This week’s Beatles Rarity Of The Week is special because this is the week that BROW is one year old. The Beatles were always big on birthday celebrations as can be felt through this medley of happy and rare birthday recordings that I have assembled for this week. The medley includes:

1) Whit Monday – from the BBC program From Us To You. It was recorded on May 1, 1964 and aired on May 18, 1964 (just a few days after my first birthday).

2) Birthday – The Beatles’ classic performed by Paul McCartney in Stockholm, Sweden on May 5, 2003.

3) Happy Birthday Michael Love – Recorded with Michael Love (of the Beach Boys) while The Beatles were in India during March 1968.

4) Happy Birthday – This recording comes from October 1971 at John’s 31st birthday party in a Syracuse NY hotel room. Eric Clapton, Ringo & Maureen Starkey, Klaus Voormann, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Keltner, Mal Evans and Neil Aspinal were all present and “o-blue-terated” (to borrow a word used by the Blue Meanies in the Yellow Submarine film).

5) Happy Birthday Saturday Club – The Beatles performed this one on the BBC program Saturday Club in honor of it’s 5th birthday. The recording was made on September 7th, 1963 and aired on October 5th, 1963.

6) Happy Birthday John – From John’s 30th birthday celebration on October 9, 1970. Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Stephen Stills and Klaus Voorman were all present (and once again: O-blue-terated).

The Beatles cutting the cake, late 1964

It’s been “fab” bringing you rare Beatles-related recordings over the past year and a sincere thank you goes out to all the “gear” people out there who have taken an interest.

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to this week’s BROW. This recording is from Twickenham studio on January 9th, 1969. John takes a good nasal lead vocal as he kicks off this slightly off-color, up-tempo number. George and Paul give some staccato ‘rat-tat-tat’ backing. It’s a 50′s influenced song if there ever was one. An edited version of this track appears on the Let It Be film and it was actually copyrighted in 1971 as a band composition under the title Suzy Parker (the name of a fashion model), but maybe this was just to protect the soundtrack of the Let It Be film. The simplistic and slightly risque lyrics as well as John’s comments after the song suggest this was an on-the-spot composition drawing heavy from Wake Up Little Susie (The Everly Brothers) and That’s My Little Suzie (Ritchie Valens). It sounds like they were having a really good time with this one.

The Beatles at Twickenham Film Studios, Jan. 1969

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

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This week’s BROW honors a request from last week for an original recording of John Lennon’s Free As A Bird. This is one of the original piano demos recorded on an audio cassette by John in 1977. Later when Paul McCartney asked Yoko Ono for any unreleased material by John, she gave him a recording of this song along with Real Love, Grow Old With Me and Now And Then. Free As A Bird was then chosen to be the best one to be completed by the remaining Beatles for use on the upcoming Beatles Anthology project in 1996. George Martin was originally offered the opportunity to produce but declined due to his hearing limitations and Jeff Lynne, who had worked with George Harrison and the Traveling Wilburys was given the job. Since John’s piano and vocal were on a single track, his voice could not be separated from the piano and it was used on the final production even though some chord changes were edited in for the sake of extending the song and adding a break for an extra vocal part by Paul and George. The demo heard here is known as demo take 1 and from it we can hear that John still had some lyrics to work out. Some lyrics were modified on later piano demos (such as demo #3 where John sings It’s the nearest thing to be…Free As A Bird instead of It’s the next best thing to be…Free As A Bird) but the lyrics were not finalized until Paul, George and Ringo worked on the full production version. Hats off to Dermahrk for the request.

John Lennon at 40th birthday party, Oct. 9, 1980

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Real Love (Official Anthology Video Clip, 1996) Most Beatles fans are well aware of the John Lennon...
2. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – And Your Bird Can Sing (alternate take) Welcome to The Beatles Rarity Of The Week. Journalist Richard...

I’ve seen a lot of discussion on MOG.com about The Beatles being “first” to do a lot of things: lyrics coming with the album packaging (Sgt. Pepper), the first feedback sound in a rock/pop song (I Feel Fine), the first classical instrumentation in a pop song (Yesterday), the first rock band to wear their hair longer than anyone was used to seeing on males, the first metal song (Helter Skelter), the first band to put backwards secret messages in their music or other hidden meanings on the album jackets, etc., etc. etc. Yeah, well, whether or not you agree with all of these, you should at least agree that The Beatles were innovative as hell.

I think this weeks BROW was the first pop/rock song to contain drug references or maybe to actually be completely about drugs. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. If you can find, or know of an earlier one, then please comment and educate me. The fact that it was about a pill pusher actually went unnoticed for awhile. The Beatles were always stretching the boundaries of what was “acceptable” and in this case got away with it without any bans. Soon afterward, the Rolling Stones followed suit with Mother’s Little Helper which was also about pill popping. Most of us also know the story about how A Day In The Life was banned on the BBC due to the I’d love to turn you on lyric. And, of course, afterward there are countless other “druggie songs” that followed.

Specifically a composition of John’s (with a little collaboration with Paul), aboutthebeatles.com says this about who Dr. Robert actually was:

[A song] written about a New York doctor named Doctor Robert Freymann, a 60 year old, German physician who was famous for prescribing generous amounts of amphetamines to famous people. Freymann once boasted that he could name 100 famous names in 10 minutes of people who used his services. Some books credit Dr. Robert as being Dr. Charles Roberts, but that name was only used as an alias for one of Andy Warhol’s actresses to protect another doctor who practiced the same type of medicine. The real Dr. Robert died in 1987 after losing his license in 1968 and removed from the NY State Medical Society in 1975.

And why am I posting this as a rarity?

Dr. Robert, the song, was first released in the US on the Yesterday…And Today album (yes, this was the one with the infamous Butcher cover, but that’s another story) on June 20, 1966. It was later released on the UK Revolver album on August 5th, 1966 but some mixing changes were made after the US version was released that only appear on the UK albums. Since the masters from the UK stereo album was what was eventually used for the Revolver CD, the US (fake stereo and mono) versions were destined to obscurity. The version I’ve posted here is the US mono version from Yesterday…And Today which unlike the UK Revolver CD version has the fade reaching the true ending of the song where John is saying ‘OK Herb’ (?) or something like that (you have to turn the volume up loud to hear this as it is at the end of the fade). The middle-eight section (which starts with ‘well, well, well you’re feeling fine’) are also mixed differently here than on the common version we hear on the Revolver CD.

Top to bottom: Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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