BLASTS FROM THE PAST, PART DEUX: The Beatles released their first LP, Please Please Me 55 years ago today: The Beatles’ Marathon Please Please Me Session, Hour by Hour.

The sessions wrapped just after 10:45 p.m., and the following night the Beatles were back out on the road. The venture had cost the record label just £400 (about $11,000 in 2018). “There wasn’t a lot of money at Parlophone,” Martin admitted. “I was working to an annual budget of £55,000.” It took the band just under 10 hours of studio time to record the bulk of their first album, released on March 22nd, 1963, as Please Please Me. As Harrison wryly observed decades later: “The second one took even longer.”

Heh, indeed.™