Help!

Help! is the fifth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles and the soundtrack to the film Help!. It was released on 6 August 1965 by Parlophone. Seven of the fourteen songs, including the singles "Help!" and "Ticket to Ride", appeared in the film and take up the first side of the vinyl album. The second side includes "Yesterday", the most-covered song ever written. The album was met with favourable critical reviews and topped the Australian, German, British and American charts.

During the recording sessions for the album, the Beatles continued to explore the studio's multitracking capabilities to layer their sound. "Yesterday" features a string quartet, the band's first use of Baroque sensibilities, and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" includes a flute section. The North American release is a true soundtrack album, combining the first seven songs with instrumental music from the film. The omitted tracks are instead spread across the Capitol Records LPs Beatles VI, Rubber Soul and Yesterday and Today.

In the US, Help! marked the start of artistic recognition for the Beatles from mainstream critics, including comparisons to the European art music tradition. It was nominated in the category of Album of the Year at the 1966 Grammys Awards, marking the first time that a rock band had been recognised in this category. In 2000, it was voted 119th in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2020, it was ranked 266th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In September 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed its sales award rules, Help! was certified platinum for recorded sales since 1994.

Background

In 1964, the Beatles appeared in their first feature film, A Hard Day's Night. Despite initial scepticism, reviews were near universal in their acclaim, elevating the Beatles' prestige as artists. With the aim of making one film a year, work began on a second Beatles picture for 1965 release. It would once again be directed by Richard Lester and produced by Walter Shenson, but written by Marc Behm and Charles Wood instead of Alun Owen. It was given the working title Eight Arms to Hold You, one of Ringo Starr's "Ringoisms"; the name stuck until early April, long enough to even appear on the US "Ticket to Ride" single, but John Lennon and Paul McCartney presumed it would be too difficult to write a compelling song with that title, so Help! was chosen instead.

According to McCartney, most of the songwriting for Help! was done at Kenwood, Lennon's house in Weybridge. McCartney also wrote some songs, e.g. Yesterday" and I've Just Seen a Face", at his girlfriend Jane Asher's family home, 57 Wimpole Street in London. At this time, the Beatles were heavily influenced by Bob Dylan, especially Lennon, who later referred to it as his "Dylan period". Mark Hertsgaard writes that while Dylan's influence was "evident" on Beatles for Sale, Help! is where it became "fully realized". Additionally, Help! is the first Beatles album on which drugs made a significant impact. Dylan in 1964 had introduced them to cannabis, which they smoked habitually while filming Help!, and they first encountered LSD in spring 1965. According to Alexis Petridis, drugs motivated the Beatles on Help! to take their songwriting to "new emotional depths", such as on You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and Ticket to Ride".

Recording and production

Recording history

Following their Christmas 1964 shows, the Beatles took a month's break before beginning work on Help! All of the recording sessions took place in Studio Two of EMI Recording Studios (now Abbey Road Studios). The first set of sessions began on 15 February with "Ticket to Ride" and continued through the 20th, after which the group flew to the Bahamas to begin filming. They took with them a tape of the 11 songs recorded so that Lester and Shenson could decide which ones to use in the film.

Several songs recorded during these initial sessions were not included on the Help! album. Lennon's "Yes It Is" was relegated to the B-side of the "Ticket to Ride" single and a cover of Larry Williams' "Bad Boy" was put on the North American album Beatles VI. Two Lennon–McCartney compositions were rejected for release altogether. The first was "If You've Got Trouble", originally written for Ringo Starr as his obligatory lead vocal for the album. One take was attempted on 18 February before it was abandoned. The other was "That Means a Lot". Two versions were attempted, one on 20 February and a "re-make" on 30 March, but it was ultimately given to a friend of the band, singer P. J. Proby, to record. Proby's version was released as a single and reached number 30 on the UK chart. Both "If You've Got Trouble" and take 1 of "That Means a Lot" were eventually released on Anthology 2 in 1996, along with other outtakes from the Help! sessions. Additionally, the last song recorded in this time was "Wait", which would not be released until the Beatles' next album, Rubber Soul.

According to Mark Lewisohn, 14 June 1965 saw "[a] remarkable day's work" and showcased McCartney's musical abilities in varying styles; the Beatles recorded his songs "I've Just Seen a Face", "I'm Down", and "Yesterday". "Yesterday" began with just McCartney singing and playing acoustic guitar, but he and producer George Martin decided to add a string quartet. Martin later described it as when, "I started to leave my hallmark on [the Beatles'] music, when a style started to emerge which was partly of my making." "I'm Down" was released as the B-side of "Help!" but not included on the album.

Innovations and techniques

Lewisohn writes that 1965 introduced the part of the Beatles' career where they put less focus on live performances and took "a more serious application in the recording studio." He identifies multiple new recording practices used on Help!, one being "to rehearse songs with a tape machine running, spooling back to record properly over the rehearsed material." Another involved adding numerous overdubs to rhythm tracks without considering them as comprising new takes; because of this, many songs on Help! are documented as having needed only a small number of takes, yet they still required hours of work. Martin also began placing the guitar parts on different tracks than the bass and drums, accomplishing "a more satisfying stereo image" according to Walter Everett.

According to Hertsgaard, Help! showed "a major acceleration in the Beatles' ongoing search for fresh sounds." He points out that half of the songs feature instruments the Beatles had never used before, including electric piano, flutes, a volume/tone pedal, and most famously "Yesterday"'s strings. Help! is also the first Beatles album to feature the Epiphone Casino, first purchased by McCartney around December 1964 before quickly becoming a staple of the group's instrumentation. Before the recording of "Yesterday", the flutes on "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" were played by John Scott, only the second outside musician to appear on a Beatles track (after Andy White).

Songs

Side one

The song "Help!" was written primarily by Lennon. He originally conceived it at a slower tempo and regretted speeding it up to make it more commercial. Although it was only written out of need for a titular song, Lennon remained extremely proud of "Help!" from the Beatles' break-up to his death, even once calling it his favorite Beatles song he wrote. He felt it was one of his "real" songs, explaining in an interview: "The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. I was eating and drinking like a pig and I was fat as a pig, dissatisfied with myself ... later, I knew I was really crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period."

McCartney's "The Night Before" is the first Beatles song to feature electric piano, played by Lennon. McCartney and George Harrison played the guitar solo together, doubling each other in octaves.

Lennon specified "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" as exemplifying his "Dylan period". A connection has been suggested between the lyric and Beatles manager Brian Epstein's homosexuality, which he kept private due to British law at the time.

"I Need You" was George Harrison's first songwriting contribution since "Don't Bother Me" in 1963. He wrote it for his girlfriend Pattie Boyd, whom he met while filming A Hard Day's Night. Its unusual guitar sound was achieved using a volume/tone pedal – the first time a guitar pedal was used on a Beatles song. A year after Harrison's death in 2001, Tom Petty sang it at the Concert for George.

McCartney wrote "Another Girl" while holidaying at a villa in Hammamet, Tunisia. He played lead guitar on the track as Harrison was struggling with it.

"You're Going to Lose That Girl" was written by Lennon and McCartney together, though McCartney credited it 60–40 to Lennon. Some have interpreted it as a continuation of "She Loves You" due to it revisiting the theme of a love triangle.