Behka’s Breakfast with The Beatles Recap – Week of April 28

Every morning at 6:00 a.m. to begin the morning show, I play a song by my favorite band, the Beatles. I try to give you some trivia about the track and its recording, and then we all learn a little something. 

On Monday, I played "Chains".

"Chains" is a song composed by the Brill Building husband-and-wife songwriting team Gerry Goffin and Carole King and originally recorded (but not released by) The Everly Brothers. In 1962 it was a hit for Little Eva’s backing singers, The Cookies. The single by the Cookies was a popular cover song for Liverpool bands after its release in November 1962, and was included briefly in the Beatles' live sets. They recorded it on February 11, 1963 in four takes (first has been proved to be the best) for inclusion on their British debut, Please Please Me.

On Tuesday, I played "Tell Me Why".

This one is from their album A Hard Day's Night. In North America, it was released on both the American version of A Hard Day's Night and the album Something New. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, it was written by John Lennon in either Paris or New York and recorded in eight takes on 27 February 1964. Lennon described the song as resembling "a black New York girl-group song".  Its basic structure of simple doo-wop chord changes and block harmonies over a walking bass line. Paul McCartney thought the song's lyrics were written about John Lennon's relationship with his wife Cynthia.

On Wednesday, I played "Thank You Girl".

This song released as the B-side of "From Me to You", which was recorded on the same day (5 March 1963). While not released on an LP in the United Kingdom until Rarities in 1978, the single was featured as the second track on The Beatles' Second Album in the United States. As the B-side to "Do You Want to Know a Secret", it hit No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1964. Originally titled "Thank You, Little Girl", the song was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney as a tribute to the band's many female fans. McCartney said, "We knew that if we wrote a song called, 'Thank You Girl', that a lot of the girls who wrote us fan letters would take it as a genuine 'thank you'. So a lot of our songs were directly addressed to the fans."

On Thursday, I played "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

The song was written by George Harrison, first recorded by the Beatles in 1968 for their eponymous double album (also known as The White Album). The song features a lead guitar solo by Eric Clapton, although he was not formally credited on the album. Inspiration for the song came to Harrison when reading the I Ching, which, as Harrison put it, "seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else... opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental." Taking this idea of relativism to his parents’ home in northern England, Harrison committed to write a song based on the first words he saw upon opening a random book. Those words were “gently weeps”, and he immediately began writing the song. The White Album sessions were getting more acrimonious at this time, and George Harrison noted that the appearance of Eric Clapton "put everyone on their best behavior".

On Friday, I played "Ticket to Ride".

The song was written primarily by John Lennon with Paul McCartney's contributions in dispute. Lennon said that McCartney's contribution was limited to "the way Ringo played the drums". McCartney said that was an incomplete description, and that "we sat down and wrote it together... give him 60 percent of it... we sat down together and worked on that for a full three-hour songwriting session." This song was also the first song by the band in which McCartney was featured on lead guitar. While the song lyrics describe a girl "riding out of the life of the narrator", the inspiration of the title phrase is unclear. McCartney said it was "a British Railways ticket to the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight", and Lennon said it described cards indicating a clean bill of health carried by Hamburg prostitutes in the 1960s. The Beatles played in Hamburg early in their musical career, and "ride/riding" was slang for having sex.

Let me know if there's something you'd like to hear next week. Let me know here, or give me a call at 826-9210!