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I was on ebay earlier and noticed a red label Parlophone copy of the single Please please me. I'm wondering whether to bid on this, does anyone know how rare a red copy is as i think they had changed to the black/silver label by this time( early 1963)?

Parlophone didn't swap over to the uniform black EMI livery until a little way into 1963. Columbia, on the other hand, had changed before Christmas 1962. I have two Columbia singles (on the black label) bought in December 1962. I suspect that the lower-volume labels (Parlophone, HMV, Liberty) stayed with the classic colour-labels until stocks were exhausted.

But I certainly remember seeing the Beatles' PPM single with the red label on sale in Philips' record shop, Kensington, Liverpool. It was released on 11th January 1963, so this would have been about a week or so later.

Not wanting to derail my own thread but was that the same Philips that recorded the Quarrymen back in 1958?

I've fancied red Parlophone label copies of Love Me Do and Please Please Me for a long time but don't have much disposable income at the moment! A quick eBay check shows that "VG" (ie. looks knackered but plays ok) copies of PPM go for around £50-60+ whereas "Excellent" ones go for well over £100. Minters would probably cost upwards of £250. I was surprised at how many seem to come up for sale (although some are the less valuable South African pressings).

Fenderman wrote:Not wanting to derail my own thread but was that the same Philips that recorded the Quarrymen back in 1958?

Absolutely.

I bought my first two records (Love Me Do and Wonderful Land) from his shop in November 1962, and quite a few others at later dates.

Of course, while I knew that he had a rudimentary recording studio in the basement, I didn't know he'd recorded the Quarrymen.

Note also that the composer credit is "McCartney-Lennon".
They switched to the standard "Lennon-McCartney" convention shortly afterwards but I don't know why this was decided, nor by whom. I could come up with loads of theories but does anyone here actually know?

I would guess any red label pressings of Please Please Me ,advertised in near mint condition, really have
to be examined in detail due to forgeries that get passed off as the original issue.
Saw an example of a Van Morrison/Them 60s LP being punted as a rare European reissue at £120,thinner vinyl
than the original Decca 60s material, and the fact many repressings of 60s vinyl appeared from Holland etc around
about 1980 would alert to not as it seemed.

Mike

The only reason I can think about the change from Mc Artney, Lennon to Lennon Mc Artney is that L comes before M and it probably sounds better

Iain_P wrote:Note also that the composer credit is "McCartney-Lennon".
They switched to the standard "Lennon-McCartney" convention shortly afterwards but I don't know why this was decided, nor by whom. I could come up with loads of theories but does anyone here actually know?

'Twas not always so.

For the 1962 pressing of Love Me Do, the order was "Lennon/McCartney":

Curiouser and curiouser!