The Beatles’ third Abbey Road recording session

From Wikipedia:

Concerned with Starr’s drumming, the producers hired session drummer Andy White for another attempt at recording the Beatles’ first single. In Studio 2, they recorded three songs with White drumming. The best takes of “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” were mono mixed. An unknown number of takes of “Please Please Me” were also recorded but none was used. The session tapes were later destroyed, thus there are no true stereo versions of the songs, although at least one mono recording has been discovered. Although the previous session’s version of “Love Me Do” was originally released as the single, following the release of The Beatles’ Hits EP, it was replaced with the version from this session and destroyed. “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” were mixed in duophonic “fake stereo” on 25 February 1963, in Studio 1. Although they were originally released in duophonic stereo on the stereo version of Please Please Me, the 2009 remastered stereo version contains the two songs in mono.

From Anthology 1:

One week after recording How Do You Do It the Beatles made a third visit to Abbey Road in what proved to be the final attempt at polishing off their debut single. To this end, George Martin had arranged for Andy White, a session drummer, to occupy the beat seat, which came as quite a shock to the Beatles and especially to Ringo, who had joined the group less than four weeks previously and wondered if this was a sign of things to come. As it happened, this was to be the only occasion that Ringo was replaced in such a fashion.

With so much thought already invested in Love Me Do it took very little time for the Beatles, with White, to complete a third recording. Quickly moving on, they also started and finished a re-make (following the 6 June attempt) of the song which would be issued as its B-side, Lennon-McCartney’s PS I Love You, they committed to tape a third number, Please Please Me. Believed wiped, the earliest available recording of the song re-surfaced in 1994 and is being released here for the first time. It varies from the master take in a number of ways, the most obvious being the absence of harmonica, always regarded as the released recording’s trademark feature. The lead and harmony vocals, and the drum track, also differ.

Q: Some of the history of this is that, the Beatles come into the recording studio in June of 1962 with their first drummer, Pete Best, and record a demo of the song “Love Me Do.” George Martin and I guess Ron Richards hear it and think Well, this is, you know, not very good, but maybe we can do something with this. We’ll bring in a session drummer. In the meantime the Beatles and Brian Epstein go out, get rid of Pete Best and bring in Ringo Starr. So they bring Ringo Starr into the studio in early September and do a version of “Love Me Do.” They’re still not happy, so they call out to Mr. Dependable, Andy White, to come in and do this. If you’re trying to listen to the difference, you hear different versions of “Love Me Do.” The version with Ringo is out there, in fact it was the single in the UK. But on the LP and over here it was Andy’s version. You can always tell the version with Andy because Ringo is playing tambourine on there. But something I’d never listened for and Andy told me last night, he said, “I didn’t play any hi-hat on it.”

WHITE: That’s true. I don’t know why that was that we didn’t use a hi-hat. Maybe because they knew they were going to put Ringo on tambourine. Give him space to play.

Q: But you also said that one of the things you were doing was linking up what you were doing with the bass drum to what Paul was doing on the bass.

WHITE: Yeah, yeah.

Q: And indeed that’s one of the things that distinguishes that version of “Love Me Do” from the other two.

WHITE: Absolutely.

Q: Do you remember anything of the session?

WHITE: Oh yeah.

Q: What do you remember?

WHITE: I remember Ringo coming in and seeing me setting up the drums, you know. The look on his face would’ve killed. And he’s never forgotten it, even to this day.

Q: Have you talked to him since then?

WHITE: I never talked to him at all, ever. I was involved with John and Paul that whole session because they had done the music and they’d use routines of course, so I had to learn the routines and the time was all taken up with that. I didn’t speak to George or Ringo not because I didn’t want to, but I was just too busy. And we also did a take of “Please Please Me,” which went on the first album, my version.

Q: Your version. Oh really?

WHITE: Yeah. And I like that one because that was a good arrangement, a lot of good breaks and things in it. Very good. And I know exactly that it…obviously I can tell the sound of my drums, you know, anywhere.

Q: You were playing Ludwigs and Ringo still had his old Premiers I think at that point.

WHITE: Oh yeah. A bunch of old rubbish he had. The drums are a dead give-away. Somebody at EMI said — well, they didn’t say it to me — but they said, “Oh no, Ringo did that, that ‘Please Please Me,’ that wasn’t them.” But the sound of the drums…

From In The Life Of…The Beatles: Andy White on the “Love Me Do” Session

Session activities

1. P.S. I Love You

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Takes 1-10

2. Love Me Do

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Remake. Takes 1-18

3. Please Please Me

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Unknown number of takes

   AlbumOfficially released on Anthology 1

4. P.S. I Love You

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Mixing • Mono mixing from Take 10

   AlbumOfficially released on Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You

5. Love Me Do

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Mixing • Mono mixing from Take 18

   AlbumOfficially released on Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You

Staff

Musicians

Production staff

Going further

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.