Please Mister Postman

The Beatles were big fans of American girl groups, particularly those that appeared on the Motown label.  Whenever they were searching for new material for their stage act, they had no problem in adapting songs from these groups, simply flipping the pronouns as necessary.  This song by the Marvelettes was Motown's first number one record, a feat achieved in December of 1961.  The Beatles were the first Liverpool group to discover it, quickly learn it and make it their own.

When they appeared on BBC Radio for the very first time in March of 1962 on the program Teenager's Turn - Here We Go, Please Mister Postman was one of three songs they chose for the broadcast.  John, Paul, George and Pete played in front of a live studio audience in Manchester, wearing their new suits for the occasion - another first.  They continued performing the song throughout that year in Liverpool and in Hamburg, but once their recording career began, it was dropped from their act along with most other cover versions of other people's songs, as they tended to feature more and more Lennon/McCartney compositions.

Many of those "oldies" resurfaced, however, as they became regulars on BBC Radio programs.  When they were offered their own series Pop Go the Beatles, they made a concerted effort to treat their fans to the songs they loved from the acts that had influenced them and their sound.  Thus it was that on July 10th, 1963, they revisited this Motown favorite from the previous year.  This performance, available on the release On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2, is relatively tame compared to the recording they would make only a few weeks later.  It has a four-note descending guitar phrase at the top and a tidy ending, neither of which appear on the official recording.  John is also a bit unfamiliar with some of the lyrics, not having sung the song for several months.

With the song fresh in mind, they reported to the second session for their second album on July 30th.  Initially, they played it as they had on Pop Go the Beatles.  By take seven, the intro was merely a tap on the hi-hat from Ringo, the tempo was brisk, and John was singing with desperation in his voice over strong backing vocals from Paul and George.  Another new touch were two breaks by the band toward the end of the number, adding to the breathless excitement of the track.  The only overdub deemed necessary was for John to double-track his brilliant lead vocal.

Producer George Martin placed Please Mister Postman as the last track on side one of the album With the Beatles.  Capitol Records in the US decided to withhold it along with the group's other Motown covers from Meet the Beatles!, preferring to highlight their self-penned numbers on that album.  Instead, the covers were all included on The Beatles' Second Album released in April of 1964.  Yet, some American fans were already familiar with the recording, because Capitol of Canada had released it as the B-side of the single Roll Over Beethoven back in December of '63, and copies of that single had been available in the US as an import.

Capitol Records in the US belatedly recognized the popularity of the four songs available on Canadian singles (the other single was All My Loving b/w This Boy), and combined them on an EP titled Four by the Beatles, released on May 11th, 1964.  Since all four songs had already appeared on American albums, the EP only hit number ninety-two on the Billboard chart.

Despite the terrific recorded version, the group played the song just a handful of times afterwards, including a mimed performance on the TV show Big Night Out on February 23rd, 1964, only a day after their return from America, and later that same week for their BBC Radio program From Us to You, recorded on February 28th.

Piggies

The sessions for the double album The Beatles lasted almost five months - from the end of May to late October in 1968.  Thirty four songs were recorded in that time, including five by George Harrison, but he had to wait until the midpoint of those sessions before his bandmates finally turned their attention to one of his compositions.  Ironically, that composition - Not Guilty - did not even make the final cut for the album.

The satirical Piggies was the third Harrisong to be recorded by the Beatles for the "White Album."  It was among the many that the group put on tape at George's house back in May before the official sessions began.  Unlike most of the songs previewed at that time, it had not been written in India.  Harrison claimed that he had written most of it a few years earlier, but left it unfinished and put the lyrics away in a book.

The demo foreshadows the elegant arrangement of the finished recording in the way George plays it on acoustic guitar.  As with most of these demos, the vocals are double-tracked.  Lyrically, the only difference is the phrase "to cut their pork chops" instead of Lennon's suggestion "to eat their bacon."  One other contributor to the lyrics was George's mother Louise, who gave him the line "what they need's a damn good whacking."

September 19th, 1968 was the first official recording session for the song, during the time that producer George Martin was away on holiday and young Chris Thomas served as producer for the Beatles.  With Paul on bass, Ringo on tambourine and George on acoustic guitar, they recorded ten takes of the song in studio two.  While on a break, Chris Thomas noticed a harpsichord set up in studio one and thought it would sound ideal on the track.  The session was moved into that studio, the classically-trained Thomas sat at the keyboard, and take eleven proved to be the keeper.

On September 20th, George overdubbed his lead vocal with occasional double-tracking.  John, who had been present the previous day, finally joined in with Paul and George at the microphone as they recorded harmonies for the final verse.  One other contribution from John was a tape loop of grunting pigs which was dropped into the song, although somewhat differently on the mono and stereo mixes.

