PLEASE PLEASE ME 
Capitol Records was slow to lock up the Beatles’ recordings in this country. This allowed small American labels to release many of the band’s early singles, notably “She Loves You” b/w “I’ll Get You” on Swan Records, but also including “Please Please Me” b/w “From Me to You” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret” b/w “Thank You Girl” on Vee Jay Records, plus “Love Me Do” b/w “P.S. I Love You” and “Twist and Shout” b/w “There’s a Place” on Vee-Jay’s subsidiary Tollie Records. In fact, during that remarkable week in April 1964 when all of the top 5 songs on the Billboard singles chart were Beatles songs – in order, they were “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “Twist and Shout”, “She Loves You”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, and “Please Please Me” – just 2 were Capitol releases (#1 and #4). (January 2013) * * * Other 1970’s recordings have danced around gay issues, such as Rod Stewart’s 1976 minor hit “The Killing of Georgie” – about the murder of a gay friend of his in New York back when he was in Faces – and it was an open secret that Freddie Mercury was gay though closeted; he was the frontman of a band called Queen after all. It was many years later though before openly gay songs and performers would arrive on the popular music scene, such as British musician Tom Robinson in the late 1970’s (he collaborated with Peter Gabriel on one EP that I own), and mid-1980’s sensation Frankie Goes to Hollywood. By the way, it is interesting that the first hit songs by arguably the two most famous Liverpool rock bands – the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” – deal fairly openly with the topic of oral sex.
(March 2013)
|