Behka’s Breakfast with The Beatles Recap: Week of March 17

Here's a look at all the songs I played at the beginning of the morning show on my segment, Breakfast with Behka and The Beatles. 
On Monday, I played "Happiness is a Warm Gun".

This song is on the White Album, aka The Beatles, from 1968.  It was written by John Lennon.  According to Lennon, the title came from the cover of a gun magazine that producer George Martin showed him: "I think he showed me a cover of a magazine that said 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' It was a gun magazine. I just thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something."

On Tuesday, I played "Come Together".

The song is the opening track on the album Abbey Road, and was released as a double A-sided single with "Something", their 21st single in the United Kingdom and 26th in the United States. The song reached the top of the charts in the US, and peaked at number four in the UK. The song's history began when Lennon was inspired by Timothy Leary's campaign for governor of California against Ronald Reagan, which promptly ended when Leary was sent to prison for possession of marijuana.

On Wednesday, I played "Michelle".

This one was started by Paul McCartney, with the middle eight co-written by John Lennon.
The words and style of "Michelle" have their origins in the popularity of French Left Bank culture during McCartney's Liverpool days. McCartney had gone to a party of art students where a student with a goatee and a striped T-shirt was singing a French song. He soon wrote a farcical imitation to entertain his friends that involved French-sounding groaning instead of real words. The song remained a party piece until 1965, when John Lennon suggested he rework it into a proper song for inclusion on Rubber Soul. The literal translation of the French lyrics is "These are words that go together well, very well together."

On Thursday, I played "Nowhere Man".

It was recorded on 21 and 22 October 1965, another one on Rubber Soul. "Nowhere Man" is among the very first Beatles songs to be entirely unrelated to romance or love, and marks a notable instance of Lennon's philosophically oriented songwriting. Lennon claimed that he wrote the song about himself. He wrote it after racking his brain in desperation for five hours, trying to come up with another song for Rubber Soul.

On Friday, I played "My Bonnie".

This one is a bit off kilter, it's not technically a Beatles song, but one of their first official appearances on record. My Bonnie is the name of a 1961 single, a 1962 album and a 1963 EP by Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers, better known as The Beatles. On The Beatles' first visit to Hamburg, Germany in 1960, they met rock and roller Tony Sheridan, and became friends with him. On their second visit, in 1961 (now minus Stuart Sutcliffe), The Beatles backed Sheridan in a series of stage performances.  While they recorded a number of songs together (as well as alone), few of them actually made it on to the album, with Sheridan re-recording many of them. The Beatles are known to appear on "My Bonnie" and "The Saints". The version of "Swanee River" on the album has sometimes been said to feature The Beatles, however that version is in fact not included, and it is not known whether the original recording still exists.  Either way, it's an old fashioned fifties rock track.  It's important because it's their official first record label release.

Let me know if you want to hear something next week!

Bonnie-ly yours,
Behka