The Beatles // Please Please Me: Remaking a Classic (BBC4 Documentary Review)

I'm a bit late with watching this 50th celebration anniversary documentary on the legendary Beatles album, 'Please Please Me' which was aired in February but I'm glad I finally got round to watching it.

The well known photograph taken for
the album cover is also explained in
the documentary.

This documentary gave a great insight into how the Beatles came to recording this epic LP in only one day. As I make my own music in my free time, I know how much time, effort and patience is needed to perfect the recording of one track, let alone rounding off a whole album. Of course the technology has developed and become much more complicated since the 60s but the satisfaction needed by the artist hasn't changed.

I thought it was really clever how the BBC brought a range of musicians in to Abbey Road studios, all to celebrate the same thing and each artist was shown covering a song from the LP, in track list order. I'm one of those Beatles' fans that finds it risky trying to cover a Beatles song differently to how they performed it but I was pleasantly surprised with some of the covers such as Blur's Graham Coxon's version of 'Baby it's You' (one of my personal favourites from the LP).  Slightly more upbeat than the original, Coxon's laid back indie vocals sets the gentle ballady feel of the song, which is heard in the original.

I didn't like this documentary just for the covers though, I really enjoyed hearing the stories behind each track previous to them showing the covers and I liked how it went chronologically to the times in which each track was recorded. I also learnt a few new facts about the LP such as Lennon having a cold during the recording, with a packet of fags and cough sweets by his side on the piano (ironic!).

But by far, my favourite cover was Beverley Knight's twist (no pun intended!) on the iconic track, 'Twist and Shout', although probably the most well known song from this album, it's still the one that gets to me the most with the grit to Lennon's vocals and the juicy guitar riffs, I can't help but at least tap my feet, or go full on into doing the twist when hearing it!

Knight makes this track much more like a soul song, as her vocals are clearly used to singing RnB and Soul music, but I don't feel as though she overdoes it in this cover, as many soul singers tend to do these days. She just adds pure and crispy licks to the melody where needed to make it her own, and the big note she belts out at the end is the icing on the cake!

 Hannah Jolley