John and Paul at the piano.

For the letter P, I am going to start at the very beginning, as it were, or very close to the very beginning, with a double P song, “Please Please Me.” This was the Beatles’ second single in the UK, but in the U.S., no one paid much attention to it at the time. It is an innovative and remarkable record and worth talking about at some length. Among the many interesting facts is how this record came to be.

“Please Please Me” was originally written at a much slower tempo than that of the finished record we know and love. When John wrote the song, it was almost ballad-like; John later recalled that he was inspired by a Roy Orbison song. “I remember the day and the pink coverlet on the bed,” he recalled, “and I heard Roy Orbison doing ‘Only the Lonely’ or something.” And that inspired him to write this lovely song, “Please Please Me,” in a sad mode. But George Martin had a different idea. “I think it would be better speeded up,” he said, and when the Beatles played it that way, they instantly agreed. And that is how they cut the record. If John was originally using “Only the Lonely” as his archetype, that would be a tempo change from the Roy Orbison tempo of about 122 bpm (beats per minute) to the final “Please Please Me” tempo of about 140 bpm—a significant increase and one that makes the final arrangement work brilliantly. George Martin was right. There is great playing from the whole band, including Ringo at his creative best. The way he plays that elegant little rolling snare phrase on each of the background vocal “Come on” responses is beautifully bouncy, and his fill into the bridge (three little one-beat mini-fills, the first played on the snare and the second and third on the tom-tom) is a masterpiece of restraint and precision but takes the song exactly where it needs to go.

“Only the Lonely” may not have been the only classic record which inspired or influenced the creation of “Please Please Me.” I am convinced that the vocal arrangement was influenced by “Cathy’s Clown,” written and recorded by the Everly Brothers. At the beginning of that wonderful record, Don and Phil sing “Don’t want your love” in unison but on the word “love” the high part stays on a single note while the low part descends away from it: Don goes down while Phil stays where he is. That makes for a beautiful musical moment, and I have no doubt that John and Paul admired it as much as I do. At the opening of “Please Please Me,” John and Paul start on the same note, but John sings the quarter-note descending melody of the song (“Last night I said these words to my girl”) while Paul stays up on the original note—an E, as it happens—all the way through the whole line, thus creating a very catchy descending cadence effect which is the heart of the song.

I certainly do not mean to suggest that “Please Please Me” is anything less than a wholly original song—this is just an exchange of ideas. When a record sounds really good, one takes the trouble to listen and to analyze—to figure out how it was done and why it sounds so delicious. The Beatles certainly did this to the music of their idols—and everyone has done it to the Beatles!

“Please Please Me” was also the title track of the Beatles’ first album, the one with that very cool picture of them peering down from the staircase in the EMI Records building on Manchester Square. Those stairs are no longer there (the whole building was demolished), though I once read that some piece of the iconic stairwell was saved, but I have never noticed it when I have visited EMI’s new building. Perhaps it is hidden away. Back then, of course, EMI House was the place to be—as soon as Gordon Waller and I had our own record deal with the same label, we were thrilled to be there. That was where our meetings took place and so on, that was the headquarters of everything, and that’s where the Beatles posed for that famous picture. Actually, quite a number of photo shoots were done in and around the building—and even in the little garden that is at the centre of Manchester Square itself. A cheap and convenient location made legendary and iconic by the magic of the Beatles.

The album Please Please Me has so many great tracks on it—one of which is a P song which takes us even closer to the beginning of the band itself: “P.S. I Love You,” which was released in the UK in October 1962 as the B-side of “Love Me Do,” their very first record. It was produced by Ron Richards, not George Martin. I am not sure why George was not there himself, but the staff producers at EMI certainly thought of themselves as a team, and it would not have been unusual for George to give Ron some advance guidance as to what he wanted to achieve and leave the session to him to get it done. This was also the session for which Ringo arrived only to find a session drummer (Andy White) had taken over his role in the studio. Andy played drums on “Love Me Do,” and Ringo shared percussion duties with Andy on “P.S. I Love You,” no doubt a difficult (and, in retrospect, wholly unnecessary) moment for all concerned. Andy was a fine drummer, but no one now has the slightest doubt as to Ringo’s brilliance and his extraordinary importance to the very essence and history of rock and roll drumming.

As with so many Beatles tracks, there are a few particularly distinctive elements which elevate the song and the record from being very good to being uniquely brilliant. On the “you” of “P.S. I love you,” instead or returning to the tonic D chord your brain is expecting, the song makes a quick diversion to a B-flat chord and makes you wait two bars for delicious resolution. And Paul’s descant part late in the song (“You know I want you to remember”) is sublime.

