THE BEATLES
Please Please Me (1963)
Parlophone/Capitol
Produced by GEORGE MARTIN

The American fans who grew up thinking of MEET THE BEATLES! as the debut album from "England's top pop combo" haven't a clue what it truly sounds like to hear lightning strike. Of course they'd already released two singles by this point, to say nothing of their work with Tony Sheridan and a massive number of live shows, so this can't really be called a beginning, but Paul McCartney's barking count that opens "I Saw Her Standing There" could never be anything but the start of something huge.

McCartney roars through the first three lines of the song, accompanied by handclaps, John Lennon's smirking rhythm guitar and breakneck drumming from Ringo Starr, and twenty seconds in, something happens, a ruthless drum fill, and a sound that already threatened to make the rest of the world spontaneously combust becomes explosive.

From that second, the most intense, exciting debut album ever made refuses to let up. The band that cut its teeth on impossibly fierce audiences in Germany rips through fourteen songs -- a mixture of their originals and a delightful set of favorites -- as if they will never even wake up the next day to see what the future will bring. The future is just irrelevant here, and even forty years later, all you know with PLEASE PLEASE ME on the speakers is that it's not happening in 1963, it's happening now.

If WITH THE BEATLES is the album that exposes their intensity (as if this didn't do plenty of that), A HARD DAY'S NIGHT is the birth of John Lennon the genius, and BEATLES FOR SALE the moody sound of revelation, PLEASE PLEASE ME is the inside-out exploration of the group's dynamic, and their arresting spontanaeity. That an album recorded in the space of a few hours remains as remarkable as other Beatles LPs that were months in the making says enough about their effortless bombast, their assurance and their complete love for and devotion to what they did.

The personalities are already in place. Paul, with his eclectic bass-playing lighting up the proceedings, is the gruff balladeer; some of his cuts, particularly "P.S. I Love You," slow down the album a bit. He seems to be straining much more there and on "A Taste of Honey" than on "I Saw Her Standing There," which finds him cutting loose entirely.

George and Ringo don't just get by on charm, though on their vocal cuts it's all they have to work with. Ringo succeeds on "Boys" because he is charming, and because it's impossible not to feel the energy in his performance. However, Harrison is an awful singer, for certain; he caterwauls his way through the cornball "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"... yet somehow it almost plays into their legend that he isn't necessarily the best at what he's doing. He's doing it because it's what he loves... and you have to hand him this much, the guitars on that cut are damn good.

Throughout the album and, in fact, particularly on "Secret," George Martin's attentive production is nothing but an asset... and not just for his lovely piano bit on "Misery." He seems to understand precisely what it is about the group that must be captured, and throws its emphasis to the forefront. Every note feels so forceful and undoctored that even on the distant mono 1987 CD you feel as though you are in the studio. You can hear the walls and the ceiling and the floor and you can sense the pregnancy of the moment, that beginning suggested so eloquently by the opening "one, two, three, four!"

Even if George Martin is owed a great deal for how he puts all this together, and even if Paul McCartney is the most versatile band member at this stage in terms of his instrumental skills, John Lennon is undeniably the star of the album. His songwriting already displays a maturity and intelligence above and beyond his peers and even his idols, well before his discovery of Bob Dylan and well before rivals from Mick Jagger to Brian Wilson approached their peaks.

"Misery" and "Ask Me Why" destroy the ballads on the second half to such a degree one almost wonders why they weren't just placed on side two to make the upstaging less obvious. The naked emotion and honest confusion of these lyrics is remarkable, and Lennon's enigma is in place from the beginning. He already seems so observant, angry, and vocal, like the kind of person you observe from a distance in a crowded room. His singing is dynamic, and on his numbers, even the (absolutely outstanding) Shirelles cover "Baby It's You," the other Beatles are more his backing band than anything else.

As an interpreter, Lennon is immediately a force to be reckoned with, as indeed are the other three Beatles. "Anna" is an old Arthur Alexander obscurity, but John's pained, urgent vocals make it no one's but his own -- the pain belongs to him.

It's on the last two cuts, though, that Lennon truly makes his intentions known. "There's a Place" certainly may count as the most arresting and beautiful rock & roll song of the early '60s and one of the finest ever. The explosive cut is innovative both for its unstoppable, loud exuberance and for its deeply introspective lyric, and particularly for the fact that two elements are matched. The song is so splendid it could only be followed by something like "Twist & Shout," something that could raise the hackles of the most seasoned rock & roll veteran.

There is a kind of vocal in rock music, a kind exhibited frequently by the likes of James Brown and perhaps Otis Redding. There is no word for it but it occurs to an almost frightening degree when a performer is so enraptured and enclosed in the world of the song he is playing that he loses all the reins on his voice until it seems as if the song is a demon that most be exorcised from his soul.

"Twist & Shout," a rather mild Isley Brothers song, becomes in Lennon's hand a bloodcurdling, insane bullet train of beautiful noise. All the while, as John is lost more and more in the world of his voice, as his screams become less tuneful and more unworldly, the backup singing of the others retains its deadpan machismo, keeping us grounded in a world that is increasingly difficult to sense in the ripping vocal chords of the frontman. The trick would be employed later in the Velvet Underground's "I Heard Her Call My Name," but Lou Reed never sang like this. No one did.

The Beatles did not become legendary, at least initially, because they sang nifty pop songs and appealed to everyone of all ages. They became what they were because they were dangerous and dirty, Buddy Holly and Elvis and Little Richard times a thousand. PLEASE PLEASE ME is revolution in a long, dirty day.