatles album, Please Please Me (Yes, it was the first Beatles album EMI released in England. In the U.S. the album was originally released on VeeJay Records, and was the second one that we got), the last Beatles album, Abbey Road (Yes, it was recorded last despite the fact that Let It Be was released last), and one in the middle, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, that remains a landmark recording in the history of pop music.

So let’s start from the beginning. Please Please Me features three songs that are stone cold Beatle classics, the leadoff track “I Saw Her Standing There,” the closing track “Twist and Shout,” and the title track. These are early days for the band, but they’ve put the craziness of the Hamburg days behind them, and the insanity of Beatlemania looms. If anyone tells you the Beatles weren’t really a rock band, this is as good a place to point them as any. Please Please Me finds the band with a lot of their raw energy intact.

The sound of the remastered album is revelatory. The chance to hear George’s Harrison’s guitar playing in all its crystalline beauty alone is worth the price of admission. Add the crisp sound of Ringo Starr’s drums, the rugged chugging of John Lennon’s rhythm guitar, and the vocal interplay between John and Paul McCartney, and you have an album well worth hearing. The key thing about Please Please Me though is that if you want to fully assess the Beatles as a band, charting the development of their songwriting and playing, this is where you have to start. –Ken Shane (more…)