Behka’s Breakfast with The Beatles Recap: Week of June 9

Every morning at 6:00 a.m. I start the morning show by playing a song by my favorite band, The Beatles.  I try to tell you a little bit about each song, too.  Some of you don't get up that early, though - so here's my weekly rundown of all the songs I played this week. 

On Monday, I played "Misery".

In February 1963, Helen Shapiro was Britain's most successful female singer (having first achieved chart success two years earlier at the age of 14) and The Beatles were fifth on the bill as part of her nationwide tour of the United Kingdom. Her artist and repertoire manager, Norrie Paramor, was looking for new material for a country and western album she planned to record in Nashville, Tennessee and suggested that the Beatles compose a song especially for her. "Misery" was started backstage before The Beatles' performance at the King's Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, on 26 January 1963, and later completed at Paul McCartney's Forthlin Road home. When the Beatles needed original material for their Please Please Me LP they recorded it themselves. It was credited to McCartney and Lennon in that order, as were all other Lennon & McCartney originals on the Please Please Me album. The songwriting credit was changed to what would become the more familiar "Lennon–McCartney" for their second album, With the Beatles.

On Tuesday, I played "Your Mother Should Know".

This song was on Magical Mystery Tour and was written by Paul McCartney. It was based on a line from the screenplay for A Taste of Honey. McCartney said he wrote it as a production number for the movie Magical Mystery Tour, supporting an old-fashioned dance segment that starts with the Beatles coming down a grand staircase in white tuxedoes. After they descend, Boy Scouts, RAF cadets and other groups march through. John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are wearing red carnations, while McCartney's is black. The carnation difference contributed to the "Paul is dead" controversy.

On Wednesday, I played "Please Mr. Postman".

"Please Mr. Postman" is the debut single by The Marvelettes for the Tamla (Motown) label, notable as the first Motown song to reach the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart. The Beatles included "Please Mister Postman" as part of their live act in 1962, performing it regularly at the Cavern Club. By the time it was recorded for their second album, With The Beatles, it had been dropped from their set, and required some work in the studio to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

On Thursday, I played "Because".

This song was written by John Lennon and recorded for the Abbey Road album. The song begins with a distinctive electric harpsichord intro played by producer George Martin. The harpsichord is joined by Lennon's guitar (mimicking the harpsichord line) played through a Leslie speaker. Then vocals and bass guitar enter. According to Lennon, the song's close musical resemblance to the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata was no coincidence: "Yoko was playing Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano ... I said, 'Can you play those chords backwards?', and wrote 'Because' around them. The lyrics speak for themselves ... No imagery, no obscure references."
"Because" was one of few Beatles recordings to feature a Moog synthesizer, played by George Harrison.

On Friday, I played "You Like Me Too Much".

There is an introduction using piano and electric piano, with Paul McCartney and George Martin playing two different piano parts on separate ends of the same Steinway grand piano. The Steinway appears only in the song's intro and was overdubbed separately, as were McCartney's bass and Harrison's vocal overdubs. The electric piano is a Hohner Pianet, played by John Lennon, and you can hear the instrument's tremolo being switched off after the intro. The piano introduction was later used by Bob Dylan for his song "Temporary Like Achilles".

Let me know if there's something you'd like to hear on the segment. We'll start up again on Monday at 6:00 a.m.!

Overdubbingly yours,
Behka