"Don't Bother Me" With the Beatles (1963)

Welcome to Track Chatter, where we choose a different song to discuss in depth. This entry is part of an ongoing series in which we reconsider songs by The Beatles. Can anything new be said about this band or its music? Have a look below and let us know what you think.

Our second entry comes from the With the Beatles. As was common during the early days of rock, this album was released in the same year as its predecessor. And like Please Please Me, it included six cover songs amongst its fourteen tracks. Most of these tracks would be released in the US two months later (Jan ’64) on Meet the Beatles. Both albums feature Robert Freeman’s distinctive photograph of the lads’ four faces cast in shadow, although the design of the covers is somewhat different and Meet the Beatles includes a slight blue tint on the photograph.

In addition to “Don’t Bother Me,” With the Beatles includes such well-known tracks as “It Won’t Be Long,” “All My Loving,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” and the sublime cover of “Please Mister Postman.”

Like our previous entry, “Chains,” “Don’t Bother Me” features a vocal performance by George Harrison, the difference being that in this case, the song was also written by George. In fact, “Don’t Bother Me” is the first Harrison-penned song to appear on a Beatles album.



Aaron chose this track, so we’ll turn it over to him now.

Aaron: I’ll just start by saying that this was the song that first gave us the idea for the project that would become Track Chatter. I was out at a pub and having one of those ever-so-enlightening conversations about the Beatles that proceeds along familiar lines: they were all that vs. they weren’t at all / or X band (Stones, Who, Kinks) were much better or more influential. Nobody ever wins these conversations, and I guess the fun is really in using the structure of the conversation to reminisce about what was a very exciting moment in pop music history, regardless of how one feels about any particular band or song. Anyway, during that particular conversation, one of my friends (yes, we’re still friends!) was explaining in intricate detail how badly the Beatles suck and how much better the Kinks were. As happens, the conversation passed on to other topics. Later that same week, I got a copy of With the Beatles, one of last year’s new mono releases. What struck me first was how few of the songs I knew really well. And I couldn’t stop listening to “Don’t Bother Me.” I found myself thinking, this really sounds like a Kinks song (the first Kinks’ recordings were released in 1964). I brought it up with Lew and during a protracted e-mail conversation and much New Years' carousing last year, the idea of Track Chatter was born. So, Lew, I’d just like to throw that out there. Is there anything about “Don’t Bother Me” that marks it as atypical of early Beatles?


Lew: I do think that “Don't Bother Me” is somewhat atypical of the early Beatles. Most obviously, it seems to have a good deal darker emotional content than many of the other songs that Lennon and McCartney were writing around this time, especially compared to the other songs on With the Beatles. Considering that they were still covering Chuck Berry songs, and 50's doo-wop tunes around this time, "Don't Bother Me" seems like a fairly substantial forecast of where they'd be headed later on. I don't think it would sound especially out of place on Rubber Soul. But, I'd also say that it has much more in common with the British Invasion songs that would be getting popular during the next couple of years than any of the Lennon/McCartney songs on the album, which is something that I think you pointed out to me during the aforementioned New Years' carousing. Do you still feel that way about it?

Aaron: I do. I wonder if, not being part of the “team,” George felt freer to explore different songwriting directions. I recently saw an old Dick Cavett interview with John Lennon from about 1972. Cavett asks Lennon how his songwriting has changed over the years. As part of his answer, Lennon makes a comment about how in the early days of the Beatles he and McCartney were under so much pressure to churn out hits that they would often take an already existing form and do their own version – a rock ‘n’ roll song, a Motown number, a soul track, and so on. Under no such pressure, George here seems to be onto something slightly more original, even if it’s a bit rougher than some of his later songwriting. I don’t think the lyric is quite as clever as early Lennon/McCartney stuff, and it doesn’t have those huge harmonies. But you’re certainly correct about its darkness being very different from what the other lads were offering. In fact, I’d wager that it’s a darker song than you’re likely to find amongst any of the pop music coming out in 1963. Certainly blues and country had long been showcasing songs that deal with that solitary and angry loneliness that comes after a breakup. Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” also from ’63, might be along the same lines. But even that one is fairly even tempered, whereas the singer of “Don’t Bother Me” is simply demanding complete solitude. He hasn’t yet moved on to a place where he can be so ironic and coy as to say “you just kind of wasted my precious time,” but it’s no big deal. He’s still pissed. And he doesn’t care what anybody thinks about that. I love the way George delivers the line, “I’ve got no time for you right now” at the beginning of the second chorus. In fact, much like with “Chains,” I think it’s George’s attitude as much as anything that really sells the song. I also really dig the way the verses seem to contain most of the song’s urgency, and then when the choruses come, they seem more relaxed and resigned. It sounds a bit like in the verses he’s trying to explain the situation, but when it’s time to really push his point at the chorus, he just loses steam, says forget it, and generally can’t be bothered. That’s another way it seems different from Lennon/McCarthy, who loved those huge choruses, like on “All My Loving” or “It Won’t Be Long” from this same album. Does that make sense?

