Why would you need to read a review of a Beatles' album? If you've been a fan for many years, you know exactly what you want and exactly what you're getting. If you're coming to them new, do you really want a potted history of this particular recording, locating its place in the band's development?

I don't listen to Beatles music for a cerebral or spiritual experience, nor to be able to impress anyone with the fact that I can pinpoint when and where they recorded that track - George was recovering from an in-growing toenail, Ringo had just bought a new set of drumsticks. I listen to the Beatles for the emotions I've nurtured over forty years of more. So can I convince you that my passion for a particular album or track will parallel yours? Of course not!

For me, the excitement generated by the Beatles is something I grew up with. I was thirteen when they had their first hit. The first records I ever bought were by the Beatles. I joined the Fan Club. I covered my walls in photos. I was threatened with expulsion from school because of the length of my hair. I even managed, as a teenager in a small Scottish town, to obtain copies of 'Merseybeat' - the Liverpool music paper. It says something about the dynamism of the 60's that Liverpool could have its own music paper (this was way before desktop publishing, the Internet, etc.).

"Please Please Me" was released in March, 1963, and was the Beatles first album ("With the Beatles" would follow). Inspired by the title song reaching number one in the charts, the LP was famously based on their current stage act - compare and contrast these studio recordings with the live version available on the unofficial, "Live at the Star Club" offerings.

These were the days when bands played live: they grew up on the circuit, playing pubs, clubs, and dives, hoping to establish enough of a fan base to secure a recording contract ... and a chance to record someone else's song, maybe cover an already successful US hit.

But the Beatles broke out of this restrictive process. "Please Please Me" combines cover versions of standards with numbers written by Lennon and McCartney, and marks their growing confidence as songwriters.

That was the dynamic attraction of the Beatles. Their music was - remains - raw and exciting. There was something liberating about it. Here were ordinary lads from Liverpool who could write their own stuff, not depend on professional songwriters to grind out hits for them. There was an immediacy about their words. This was the decade when the first working class kids were making their way to university. It was an age of sensed meritocracy and upward mobility. The Beatles were flying the banner for the triumph of talent over elitism, for the victory of regional accents over the sterile BBC English we were normally fed. And the Beatles had seized the baton from the USA and were now setting the cultural initiative for the rest of the world to follow.

And I knew all this at school. My mother sent me to an all boys school. I'd noticed girls. There were a couple I passed every morning who I really noticed. But I'd never talked to one! And here were the Beatles. You could imagine dancing with some mini skirted lassie in the sweaty din of the Cavern Club. These were songs of love and lust, of energy and passion, of time and place.

That's the significance of Beatles music. For a generation, it changed their world. For the future of pop, it set new standards and directions. And for the individual, it established patterns of memories and emotions which are still alive to this day.

The music of the Beatles inscribes a unique history for every fan. Songs which you associate with someone or somewhere special, songs you associate with laughter, pain, love, despair, loss or triumph, songs which provide the punctuation marks to your own life's narrative. Few other artists have come close to this.

"Please Please Me" established a yardstick for the quality of recording: here are songs which have a beat, which are well sung and provide dynamic bass lines, but they are also songs with passion and depth, songs which elevate your spirits and make you feel positive. Still melodically simple, but embodying a universal sentiment, the songs on "Please Please Me" lack artifice or pretence that they are by anyone else but the Beatles. This is assertive music, music with personality. And it's timeless.

Recorded in a mammoth 24 hour recording session, Please Please Me introduced the world to those 'loveable' moptops. The amazing thing is that 4 years later they were 'grinding' (sgt)pepper which took over 6 months to record. Essentially an album of their live set, please please me took the pop world and turned it on its head. My personal favourite is Twist and Shout which was deliberately recorded last (lennon wanted his voice raw) and stands out as one of the best cover versions of a song..however 'I saw here standing there' by McCartney IS one of the greatest Rock N Roll songs ever released.

Without a doubt one of the greatest rock n roll albums ever made.

So, it all started here: the best band in the business, the best songwriters and the best series of pop/rock albums ever.

While the record has its share of less memorable songs (I can't stand PS I Love You) it has a freshness, energy and sheer feeling which you can still get from it at the umpteenth hearing.

