"The artists who, on a snowy February morning in 2013, are re-recording the same 11 tracks..."

"... in the 12 hours it took the Fab Four to lay down the album aren't changing the world perhaps — but they are taking part in a one-off event."

In 1963, both record industry convention and time restraints dictated that The Beatles record a number of cover versions for Please Please Me (six in total) - which accounts for its low standing in the band's back catalogue.

"It's not the best Beatles album," says BBC 6 music presenter Stuart Maconie. "But it's the first Beatles album.

"It's the first album of the rock era, really. That's what people forget. It was all about singles and it was the first self-contained album and it did change the whole rock era."

The references to "Please Please Me" there — in that BBC.com article — are not the single we remember but to the album which you can buy these days in the United States but wasn't what we had back then.

In the United States, most of the songs on Please Please Me were first issued on Vee-Jay Records' Introducing... The Beatles in 1964, and subsequently on Capitol Records' The Early Beatles in 1965. Please Please Me was not released in the US until the Beatles' catalogue was standardised for CD.

Anyway, the recording of the album you probably have on CD was made on February 11, 1963, 50 years ago, yesterday.