Lew: I think what you say makes a lot of sense, especially when you talk about songwriting forms. The point about Lennon and McCartney using established styles to make their own songs is a great one, and it's hard to ignore. Dipping into traditionalism in the way they do - that is to say, by appropriating existing forms for your own purposes - cuts both ways, to my mind. On one hand, it does exactly what the term traditionalism implies; it makes you part of a narrative. When a form or style endures successive trends, it's easy to note all manner of innovations in terms of composition and performance. I think most people would agree that that is the reason for jazz musicians to learn standards; it provides a yardstick to measure yourself against your progenitors, or determine that you can't relate to them, if that's the case. On the other hand, tradition should be useful, rather than constricting. The ability to access an established form can be liberating, or it might stifle creativity at some level, because it requires everyone to observe a particular structure. In that context, I wouldn't say that "Don't Bother Me" is clearly participating in a set tradition. It's more of an amalgam of various traditions, and in that respect, I'd say that it more successfully forecasts the advent of rock music that was deliberately opposed to existing forms. I could go on, but I'll pause here for a second to see what you think about that.

Aaron: Well, just a couple thoughts, really, before I toss it back to you. I like the way you describe the tension between tradition as liberating or constricting. It’s a tension that pretty much permeates rock music history and has led to some of its greatest achievements and most spectacular failures. I’ll be interested in taking the question up more as we make our way to some Lennon/McCartney numbers, which might better lend themselves to such a discussion. Also, while I’m sure this is probably clear to anybody reading this, I’d just like to point out that by describing “Don’t Bother Me” as adventurous or predictive of rock that opposed existing forms, we’re certainly aware that it’s not a radical departure – along the lines of say Zappa or Captain Beefheart or even the way, by 1963, Dylan was deconstructing tradition popular song forms. Having said that, however, I’d love to hear more from you on just how “Don’t Bother Me” is predictive in that way. And when you call it an “amalgam” of various traditions, have you got anything specific in mind?

Lew: You're definitely right to add the disclaimer about “Don't Bother Me” as being less radical than any number of more deconstructive approaches to rock or pop songwriting. When I say it's predictive of later rock music, I don't necessarily mean to say that it's blazing a trail that would be followed by others (although it probably did that to a greater or lesser degree), or that it presents the listener with a dramatic upheaval of opposition to traditional songwriting forms. I think more of what I'm trying to get at is that, in contrast to Lennon and McCartney's very obvious use of traditional styles as jumping-off points for their own songs, George seems to be making use of traditions in a more organic way. In terms of what he's actually synthesizing in “Don't Bother Me,” I'd say that there's a more traditional English vibe to the melody than in a lot of the other songs The Beatles were making around that time, but again, I don't want to say that he's wearing that on his sleeve in the same way John was overtly channeling Little Richard for “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” for example. Whatever influences helped him write that song seem pretty well subsumed by the song itself. I also want to say that if it sounds like I'm being negative about the songs Lennon & McCartney were writing, I don't meant to be. I'm trying to differentiate, not make a qualitative comparison. Does that makes sense?

