Ringo Starr says The Beatles recorded debut album ‘in twelve hours’

The debut album from The Beatles took just “twelve hours”, according to drummer Ringo Starr.

Please Please Me, the first album from the legendary band, released on March 22, 1963. Though Starr claims the album took The Beatles just half a day to record, the recording sessions did, indeed, take longer than that. But the bulk of the album was reportedly finished in just one day, with The Beatles’ drummer insisting Please Please Me was completed in one session. Though it may sound unbelievable to think The Beatles recorded their fourteen-track debut in just twelve hours, the band had booked for a morning and afternoon session at EMI Studios in London. They then added an evening session to their schedule, which was dubbed by historian Mark Lewisohn as the “most productive 585 minutes in the history of recorded music”.

A breakdown of the album recording has since been shared, and Starr confirmed it took the band just twelve hours to piece together their debut effort. John Lennon, who had a cold at the time of recording, reportedly used “hot milk and throat soothers” to get through the final recording of the day, Twist and Shout. Starr noted this in his interview.

Starr explained the band were across the road and miming songs for Radio Luxembourg when they were told they could pop across the street to use the EMI recording studio.

He said: “I think we did a show. EMI used to buy time in Luxembourg, and we went down and mimed to it. They used to have, like, fifty kids in this room, but it was a live disco radio show. And I think that’s the first time it was ever on radio.

“We were doing all this playing all over the road, and they said ‘Well, you can do an album now,’ you know. So we went in and we did the album in twelve hours… because we did everything we’d been doing on the road for the last year or so, you know.”

Starr also confirmed Lennon was sick for the recording process, and that the Imagine songwriter “broke his throat” doing Twist and Shout. The drumming legend added: “…Twist And Shout was the last one, and John really does it well, but he broke his throat doing it.”

Lennon said the Twist and Shout recording nearly left him for dead. Speaking during an archival interview used for Anthology, Lennon said: “The last song nearly killed me.

“My voice wasn’t the same for a long time after; every time I swallowed, it was like sandpaper. I was always bitterly ashamed of it because I could sing it better than that, but now it doesn’t bother me. You can hear that I’m just a frantic guy doing his best.”

Long-time Beatles producer George Martin was left stunned by the quickness of the group. He said at the time: “I don’t know how they do it. We’ve been recording all day but the longer we go on the better they get.”

All songs were recorded on February 11, 1963, with the last song, Twist and Shout, chosen during a lunch break. Lennon added that the Beatles listened to a full tape playback of the album, and everyone was satisfied with how it sounded.

He added: “Waiting to hear that LP played back was one of our most worrying experiences. As it happens, we were very happy with the result.” Earlier sessions in the studio featured Pete Best on drums, and a second session featuring Starr where the band with finished their first single of the sessions, the title track.

Love Me Do was recorded on September 11, which was a surprise hit for the band and prompted Martin to suggest they write their own songs.