There's a Place (BDJ Remix)

This song was recorded on 11 February 1963 in ten takes. There's a Place was first released as a track on Please Please Me. It's release in the US came a year later on the legendary Vee-Jay album “Introducing…The Beatles,” released on January 6th, 1964. The second US release was as a single, which wasn’t released in Britain, as the flip side to “Twist And Shout.” This single was released on the newly formed Vee-Jay subsidiary Tollie Records in late February of 1964 as a way to capitalize on their performing “Twist And Shout” on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 23rd, 1964. Although its’ A-side reached number two on the Billboard charts, “There’s A Place” charted at number 74 for the week of April 11th, 1964.

The third US release of the song occurred in August of 1964 with the re-release of the Tollie single on the Vee Jay “Oldies 45” label. The fourth release was on the Vee Jay double-album “The Beatles vs. The Four Seasons”, released on October 1st, 1964, which coupled the “Introducing…The Beatles” album with “The Golden Hits of the Four Seasons”. The fifth appearance came less than two weeks later with another repackage of the Vee Jay album under the name “Songs, Pictures And Stories Of The Fabulous Beatles”, released on October 12th, 1964. Then, it became silent and the song was not available in album form for the next 16 years........

The vocals use some complex harmonies, and there was a harmonica intro. There's the usual outrageous composition by Lennon, the verse being an unusual 15 measures long, and the bridge an unusual 10. Goes to show that the Fab 4 put considerable effort in this song. It was the first song they recorded for the LP, so they probably saw it having great - hit - potential. In the end, it ended up in a very unflattering position on the album; next to last on side two. They apparently lost interest in the song quickly thereafter. They did not perform the song during any other their national tours of 1963, nor is there any documentation of them performing the song at any other live performance apart from 3 BBC shows.

The lyrics are pretty serious for those 'Yeah yeah' times, and deal with the struggles of Lennon with Life in general. It is the earliest expression of a feeling that Lennon would use many times, which goes something like: "it's all about me (Lennon) and the world hates me"....

On Please Please Me, it was recorded in the famous Martin vocals-left/instruments-right stereo mode.

Here, we present a true stereo version, compiled from 2 different takes. This really brings out the vocal harmonies: Paul takes the lead for most of the verse sections with John singing in harmony below him. At the end of the first and third verses, Paul suddenly drops out leaving John briefly exposed by himself on lead ('when I'm alone!"), and at the end of the middle variant verse, John sings lead with a vocalese backing by Paul and George. The bridge section alternates between solo John and John and Paul in unison.

And listen to those trill-like ornaments John tacks onto the end of his phrases in the verse ! Motown artists, such as Smokey Robinson, were probably the catalyst to this vocal gimmick.

Macca's bass goes 'boom boom boom' most of the time; we forgive him for that, since he had to sing the complex vocal harmonies in real time !

Harrison plays the intro (which he flunked in several takes), an adequate rythm guitar, and sporadic vocals harmonies.

We didn't use the Hohner harmonica, but kept the guitar intro instead.