FOR BEATLES FANATICS
During the first seconds of the song, we hear a quick sniff. Is Ringo trying to justify his impending tonsillectomy?
Help!:
A Transitional Album
1965
Help!
The Night Before
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
I Need You
Another Girl
You’re Going to Lose That Girl
Ticket to Ride
Act Naturally
It’s Only Love
You Like Me Too Much
Tell Me What You See
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Yesterday
Dizzy Miss Lizzy
Bad Boy
ALBUM
RELEASED
Great Britain: August 6, 1965 / No. 1 for 9 weeks
United States: June 14, 1965, Beatles VI / No. 1 for 6 weeks
June 20, 1966, Yesterday and Today / No. 1 for 5 weeks
August 13, 1965, Help! / No. 1 for 9 weeks
December 6, 1965, Rubber Soul / No. 1 for 6 weeks
The Beatles ended the year 1964 with a new success (“I Feel Fine,” number 1 on the charts on both sides of the Atlantic), and 1965 started under favorable auspices. On January 27, John, Paul, and Brian Epstein founded Maclen Music, a company created specifically to administer the group’s rights in the United States. Recording sessions for the new album started on February 15 and on February 24 filming began for a new movie, Help! At the beginning of the year, the Beatles had a lot on their plate—seven new songs for the soundtrack of the feature film and seven others to complete the album.
On Help! the Beatles’ songwriting and sound developed in remarkable ways. John, strongly influenced by Bob Dylan, wrote more edgy lyrics, realistic, dark, and cynical (“Help!,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”). Paul revealed many facets of his talent as a performer (“I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “I’m Down”) and wrote one of his more successful songs, “Yesterday.” George finally asserted himself as a songwriter to be reckoned with: he completed two titles, one of them, “I Need You,” was chosen for the soundtrack of the film. Ringo confirmed his love for country music with his cover of “Act Naturally.” As for George Martin, he helped the Fab Four enhance their sound palette by suggesting the use of a string quartet on “Yesterday,” for which Martin wrote the sublime arrangement. Now, the Beatles opened new musical horizons.
Upon the release of Help! on August 6 in the UK and on August 13 in the United States, the album reached the number 1 spot on the Billboard album charts. Across the Atlantic, to the dismay of the Beatles, Capitol Records distributed the songs of the album among four records: Beatles VI, Yesterday and Today, Help!, and Rubber Soul. The U.S. Help! album replaced the songs that did not appear in the film with instrumentals.
The Movie
The second Beatles movie, Help!, was used as a vehicle to spotlight Ringo’s personality. The plot revolves around a magic ring that Ringo wears and a cult devoted to the goddess Kaili who wants to get the ring back at any price. Richard Lester returned as director for the film. Filming took place between February 24 and May 11 in the Bahamas and the Austrian Alps. As with A Hard Day’s Night and later Let It Be (1969), additional filming took place in Twickenham Film Studios in London. Production of the film was completed on June 16.
Ringo had suggested Eight Arms to Hold You as the title for this new movie, but that was abandoned in favor of Help! We don’t know who was responsible—Richard Lester or John? Unlike A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles did not invest much of themselves in the script, but the shooting allowed them to flee the pressure of the fans, to have fun, and to consume copious quantities of marijuana. The result is satisfying, nothing more.
Unlike A Hard Day’s Night, Lester commissioned the film score not from George Martin, but from Ken Thorne. George Martin remembers: “Dick Lester and I didn’t hit it off well on A Hard Day’s Night, and the fact that I got an Academy Award nomination for musical direction probably didn’t help either.”1 The premiere was at the London Pavilion on July 29. Despite relatively good reviews, the movie did not have the same success as the first Beatles movie.
For the Help! album, Robert Freeman was once again responsible for the design. The original idea was to feature the Beatles with their arms positioned to spell out the word Help in semaphore. But the arrangement of the arms did not look good, so Freeman asked the Beatles to take other positions. The result was NUJV, which had no meaning! On the U.S. cover, slightly amended, we read NVUJ.
The Instruments
The Beatles’ sound palette was enriched in 1965. At the beginning of that year, John and George bought two Fender Stratocaster Sonic Blue guitars. Although mainly used on Rubber Soul, they appeared on some tracks of the Help! album. For Christmas 1964, Paul bought two Epiphone guitars: an ES-230TD Casino, which he used for the first time to perform some solos (“Another Girl,” “Ticket to Ride”), and a Texan acoustic flat top guitar, which he immortalized on “Yesterday.” John’s Framus Hootenanny twelve-string guitar made an appearance, too. Two new keyboards were also used: a Hohner Pianet electric piano and a Vox Continental portable organ.
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
The Beatles recorded two original songs for Help! that did not make the album—“That Means A Lot” and “If You’ve Got Trouble.” They were eventually released in 1996 on Anthology 2.
Help !
