Don't Bother Me

This song deals in the motifs of plea, sadness and loneliness. The title is worded as a command and also turns on a negative, and nothing earlier in the catalogue was like it. The language is grim in subject. The Travel motif first appears in the Beatles catalogue here.

This track is one of 4 Beatles songs in E minor (the earliest of them is 'Do You Want to Know a Secret' earlier the same year), a rock and merseybeat piece taken at about 106 BPM. You will notice the defining riff, Minor-key guitar riff opens song. A small coincidence, but the chords run Bm → Am → C → Em, the same move 'I'm Only Sleeping' makes as Bm → Am → Cmaj7 → Em.

Recorded across two days at EMI Studio 2 with overdubbed Latin percussion - claves, bongos, and tambourine - giving it an unusually moody atmosphere for an early Beatles track. McCartney is on the Hofner 500/1, his bass, and they worked with the Ludwig Downbeat, which is on 17 songs from 1963. The sound was built with double tracked vocal. It is taken out on a fade-out, one of 46 across the catalogue, 1967 being the year for it. That day put five songs on tape, the 27th to the 31st of their career.

Harrison wrote it and took the lead vocal (The record has Harrison's first composition on it). What you hear on bongos is a Loose Arabic-tinged percussion.

The record was released November 22, 1963, as part of With The Beatles. In America it arrived eight weeks later, on Meet The Beatles!, a Capitol record. The song was also featured in the film A Hard Day's Night, from 1964. This track was the 20th of 32 released in 1963, and the 22nd of their career.