The Beatles’ Please Please Me: Remaking a Classic

They sound deceptively simple, but we suspect this peculiar-sounding experiment may prove how fiendishly difficult Beatles songs can be to cover. Will Stereophonics, Joss Stone or Mick Hucknall be up to the task? Stuart Maconie will be finding out, as they join others including Graham Coxon and Squeeze masterminds Difford and Tilbrook in taking a song each and replicating the 12-hour session that produced the Fab Four’s debut album.

Celebrity fans will be explaining the enduring brilliance of the record, while a few fringe survivors from the session (no Paul or Ringo, sadly) will be reminiscing in the manner of George Martin from that sketch in ‘Big Train’. No previews were available but, if nothing else, there’ll be plenty of reflected glory to bask in as Hucknall and co try and fail to emulate everything from the ebullience of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ to the raw commitment of ‘Twist and Shout’.