When a refreshed George Martin rejoined the sessions and listened to the tracks that had been recorded in his absence, he suggested that Piggies could use a string arrangement to augment the irony of the harpsichord part.  Harrison agreed, and an octet performed Martin's score on October 10th.  One final touch added at the mixing stage was George saying "one more time" before the final cadence played by the strings.  This verbal comment was actually from September 20th when the vocal harmonies were being recorded. 

The song sits on side two of the "White Album" between two other songs with animals in their titles - Blackbird and Rocky Raccoon.  The Beatles never revisited Piggies, but George revived it for his brief tour of Japan in 1991, also playing a final verse that he had omitted when the song was originally recorded.  This can be heard on his album Live in Japan.  But wait...there's more...

Hunter Davies, who had written the official biography of the Beatles during their career, collected handwritten manuscripts of as many of the group's songs as he could over the years and published the book The Beatles Lyrics in 2014.  In it, he reprints a set of lyrics in George's own hand that contains yet another verse, never before seen or heard.

Penny Lane

The songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney was not just a partnership, but also a rivalry that slowly managed to increase in intensity over the years.  In late 1966, that rivalry was still friendly for the most part, and the two old chums were more likely to be cooperative rather than adversarial.  On some occasions, a composition that one of them wrote on his own would inspire the other to come up with something of equal merit.  Thus it was that Lennon's dreamy Strawberry Fields Forever, with its idyllic image of one of their childhood haunts, spurred McCartney on to write a tribute to the neighborhood of Penny Lane.  

Lennon's composition was largely an internal meditation on identity, one that only referred to its title locale obliquely.  McCartney, on the other hand, opted to write a piece about specific places and the characters who inhabited them.  Most of us think of it as a sunny song with its "blue suburban skies," but Tim Riley points out in his book Tell Me Why that the third line of every verse shifts into a minor key as the characters deal with the "pouring rain."  Then there is the verse about the pretty nurse, who, "though she feels as if she's in a play, she is anyway."  McCartney very subtly hints that under the shiny surface, things are not always what they seem.  "Very strange."

Riley states that Penny Lane is "as perfect as pop gets," and goes on to say that "McCartney's command of the 45 genre in this song is masterful," forgetting that neither this song nor Strawberry Fields Forever were written as singles.  Rather, they were both intended to be part of an album built around the concept of childhood.  Though that concept album was abandoned once these songs were selected for immediate release, the double-A sided single was issued in a picture sleeve with photos of the Beatles as children on one side.

In the book Here, There and Everywhere, engineer Geoff Emerick reveals that Paul was still heavily influenced by the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds at this time, and he told Geoff that he wanted a "clean American sound" for this song.  Emerick suggested that they record each instrument individually in order to achieve this, instead of the usual practice of having the band lay down a backing track onto which overdubs could be added.  The process became very complex as a result and was spread out over many days.

On December 29th, 1966, Paul began this process by recording six takes of the piano track.  He then recorded two more piano tracks, each with slight variations and different effects added to make them sound distinct.  He played a high-pitched harmonium on track four, most prominent at the very end of the song.  Along the way Ringo joined in playing  tambourine, and a sped-up drum roll and cymbals were also added.  On December 30th, these four tracks were reduced to a single track before overdubs continued with Paul's lead vocal and occasional backing vocals from John.

January 4th, 1967 saw John add yet another piano part as George played guitar and Paul double-tracked his vocal line.  On the 5th, Paul re-recorded his lead vocals.  On the 6th, Paul played bass, John added rhythm guitar and Ringo drums.  John also played conga drums!  Another reduction mix followed before John and producer George Martin added - you guessed it - even more piano.  Handclaps and scat singing by Paul, John and George of what would eventually become the brass part finished out the day's work.

For some reason, George Martin's arrangement was recorded by different sets of instruments on different days.  The first group of flutes, trumpets, piccolos and a fluegelhorn played their parts on January 9th.  In between, on the 10th, Ringo added tubular bells to the track at the two points where the fireman is mentioned.  On the 12th, more trumpets, oboes, cor anglais and a double bass finished recording Martin's arrangement.  At this session, Paul told Martin about a tiny trumpet he had seen on a television program the previous evening.  It turned out that Martin knew the player, David Mason, and that he played the piccolo trumpet in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto on the BBC program in question.

Though the track had probably been considered complete at this point, Paul could not resist the opportunity to add the piccolo trumpet to the mix, so Mason arrived at the studio on January 17th to apply the crowning touch.  Paul figured out the melody he wanted, Martin wrote it down and Mason nailed it in two takes.  

A mono mix was made and quickly sent along with the Strawberry Fields Forever mono mix to the US for the single release.  But Paul belatedly decided that he did not want the final little piccolo trumpet flourish at the end of the song, so a new mono mix was sent to the US on January 25th.  Promotional copies of the first mix had already been played on American radio.  These, of course, instantly became collector's items.

