Beatlemania and touring years (1963–1966)

Please Please Me and With The Beatles

After the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with a more emphatic reception. Released in January 1963, it reached number one on every national chart except Record Retailer, where it stalled at number two.^[46] Martin originally considered recording their debut LP live at the Cavern Club, but after deciding that the building's acoustics were inadequate he elected to simulate a "live" album with minimal production in "a single marathon session at Abbey Road".^[47] Ten songs were recorded for Please Please Me, accompanied by the four tracks already released on their two singles.^[47] Recalling how the band "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day", Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins."^[48] Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs à la Everly Brothers, à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that—to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."^[49]

Their logo was based on an impromptu sketch by instrument retailer and designer Ivor Arbiter.^[50]

Released in March 1963, the album reached number one on the top four British charts, initiating a run during which eleven of their twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through 1970 reached number one.^[51] The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit, starting an almost unbroken string of seventeen British number one singles for the band, including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six years.^[52] Released in August, the band's fourth single, "She Loves You", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks.^[53] It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was surpassed by "Mull of Kintyre", by McCartney's post-Beatles band, Wings.^[54] Their popularity brought increasing press attention, to which the band members responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied what was expected of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest.^[55]