It’s well-known folklore that the making of The Beatles’ debut album, Please Please Me, was recorded in a single day. At 14 tracks long and with a rumoured 12-hour window, that is less than one song an hour, which you don’t need to be a music fan to understand, is prolific.
But it was great as it was prolific, with a catalogue of breakout hits jam-packed into that memorable debut album. It captured the lightning in a bottle essence of a band of talented brothers brought together with the dangling carrot of stardom hanging in front of them, permitting them to get the job done.
But if you ever questioned the innate star quality of The Fab Four, then look no further than their response to being given a 12-hour window to lay down their debut. “The whole album only took a day… so it was amazingly cheap, no-messing, just a massive effort from us. But we were game,” remembered McCartney in 1988 of the experience. “We’d been to Hamburg for Christ’s sake, we’d stayed up all night, it was no big deal. We started at ten in the morning and finished at ten at night… it sounded like a working day to us! And at the end of the day, you had your album.”
So naturally, with the clock ticking and the label desperately checking their bank balance, the pressure was on the boys to deliver songs in quick succession. While many of the songs were laid down within the 45-minute slot given to each song, only one was done in one take, and it was their biggest hit.
John Lennon’s throat-shredding anthem ‘Twist and Shout’ was astonishingly recorded in just one go. Perhaps more astonishingly was the fact it was recorded at the very end of the day, when Lennon’s voice had already been stretched to its very limit and had spent the previous 12 hours fending off a cold – if you don’t believe me listen to the entirety of Please Please Me where you can hear him coughing.
But there’s a case to be made that without those turbulent circumstances, the track would never have had that signature energy, that rawness that made it one of the most compelling vocal takes of all time.
What other Beatles tracks were done in one go?
‘Twist and Shout’ remains the only Beatles original track laid down in one go. While they were indeed prolific, the band was also diligent. You don’t cement a legacy as one of the all-time greats by simply recording songs on the fly and hoping they sound halfway decent. As their careers drove into the experimental, intense care was taken over every recording to make sure it was as good as it could be.
But covers are ultimately a vehicle for fun, and the remaining evidence of their one-take recordings just goes to prove that. A year after their one-day recording epic on Please Please Me, Paul harnessed every ounce of Little Richard to perform a cover of ‘Long Tall Sally’. With producer George Martin on keys, the group did a one-take recording of the legendary song, which was released on a four-song EP in June.
The third song that was rumoured to have been recorded in one take was the band’s cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’, which appeared on the band’s Beatles For Sale album. So, as it stands, the history books tell the story that three of The Beatles’ releases were one-take wonders, but such is their genius that it wouldn’t be surprising if a story surfaced soon proving that another classic was actually done in one swift move.