John gave Paul all the credit for this song, saying that Paul was trying to write a letter song like “Soldier Boy,” by the Shirelles. Paul wrote “P.S. I Love You” in Germany, on the way to or from Hamburg. The idea of a letter song was not new, of course; such songs have been around a long time. There was even an old song with the title “P.S. I Love You.” Ron Richards said that he didn’t think the Beatles’ “P.S. I Love You” could or should be a single, in part because of this preexisting hit record. But that version was from a long time ago. Rudy Vallee recorded the song sometime in the 1930s. It is not a bad song and worth listening to if you are curious, as I was. The earlier version of “P.S. I Love You,” performed by Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees, was not (of course) written by Lennon & McCartney but rather by the very distinguished songwriting team of Johnny Mercer (lyrics) & Gordon Jenkins (music), which leads us to an unexpected coincidence. Gordon Jenkins subsequently wrote the beautiful string and orchestral arrangements for Harry Nilsson’s album of standards, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, an album which each of the Beatles admired and loved. A strange and interesting connection.

The letter P also takes us beyond the Beatles’ breakup to what I think is one of the best records and best-written songs that any individual Beatle ever did beginning with P. This is Ringo’s song “Photograph,” which was written by George Harrison and Ringo himself. The song was recorded in Los Angeles, produced by my friend Richard Perry and engineered by Bill Schnee, a legendary and highly skilled recording engineer. And it does sound extraordinarily good. Great band, great vocal by Ringo, and a huge hit.

Ringo also sang it at the “Concert for George,” a performance which was one of the emotional highlights of that event given the nature of the song and that it was sung so recently after George had left us. A couple of additional credits I should throw in because they are important: Bobby Keys played that cool saxophone solo, and the orchestra was arranged by Jack Nitzsche. I don’t know if you know who Jack is, but he did a lot of work with Phil Spector. The Wall of Sound was as much his invention as Phil’s, and he deserves appropriate credit. He is a terrific arranger, and he did excellent work on “Photograph.”

I cannot mention Phil Spector—another P—without spending some time talking about his work with the Beatles. Phil was one of the great geniuses of the record business, produced some of the finest records in the history of rock and roll, but also was (and presumably still is) mad as a hatter and usually heavily armed—though I must assume the latter attribute no longer possible since he is incarcerated. I met him a couple of times, and it was an intimidating and scary experience, most notably at a Linda Ronstadt concert at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. Linda, with whom I was working as producer and manager at the time, knew Phil better than I did. I was the one saying, “Oh, we should let him come backstage and visit us after the show.” I was a huge fan, and Phil was a legend. But she responded, “No, no, don’t! He’ll have guns; he’ll have crazy people. I’ve met him, and he is mad!” I thought she was overreacting, so he did come backstage, and oh my God, it was terrifying. He leapt out of this huge car with various bodyguards and holding clearly visible large and dangerous weapons. Linda very sensibly ran away and hid in her dressing room, and I had to get rid of him with the help of the people at the Universal Amphitheatre. But anyway, apart from that (and the fact that he eventually did murder someone), he was a nice enough chap, I guess, and certainly made some truly incredible records. My favourite Phil Spector production, strangely enough, was a huge hit in the UK but not a big hit in America, which I never understood because it is an amazing record. That is “River Deep—Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner. A true masterpiece of arrangement and production. An extraordinary song written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich along with Spector, with a stunning vocal from Tina Turner. (Ike was included in the credits but was paid to stay away.) I consider “River Deep—Mountain High” to be the greatest possible example of Phil’s genius—his Sistine Chapel, his Mona Lisa, his Four Seasons, his Messiah—record production as high art and commercial success at the same time.

Phil Spector (along with Jack Nitzsche, of course) created the Wall of Sound, the essence of which was having an astonishing number of first-rate musicians in the band, several of them often grouped together on the same part, to create this gigantic sound. It had a very powerful effect on listeners and led to a string of hit records. Phil was a genius of a record producer, and some records he made during that period have become classics that producers all agree are some of the best-made, best-sounding, most revolutionary records ever.

Phil came into the Beatles’ lives to salvage the 1969 “Get Back” sessions and turn them into the Let It Be album, in many cases without much input from the Beatles themselves. I’ve already written about his adding an orchestra to “The Long and Winding Road,” and he put his stamp on the rest of the project as well. Even though Paul was unhappy with Phil’s additions, the other Beatles continued to work with him after the band broke up. Phil produced George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and John Lennon’s “Instant Karma!” He and John became friends for a while until he drove even John crazy—Phil was at least as unpredictable and infuriating as he was brilliant.

But as we all know, the Beatles—together or individually—did not need Phil Spector to make hit records, beginning with P or any other letter. In 1966 and 1967 they saw two of their P songs climb the charts, both of them Paul songs. One was about one of Paul’s fictitious but richly imagined characters, the unnamed but certainly eager “Paperback Writer.” Again, a perfect record. I could dissect it in detail—but allow me to suggest something else. You already know the whole record and you love it. So next time you listen to it, concentrate on one part at a time. Listen to the background vocal arrangement. Listen to the electric guitar lick. Listen to the unstoppable groove of Paul and Ringo as a rhythm section.

One of the curious things about “Paperback Writer” is that it is the only tune that the Beatles ever did live on Top of the Pops, which was, as you may know, a huge weekly television show in England that continued to exist until relatively recently. It was the show on which every band appeared, with the solitary exception of Led Zeppelin. If you had a hit single, you did Top of the Pops. Generally, you did it as a live broadcast, unless you were the Beatles, who were permitted to make videos and send them in to be broadcast. The one exception, apparently, was “Paperback Writer.”