Aaron: Yeah, it makes sense. I like the way you describe its use of tradition as more organic but also as being “subsumed by the song itself.” I think one of the (pretty well established) important aspects of early Lennon/McCartney songs was the way they reinvigorated pop music in the early 1960s, on both sides of the pond. For them, I assume, it made sense to turn to the Little Richards and Chuck Berrys of America because they were the only ones really making “rock n roll” at that time as opposed to bubblegum (I know this is somewhat of a simplification, but it’s close enough to true for the purposes of this discussion). So what Lennon/McCartney did seems to have been very deliberate (even calculated), but they did it so damned well that it worked. And it probably freed up other British acts to incorporate a bit more of that “organic traditionalism” that you mention. The Stones, of course, would also look to American music in their early years, but other British Invasion bands like the Kinks, the Who, the Animals, and others, while grounded in various strains of American RnB, perhaps didn’t feel so beholden to it. If bands back then were anything like bands today, I’m sure there were a lot of guys trying not to sound like the Beatles while still picking up on their energy, enthusiasm, and rhythmic dynamism. In that sense, their songs, too, would contain “subsumed” traditionalism, if that makes sense. In any case, I wouldn’t ever think you were slagging off Paul and John – they would have plenty of “originality” to contribute to the pop landscape, and soon enough (in fact, just as we discussed with “Chains," I’d say that even their take on traditional American forms was fairly original from a contemporaneous point of view). But this brings me back to what I said earlier about “Don’t Bother Me” sounding like a Kinks song. In that sense, I think you’re on the money when you talk about the song as being “predictive,” and why I think that’s such a good word for it – it may not be that “Don’t Bother Me” was highly influential on bands like the Kinks or the Animals, but it certainly pointed in the direction that British Invasion bands were heading as the whole era got up and running over the next two years or so.

Any thoughts on that, or any final thoughts you might want to add?

Lew: The only other thing that I thought might be worth mentioning is the way that “Don't Bother Me” differs from the Lennon/McCartney songs that we'll be talking about with regard to sheer musical structure. I had a feeling about this so I took a minute and learned the chords to “Don't Bother Me.” At the risk of going too far into theoretical terminology, I think it's important to say that “Don't Bother Me” is coming from completely different place in terms of chordal relationships than a number of Lennon/McCartney songs (as we'll see when we talk about “Tell Me Why” next). I have been thinking that “Don't Bother Me” is kind of a Modal tune - not in the sense of the word implied by post-bop jazz, but more in the sense of Renaissance music or Gregorian chant (I realize that this may be a bit of a stretch, aesthetically speaking). The term “modal” is a fairly hotly debated one, so I'm not really ready to claim that “Don’t Bother Me” is definitively modal, but I will say that the song suggests some aspects of modal music over tonal music. The chords in the song imply a key center (E minor, in this case), but the chord E minor itself isn't necessarily treated as a tonic, in the sense that one uses that word in the context of tonal music - that is, where the Dominant-Tonic relationship resolves musical phrases and cadences (in this case, the chords B Dominant 7 to E Minor). “Don't Bother Me” does use a B7, but not in the way that you'd expect. B7 contains the notes B, D#, F#, and A. Emin contains E, G, and B. Generally, one would move from B7 to Emin, and the resolution from the D# in the B7 to the E (a half-step) would create what's called “voice-leading.” By contrast, “Don't Bother Me” moves from Emin to B7, to A7, to Gmaj, and then back to Emin. There's no cut and dried resolution, beyond the fact that Gmaj is from the same chord family as Emin. Essentially, the chords of the song deviate from formal compositional tradition, and suggest a more unstudied approach - again, probably based in English folk music (which, unlike most American popular music, derives strongly from medieval music). Lennon and McCartney, by accident or design, were very proficient at using compositional devices that were much more in keeping with the tradition established by Baroque classical music. I realize that we haven't talked about the music of The Beatles in these terms previously, but I think it's going to be important to consider these musical aspects in greater depth as we go along - first, to illustrate the different musical perspectives that informed the early days of The Beatles, and also to show the ways in which John and Paul eventually turned away from the more traditional approaches that they had been taking to songwriting. I don't think I have a lot more to say about this track at the moment, but I'd love to know if I've been able to use musical terminology in a way that clarifies something about the song, rather than making it more confusing.

Aaron: No, that’s not confusing at all – I only wish you were here with a guitar to demonstrate more clearly what you mean in your discussion of the chord relationships. But I’m pretty sure I get it, and I think the potentially modal nature of the song you point out probably has a lot to do with what drew me to it in the first place. Of course, I would have had no idea about that and would not have been able to articulate it. But I think it does have something to do with the tension between the verses and the choruses that I was talking about earlier. It’s the lack of resolution you describe that gives the song – at least in part – such urgency. What’s really cool – and who knows if this was intentional on George’s part or not – is the way that the chord structure that you describe actually contributes to and works in tangent with the song’s lyrical structure. That’s a relationship that The Beatles would go on to explore more deeply later in the decade, so I agree with you completely that it’s an aspect of their music that we will have to continue to keep in mind and discuss as this conversation continues.


Coming next: "Tell Me Why" from A Hard Day's Night, the band's first album of all original tracks.