Breakfast with Behka and The Beatles Recap: Week of May 19

Here's a look at all the songs I played on our Breakfast with Behka and the Beatles segments!

On Monday, I played "Twist and Shout".

"Twist and Shout" is a 1961 song written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns (credited as "Bert Russell"). It first became a chart hit as a cover single by The Isley Brothers. It was subsequently covered by the Beatles and released on their first album Please Please Me. Lennon was suffering from a cold, and was drinking milk and sucking on cough drops to soothe his throat. His coughing is audible on the album, as is the cold's effect on his voice. Even so, he produced a memorable vocal performance: a raucous, dynamic rocker. He later said his voice was not the same for a long time afterward, and that "every time [he] swallowed, it felt like sandpaper".

On Tuesday, I played "Glass Onion".

The song refers to several earlier Beatles songs, including "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am the Walrus", "Lady Madonna", "The Fool on the Hill" and "Fixing a Hole". The song also refers to the "Cast Iron Shore," a coastal area of south Liverpool known to local people as "The Cazzy". The song's "the Walrus was Paul" lyric is both a reference to "I Am the Walrus" and Lennon saying "something nice to Paul" in response to changes in their relationship at that time. Later, the line was interpreted as a "clue" in the "Paul is dead" urban legend that alleged McCartney died in 1966 during the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike. The line is preceded with "Well, here's another clue for you all".

On Wednesday, I played  "That Means A Lot".

This one was written by the Beatles to go on their soundtrack for the movie Help!. However, it was given to another of Brian Epstein's clients, PJ Proby, in 1965. Proby's version reached #24 on the NME chart.Prior to the release by Proby, the Beatles recorded a version that was intended for the Help! film and soundtrack. The Beatles were dissatisfied with the song and their version was not released until the Anthology 2 CD in 1996.

On Thursday, I played "Yer Blues".

This song was written by John Lennon for the White Album. He wanted to write a blues song, but was unsure if he could imitate the likes of the original blues artists he had listened to in school. In "Yer Blues", he alludes to this insecurity with a reference to the character Mr. Jones from Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man". Instead, Lennon wrote "Yer Blues" as a parody of British imitators of the blues, featuring tongue-in-cheek guitar solos and rock and roll-inspired swing blues passages.

On Friday, I played "Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite".

The inspiration to write the song was a 19th-century circus poster for Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal, Rochdale, that Lennon purchased in an antique shop. It was one of three songs from the Sgt. Pepper album that was banned from playing on the BBC, supposedly because the phrase "Henry the Horse" combined two words that were individually known as slang for heroin. Lennon denied that the song had anything to do with heroin.

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

Kitely yours,
Behka