The Beatles didn’t get a lot of breathing room in 1963: In February, they had to be smuggled out of a show in Carlisle in a post office van by a police sergeant disguised as a mail carrier; by November, a couple of weeks before the release of their second album, With the Beatles , a riot broke out after fans pushed a parked car into a line of police officers trying to enforce a cordon outside a show in Dublin. Though the precise coinage is still debated, the word “Beatlemania” entered the public lexicon in October; at a couple of live shows, the band reportedly stopped being able to hear their instruments over the sound of the screaming.
While the bulk of Please Please Me had been recorded in a single 13-hour session, With the Beatles...