Top of the Pops used to be broadcast live from Manchester on Thursday nights, and it was a very exciting process because you had to wait in a state of anticipation until Monday when that week’s top forty was published. If your record had entered the charts or made an upwards move, you knew you would be doing Top of the Pops on Thursday. You’d get a train up to Manchester in the morning, appear live on Top of the Pops, and then the great thing was that you could then go out clubbing that night. And I mean, how could you fail to have a great night? You were out and about in Manchester having just been seen by everyone on live television, singing your hit, and you would walk into some cool club where they were playing records (sometimes even including yours), and there would be lots of charming girls anxious to dance with you at the very least. So, it was always fun and something to look forward to. The BBC later moved Top of the Pops down to London, and it eventually became a taped show, not a live show, so all that instant fun disappeared. But we had a great time in Manchester back in the day, staying in the dowdy Victorian elegance of the old Midland Hotel.

I also read recently that the BBC’s tapes of the Beatles performing “Paperback Writer” live on Top of the Pops were reused to save money, so there is a silent amateur video of the broadcast, which is both sad and pathetic. “Paperback Writer” went to No. 1 in the U.S. a little later but in an odd way. It topped the charts for two weeks, but they were not consecutive weeks. The song was No. 1, then it was knocked off by a very good record by a very good singer, and then that record in turn dipped down a bit, and “Paperback Writer” went back to No. 1. Who was this mysterious interloper? A man by the name of Frank Sinatra, with a record called “Strangers in the Night.” Two generations of excellence, sharing the top of the charts.

The second of Paul’s hit songs in the letter P category also features imaginary characters, but they inhabit a real place: Liverpool’s Penny Lane. The barber, the banker, the fireman, and the nurse were all ordinary people from the Beatles’ hometown, and in the space of a few notes and a few words, Paul brings them to life. The song features a wonderful trumpet solo, on a Bach trumpet (also called a piccolo trumpet), which plays in a higher register than an ordinary trumpet.

When I was writing about the letter O, I spent some time discussing the oboe because I like to throw a few musical instruments as well as songs and people into our alphabetical journey. So now I would like to turn our thoughts to the most prominent P instrument, the piano. The piano is incredibly important to every musician. Almost every one of them, amateur or professional and regardless of whatever else they play, can tinkle away a few chords and notes on the piano, and it is often the primary instrument of songwriters, composers, and arrangers. That said, it is a relatively new instrument. The piano—or to give it its full name, the pianoforte—was invented for a particular reason. Up until about the middle of the eighteenth century, the main keyboard instrument available for personal use was the harpsichord.

The harpsichord sounds really cool, with a jangly, pointed sound. One of the best uses of a harpsichord in a Beatles song was when George Martin played it on “Fixing a Hole.” When you listen to George Martin on the harpsichord, you can hear that it has a very specific and distinctive tone. When you press a key on a harpsichord, what you are actually doing is lifting a little kind of pick under the string, until you apply enough pressure and suddenly, ping, it plucks the string, just as a pick does when you use one to play the guitar. The string then makes a fixed percussive sound, but it has only one volume level. Whether you press a key hard or soft, the strength and volume of the note produced is the same. This gives an almost mechanical consistency to all the notes you play.

The problem was that musicians could not play sensitively and softly on the harpsichord—they could not play with dynamics. They wanted an instrument that could go from soft to loud, or in Italian from piano to forte. And so, they invented an instrument to do this. Instead of plucking the string with a pick, the new pianoforte hit it with a hammer. That way, if you hit the key softly, the hammer hits the string softly and plays the note quietly. If you bang the key hard, if you Jerry Lee Lewis on it, it plays it loud. And that is what was revolutionary about the piano and why it is the most used keyboard by far, even in the age of electronic keyboards—it is incredibly and uniquely responsive. P for piano leads us to a great variety of songs. I must first acknowledge one legendary John Lennon piano song. You know what it is. He wrote it on the piano. There is a video of him playing that beautiful white piano. It is a song that has been covered many, many times. It is a masterpiece. It is “Imagine.” Listen to it again, if you haven’t done so recently. You will be glad you did.

There are many Paul piano songs but I realize I have already told you about the best of them. The letter L was particularly rich in such songs, with “Lady Madonna,” “Let It Be,” and “Lovely Rita.” And there are many others as well, like “Martha My Dear” and “Good Day Sunshine”—on the latter of which George Martin played the piano part, as he also did on John’s song “In My Life.”

Before we leave the letter P behind, I’d like to include one last song in our piano discussion. Mysteriously, on the recorded version of this song there actually is no piano. Paul does not play piano on the record. No one does. However, the song is inextricably linked in my mind to a particular piano and will be so forever. I have told the story before, so I shall not repeat it here. Suffice it to say that even though the song is perfect for guitars, I still hear in my head that miraculous and astonishing piano and vocal duet version I heard in my family’s basement music room all those decades ago of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”