Marathon Beatles session re-staged

Acts such as Stereophonics and chart-topper Gabrielle Aplin are to take part in a re-staging of a mammoth famed Beatles recording session exactly 50 years on.

They will be performing tracks from a 12-hour session which formed the bulk of the Fab Four's debut album Please Please Me.

Tracks will be featured live on Radio 2 next month and will also be screened by BBC4 as part of a celebration of the album.

The Beatles recorded most of their first album Please Please Me at Abbey Road's Studio 2 in the space of a few hours on February 11 1963. The guest artists will perform the tracks in the order they were recorded on the day, beginning with There's A Place and ending with their cover of the Isley Brothers' hit Twist And Shout.

Not all the album was created that day with some tracks recorded during sessions some months earlier, including Please Please Me itself, as well as A Taste Of Honey and Ask Me Why.

One of the songs completed in the session Hold Me Tight did not make the album - it was included on next release With The Beatles. For the recreation, it will be substituted for the album's title track.

A house band will back many of the solo artists during the day, although Stereophonics will play in their own right for the event. Mick Hucknall is also taking part.

The event will be screened on BBC4 in February for a programme with the working title 12 Hours To Please Me.

It is not the first time the BBC has restaged a Beatles album. In 2007 it put together a new version of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.