Yesterday I wrote about the first six songs on the album Please Please Me. Today I will include my thoughts on the second half of the album. But before I get to that, I want to talk about the album itself. George Martin, who would produce almost all of the Beatles albums, brought the group into the studio after having heard their Cavern Club performance. The recording was to basically be their live 1963 act. They had already recorded Love Me Do in October of 1962 and it reached number 17 on the UK charts. That song, along with seven others was an original Lennon/McCartney song. The album was rounded out with six covers (most notably the famous Twist and Shout). The entire album was recorded on one 9 hour session on a two track tape recorder. The vocals were recorded on one track and the instruments on the other. This allowed for a nice balance on the final mono mix especially in places where the music would overpower their voices. There was a stereo mix made as well, but there are very few of these remaining as stereo was a very new and niche market at the time. The album was released on March 22, 1963 in the UK on the Parlophone label and hit the top of the charts in May. It remained at the top of the UK charts for thirty weeks until it was replaced by the Beatles second album, With The Beatles. The album was not released in the US and most of the songs can be heard on the Vee-Jay Records Introducing The Beatles released in 1964, and once Capitol records took over all of the Beatles releases, they were released again on the album The Early Beatles in 1965. In 1987, the album was released on LP for the first time in the US as well as on CD. These 1987 releases were in Mono only, making the new stereo remix the first time this albums was released on CD in stereo.
Now to the rest of the songs:
Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You are in mono even on the stereo mix, so there is no comparison.
Baby Its You – Even. The vocals out of the right don’t sound so bad in the stereo mix here and the guitar is cleaner. The vocals in the center of the mono mix make this a tie.
Do You Want To Know a Secret – Stereo wins. The guitar is just so much cleaner here is makes it sound like it is right in the room with you. The vocals are out of the right, but there is a slight echo or reverb of them through the left that makes it sound good.
A Taste Of Honey – Even – Again, the vocals out of the right are balanced out with great guitar and the slight echo out of the left in the stereo. The mono sounds more together with the vocals in the center.
There’s a Place – Mono wins. Vocals in the center again make this a superior version
Twist and Shout – Mono wins, probably because this is such a well known song (and a favorite of mine). The stereo version is so foreign to what we know of this song, that I have to go with the mono.
Here are both versions of Do You Want To Know a Secret. You be the judge!
Enjoy!
Mono
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYxzswPZ_D8]
Stereo
[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc8WkNP91g]
Again, I prefer the mono here. It’s a much more coherent sound, at least played on my computer’s speakers; the mono blend is better in the instrumental background. What sticks out in stereo is the bleed into the vocal tracks from the lead guitar- sounds like George played and sang together on the track as opposed to overdubbing later.
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