The Beatles "Please Please Me" Parlophone ?PMC 1202 UK 4th Mono Press 1N/1N

	£		35
	$		46

The Beatles  "Please Please Me"   Parlophone  PMC 1202 Mono 4th Pressing 1963 Vinyl LP
The vinyl is in pretty good condition. Side 1 is almost unmarked and appears to have been more lightly played than Side 2, which does have a few marks. I have played the LP through (on a not-too sophisticated Dansette) and although there is a bit of noise in quieter passages, there are no hop, skip or jumps. The sleeve has seen more wear than the vinyl. The spine is intact and legible. The front (and back) has damage to the corners. To the rear the bottom seam has come away across its entire length. The printer's name is still crystal clear. There is also a (water?) mark on the back of the cover. Please see the photos.
Black and Yellow Parlophone label with silver print. The name "THE PARLOPHONE CO. LTD.(capital letters)" on the outer rim, and the "RECORDING FIRST PUBLISHED 1963" statement was not yet added. "33 1/3" was removed. The word "mono", on upper right of the front cover, is large. Aldon Music appears as Aldon Mus. on label. Ludix Music Ltd. appears as Ludix Mus. on label. 
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout): XEX-421 1N  Matrix / Runout (Side A runout): XEX-422 1N 
"Please Please Me" is the Beatles' debut studio album. Parlophone rush-released the album on 22 March 1963 in the United Kingdom to capitalise on the success of the singles "Please Please Me" (No. 1 on most lists but only No. 2 on Record Retailer) and "Love Me Do" (No. 17).
Of the album's 14 songs, eight were written by Lennon–McCartney (originally credited "McCartney–Lennon"), early evidence of what Rolling Stone later called "[their invention of] the idea of the self-contained rock band, writing their own hits and playing their own instruments." In 2012, Please Please Me was voted 39th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The norm for British 12" vinyl pop albums in 1963 was to have seven songs on each side (American albums usually had five or six songs per side) leaving producer George Martin needing only ten more tracks if he were to include the four sides of the group's first two singles: “I asked them what they had which we could record quickly, and the answer was their stage act” Martin said. He had at first contemplated recording the album live at the Cavern Club in front of the group's home audience and visited the Liverpool club on 9 December 1962 to consider the technicalities (or, as more recent scholarship indicates, on 12 December 1962.) but when time constraints intervened, he decided to book them at EMI Studios in Abbey Road and record them live there instead. Martin said, "It was a straightforward performance of their stage repertoire—a broadcast, more or less."
Initially only a morning and afternoon session were booked; the evening session was added later. Therefore, at 10:00 am on Monday, 11 February 1963, the Beatles began working their way through their live set song by song, the number of takes varying on each, and finished at 10:45 pm—less than 13 hours later— capturing in essence an authentic representation of the band's Cavern Club-era sound. The day ended with a cover of "Twist and Shout," which had to be recorded last because John Lennon had a particularly bad cold and Martin feared the throat-shredding vocal would ruin Lennon's voice for the day. This performance, caught on the first take, prompted Martin to say: "I don't know how they do it. We've been recording all day but the longer we go on the better they get." Mark Lewisohn would later write: "There can scarcely have been 585 more productive minutes in the history of recorded music" Paul McCartney double tracked his vocal on "A Taste of Honey" and Lennon added harmonica onto "There's A Place" during these sessions. Martin overdubbed piano on "Misery" and celesta on "Baby It's You" on 20 February during which the Beatles were not present.
The whole day's session cost around £400 (£10,000 as of 2016).  Martin said: "There wasn't a lot of money at Parlophone. I was working to an annual budget of £55,000." This budget had to cover all of the artists on Martin's roster. Individually, under a contract with the Musicians' Union, each Beatle collected a £7 10s (£7.50) session fee for each three-hour session.
"Please Please Me" hit the top of the UK album charts in May 1963 and remained there for 30 weeks before being replaced by "With the Beatles". This was surprising because the UK album charts at the time tended to be dominated by film soundtracks and easy listening vocalists. In a 1987 review upon its CD reissue, Rolling Stone magazine's Steve Pond recommended "Please Please Me" "for the Beatles' unfettered joy at making music".  In 2012, "Please Please Me" was voted 39th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". It was ranked first among the Beatles' early albums, and sixth of all of the Beatles' albums, with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Revolver, Rubber Soul, The Beatles (The White Album) and Abbey Road ranked higher.
Rolling Stone also placed two songs from the album on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: No. 140, "I Saw Her Standing There", and No. 186, "Please Please Me". According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh," the covers are "impressive" and the originals "astonishing.