Behka’s Breakfast with The Beatles Recap: Week of August 11

Every day I start the morning show by playing a song from my favorite band, The Beatles.  I try to share a little relevant information about the songs, and hopefully we'll all learn something. On Monday, I played "In Spite of All the Danger".

"In Spite of All the Danger" is one of the first songs recorded by the Quarrymen, then composed of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, pianist John Lowe and drummer Colin Hanton. The song was written by McCartney and Harrison and is the only song to credit the two alone. It is believed to have been recorded on Saturday 12 July 1958 (three days before Lennon's mother's death). However, that recording date is disputed by the group. The recording was made at Percy Phillips' home studio in Liverpool, and cost 17 shillings and six pence (87.5p, about $2).

On Tuesday, I played "Sie Liebt Dich".

The German sub-label of EMI, Odeon Records, persuaded George Martin and Brian Epstein, insisting that the Beatles "should record their biggest songs in German so that they could sell more records there." Martin agreed to the proposal, and convinced the Beatles to comply, which resulted in this version of "She Loves You". In their only recording session outside the United Kingdom, the Beatles recorded Paul McCartney's new song "Can't Buy Me Love", and the German versions of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You", "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" and "Sie Liebt Dich", respectively, on 29 January 1964 at EMI's Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. The recording session was scheduled for 27 January, but the Beatles were reluctant to attend it.

On Wednesday, I played "Wild Honey Pie".

McCartney is the sole performer on the recording. John Lennon and Ringo Starr were working on other White Album songs, and George Harrison was on holiday in Greece. McCartney said of this song: "We were in an experimental mode, and so I said, 'Can I just make something up?' I started off with the guitar and did a multitracking experiment in the control room or maybe in the little room next door. It was very home-made; it wasn't a big production at all. I just made up this short piece and I multitracked a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and built it up sculpturally with a lot of vibrato on the strings, really pulling the strings madly. Hence, 'Wild Honey Pie', which was a reference to the other song I had written called 'Honey Pie'." According to McCartney the song might have been excluded from The Beatles album, but Pattie Boyd "liked it very much so we decided to leave it on the album."

On Thursday, I played "You Never Give Me Your Money".

The song was written by McCartney when he was staying with new wife Linda in New York in March 1969, shortly after the Get Back sessions that ultimately resulted in Let It Be. John Lennon and McCartney were at risk of losing overall control of Northern Songs, the company that published their songs, after ATV Music bought a majority share. McCartney had been largely responsible for the group's direction and projects since the death of manager Brian Epstein in 1967, but began to realize that the group dynamic of the Beatles was coming to an end. He was particularly unhappy at the others wanting to draft in manager Allen Klein to help sort out their finances. McCartney later said that the song was written with Klein in mind, saying "it's basically a song about no faith in the person". He added that the line "One sweet dream, pack up the bags, get in the limousine" was based on his trips in the country with Linda to get away from the tense atmosphere with the Beatles.

On Friday, I played "Only a Northern Song".

Harrison himself described the song as "a joke relating to Liverpool, Holy City in the North of England. In addition the song was copyrighted to Northern Songs Ltd. which I didn't own."   Northern Songs was a music publishing company formed in 1963 primarily to put out Lennon–McCartney compositions. The company had subsequently been floated in 1965, but while Lennon and McCartney each owned 15% of the public company's shares, Harrison owned only 0.8%. Harrison was contracted by Northern Songs as a songwriter only, and because Northern Songs retained the copyright of its published songs, this meant "Lennon and McCartney, as major shareholders, would earn more from his [Harrison's] songs than him." Hence the song's "mild dissonance" and "nasally sarcastic" key-changes have been said to complement the "suppressed bitterness" of Harrison's lyric, which features such self-referential lines as: "It doesn't really matter what chords I play/What words I say or time of day it is/As it's only a Northern Song."

As well as reflecting Harrison's dissatisfaction with Northern Songs, and its major shareholder Dick James in particular – "I was starting to get a bit of an idea that ... you'd only written half a song and he [James] would be trying to assign it" – the song also suggests that, at this time, Harrison "had yet to recover his enthusiasm for being a Beatle", having threatened to leave the group six months earlier, following their final live concert at Candlestick Park.  This song was considered one of the "throwaway" tunes included on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

Well, that's it. I'll start up again next week on Monday morning at 6:00 a.m. Let me know if there's something you want to hear then!

Northernly yours,
Behka