There are some tough edges from the Hamburg days, in particular, George's guitar playing and John's singing on Twist and Shout, but the album is much more refined that the Hamburg tapes which were (badly) recorded a few months before this LP.

From I Saw Her Standing There - one of the all time best album openers - to John's attack to Twist and Shout, the album is a treat. It shows The Beatles' love for covering great songs (Baby It's You,Chains, Twist and Shout) and their rapidly developing songwriting (Please Please Me, There's a Place).

The sound, as with all the band's early records, is a bit strange in stereo, with the instruments basically out of one channel and the vocals from the other. The CD age didn't do the record many favours, either, with a less 'warm' presence than my old mono LPs and the clarity of the sound drawing on'e attention to the odd fluff. But then, it was recorded in just a few hours.

Not their 'best album', but essential.

I defy anyone not to love this album for the sheer verve, gusto and panache of the delivery, not to mention the fervent optimism and freshness of the sound and many of the lyrics. Of the Lennon & McCartney compositions, four are compelling ('I Saw Her Standing There', 'Love Me Do', 'Do You Want to Know a Secret?' and the absolutely stunning title track, which is sadly underrated these days). The other four ('Misery', 'Ask Me Why', 'P.S. I Love You' and 'There's a Place') are all period curios with a certain insouciant charm which means they are never dull to listen to, if not exactly destined to live long in the memory. Of the six cover versions, there is only one real dud ('Boys', sung only adequately by Ringo), whilst 'Anna (Go to Him)', 'Baby It's You' and the incomparable 'Twist and Shout' are all sensational. Listening to this LP and comparing it with the often indifferent recordings made of the band in the run up to them winning their Parlophone recording deal in 1962, it is clear just what a magnificent foil Sir George Martin was for The Beatles - he brings the immediacy and variety of the band's work right into your living room with a whoosh, and truly merits the epithet 'the fifth Beatle'. Of all the early albums (up to and including 'Help!'), this one is definitely my favourite for its infectious energy and the sheer variety of the songs and musical styles. To release such an album in the spring of 1963 showed admirable guts and self-belief on the part of all concerned. Sublime.

My sister brought home the 'Twist And Shout' EP and we played it to death. She carried on buying Beatles records until John went, in her words, 'all Yoko'. I suppose that's a reminder that, to some extent, The Beatles started out like a 'boyband' and, to be honest, most of their early lyrics were just variations on 'Love Me Do'. But when your earliest memories include this music, nothing else competes. There's a lot of great music out there by other artists, but The Beatles were 'It' from the day they made this.

The album is about thirty-two minutes long and nearly half the songs are covers, while the technology sounds as if it consisted largely of rubber bands. Yet The Beatles, even at this tentative, early stage, display an ability to engage you like nobody else. They were sometimes guilty of dreadful taste, as on the woo-woo-wooing of 'Ask Me Why', but there are so many moments when they take you to another plane. Paul McCartney even says '1-2-3-4' better than anyone else. How can you not be lifted skyward by the exuberance of the laddish 'I Saw Her Standing There' or 'Boys'? This is The Beatles' original agenda: their own localised brand of rock 'n' roll, inspired by teenhood American heroes such as Little Richard. The sexual, near hysteria of 'Twist And Shout' falls into the same bracket.

There are some lesser-known diamonds here too: 'There's A Place' typifies the successful marriage of great melody and divine harmony; likewise 'P.S. I Love You', though it's a bit sugary in content; 'Misery' is another highly-melodic song; best of all perhaps, the teasing 'Do You Wanna Know A Secret?' The debut single, 'Love Me Do' seems horribly simple at first, but that loping harmonica line helps turn it into an irresistible northern blues. You can almost taste the fog and smoke. The title track, of course, opened it all up for the band.

The covers vary in quality. The aforementioned 'Boys' and 'Twist And Shout' are superb, although, like the milder 'Baby It's You', the former was a girl band song. 'A Taste Of Honey' is worth a mention too, with its beautifully-executed close harmony arrangement.

Sure, I'm biased. But whatever fans of other recording artists say, I believe there are five star albums and there are Beatles albums. Peerless.