While Penny Lane became a number one hit in the US, it stalled at number two in the UK, unable to dislodge Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me from the top spot.  At the end of the year, Capitol added it along with the other songs from 1967 singles to the Magical Mystery Tour album, although in mock stereo.  The first true stereo mix was created in 1971, and first heard only on the UK version of the Blue Album in 1973.  The US version of the album Rarities in 1980 finally used the true stereo mix and included the final trumpet flourish. 

Anthology 2 from 1996 presents a version of the song highlighting some elements buried in the final mix, especially a lovely brass instrumental section before David Mason's piccolo trumpet solo was added in its place.  50th anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper include the stripped down backing track of pianos, plus various voices and sound effects barely heard or not heard at all on the finished product.

Promotional films were made for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever at the time of the single's release.  To create the illusion that they were in Liverpool, a crew was dispatched to get some location shots of the Penny Lane district, but the Beatles were actually shot walking and riding white horses around Angel Lane in the east end of London.  The horses were used again around Knole Park near Sevenoaks in Kent, where another scene was shot of the boys around a dinner table in the park.  As was the case when the Beatles were placed on skis for the film Help!, they seem to have had no prior experience riding horses.  Oddly, John, not Paul, is the primary focus of the film.

The films were quickly edited and shown on various programs in the UK including Juke Box Jury and Top of the Pops.  In the US, they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand and ABC's variety show The Hollywood Palace.  These films were the first time that audiences saw the Beatles' new look with moustaches and beards, and reaction was definitely mixed.

Paperback Writer

The Beatles had been in sessions for their next album for exactly one week in April of 1966 when they were required to turn their attention to recording a new single for immediate release.  Unlike the previous two years, there was no film in production and no batch of soundtrack songs from which a spring single could be chosen.  And it had already been (gasp!) four months since their last official single release in the UK.  

McCartney had a composition that could work quite nicely as a single - despite its unusual content - thanks to a catchy chorus.  While some other pop recording artists had already ventured off to more varied subject matter, the Beatles had strictly stuck to love songs up to this point for the official singles in their catalog.  This song, in the form of a letter to a publisher from an aspiring author who has written "a dirty story of a dirty man," would be a departure for them.

They began work on the song during the evening session on April 13th.  Only two takes were made of the backing track, probably featuring a lineup of Paul on lead guitar, John on rhythm guitar, Ringo on drums and George playing a rather subdued bass line.  Before the session was over, Paul had overdubbed and double-tracked his lead vocal, and Ringo had added tambourine.

The track was completed on the following afternoon, with piano and organ parts played by producer George Martin, which wound up being deleted.  The major elements added were the backing vocals and a prominent new bass line, now played by Paul.  At the urging of John and Paul, engineer Geoff Emerick and Ken Townsend figured a way to boost the bass sound on an EMI recording for the first time, making it sound more like the American records the Beatles admired.  

The backing vocals by John and George in verses three and four were simply the words "Frere Jacques" sung in falsetto for no particular reason other than a good laugh.  Waves of backing vocals were also overdubbed onto the title phrase, an overt attempt by the Beatles to emulate the Beach Boys harmonies which they had recently heard on an advance copy of the landmark album Pet Sounds.  Echo was added to these harmonies only as the mono mix was being created.

Though this song and its B-side Rain were quickly recorded over the span of four days, the single was not released until May 30th in the US and June 10th in the UK.  And while sales were lower than usual for a Beatles single in the UK, it still managed to hit number one in both countries.  Toward the end of the year, a stereo mix was created for the first time as the song was added to the UK compilation album A Collection of Beatles Oldies.

Director Michael Lindsey-Hogg produced multiple promotional films and videos for both sides of the single.  The color video was shot specifically for the Ed Sullivan Show in studio one of EMI's Abbey Road Studios.  It was preceded by an amusing introduction addressed to Ed Sullivan himself by Ringo.  In addition to showing the group miming to the song on their instruments, the Paperback Writer video has the boys holding up transparencies from the infamous butcher photo shoot (though it is impossible to tell that that is indeed what they are in the quick shots).  It also clearly shows the front tooth that Paul had recently chipped in a moped accident.

The Paperback Writer film was shot one day later in Chiswick Park, alternately showing the boys lounging in the garden or once again miming to the record.  This lovely color film was broadcast in black and white on Top of the Pops.  Surprisingly, that program also managed to lure the group to its studio to mime to both sides of the single on live TV (pictured above on June 16th, 1966).

Even more of a surprise was the decision by the Beatles to add the song to the setlist for their final live tours in 1966.  It was difficult to reproduce onstage given the technology of the time, and they did not perform it well, as you can hear if you manage to find a sound clip of any of those concerts.

Fans in the US finally got to hear the stereo mix when the song appeared on the Capitol compilation album Hey Jude in February of 1970.  It was, of course, included on the Red Album in 1973, on both the US and UK versions of 20 Greatest Hits in 1982, on Past Masters Volume Two in 1988, and on the album 1 in 2000.  The video collection 1+ contains both of the promotional clips from 1966.