Lennon-McCartney / 2:18
1965
SONGWRITER
John
MUSICIANS
John: vocal, rhythm guitar
Paul: bass, backing vocal
George: lead guitar, backing vocal
Ringo: drums, tambourine
RECORDED
Abbey Road: April 13, 1965 (Studio Two)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 12
MIXING
Abbey Road: April 18, 1965 (Room 65) / June 18, 1965 (Studio Two)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Norman Smith
Assistant Engineers: Ken Scott, Phil McDonald
RELEASED AS A SINGLE
Help! / I’m Down
Great Britain: July 23, 1965 / No. 1 for 3 weeks from August 7, 1965
United States: July 19, 1965/ No. 1 for 3 weeks from September 4, 1965
Genesis
About 1973, John confessed to May Pang, his girlfriend at the time, that his favorite Beatles song was probably “Help!”: “I’d like to redo ‘Help!’ someday. The way we did it, it never told all of the truth.”1 He would have preferred a more soulful, mellow version of the song, with a greater emotional impact. He didn’t have the opportunity.
During a working session in April 1965, “Help!” was mentioned as the title of the second movie. John went home to compose the eponymous song. When Paul joined him, he already had the basis of the piano part. Paul says: “My main contribution is the countermelody to John.”2 When the song was finished, John and Paul were satisfied and performed it for Cynthia and Maureen Cleave, the famous journalist from the Evening Standard. “Very nice,” they said. “Like it.”3 “Most people think it’s just a fast rock ’n’ roll song. I didn’t realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help,”4 he said in 1980. At that time John was dissatisfied with himself—he felt ill at ease with success, honors, money, excess; he felt oppressed: “The whole Beatles thing was just beyond comprehension. I was eating and drinking like a pig and I was fat as a pig, dissatisfied with myself, and subconsciously I was crying out for help … So it was my fat Elvis period.”5 Help! became a kind of way out, and he poured all his dark and unhappy thoughts into his songs on the album. Dylan was right: The times they are a-changin’.
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
When George recorded his descending arpeggio, there was only one free track (the fourth). But, listening to the record, it appears that the
arpeggio has been doubled. Since no other track was available, John or Paul must have played it with him.
Production
On April 13, 1965, it took twelve takes and four hours for the Beatles to immortalize “Help!” John played his twelve-string Framus Hootenanny acoustic guitar, George his Gretsch Tennessean, Paul his Hohner, and Ringo his Ludwig kit. The first four takes were reserved for the basic rhythm. George executed little more than his descending arpeggio. At take 5, they decided to leave this section blank, John marked the tempo by strumming his strings. Take 9 was selected as the best take. John sang the lead vocal, backed by Paul and George. Then they doubled the vocals while Ringo added a tambourine. After freeing a track by a tape-to-tape reduction to a second tape recorder (see Technical Details), George was able to focus on his descending arpeggio. Take 12 was the final one. The mono mix for the movie soundtrack is dated April 18. Mono and stereo mixes for the album are dated June 18. An interesting detail: the doubling of John’s vocal, judged bad in the first refrain, was eliminated.
The Mystery of Mixes
A mystery surrounds the mixing sessions. The mono version (of the movie and the single mono LP) differs from the stereo version of June 18. The vocals are different, Ringo’s tambourine has disappeared, and one word was replaced (And now this day / But now …). According to documents that recently surfaced, the Beatles went for unknown reasons to CTS London Studios, rather than Abbey Road Studios, to rerecord their vocals for the Help! film.
Technical Details
“Help!” marked a significant technical change in the Beatles’ recording process. With this song, George Martin and Norman Smith inaugurated a new recording method, also called a tape-to-tape “reduction.” They transferred the first four tracks from the original tape recorder to a second four-track tape recorder, by remixing tracks 3 and 4 and then combining them into one track on a second tape. Thus, on the second recorder, tracks 1 and 2 were identical to the original, the third track was the premix of track 3 and 4 from the original tape, and track 4 became free. This process had to be used sparingly, since each reduction caused a loss of sound quality.
The Night Before
Lennon-McCartney / 2:34
1965
SONGWRITER
Paul
MUSICIANS
Paul: vocal, bass, lead guitar
John: Hohner Pianet piano, backing vocal
George: lead and rhythm guitar, backing vocal
Ringo: drums, maracas
RECORDED
Abbey Road: February 17, 1965 (Studio Two)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 2
MIXING
Abbey Road: February 18 and 23, 1965 (Studio Two) / April 18, 1965 (Room 65)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Norman Smith
Assistant Engineers: Ken Scott, Malcolm Davies, Phil McDonald
Genesis
“Do you feel that there’s any change [from your last record]?” Paul answered this question at a press conference on August 29, 1965, in Los Angeles without hesitation: “We try to change every record. You know, we’ve tried to change from the first record we made.”1 Indeed, this was the case with “The Night Before.” This song combined British rock and American rhythm & blues and carried germs of a future musical direction. It was the first time a Hohner Pianet electric piano appeared in a Beatles recording. The keyboard was used afterward by groups such as the Lovin’ Spoonful and Roxy Music.
Paul remembered that he had composed the song alone at the apartment in Wimpole Street, owned by Jane Asher’s parents. John did not dispute that: “That’s Paul again. I’ll just say it’s Paul, meaning I don’t remember anything about it except it was in the movie Help!”2 Although it was well made, neither John nor Paul had strong memories about its creation. Chosen for the movie soundtrack, it was performed in an outdoor scene filmed on Salisbury Plain, where Stonehenge is located.
Production
On February 17, the third session devoted to the Help! soundtrack, “The Night Before” was taped and completed in only two takes. Paul was on vocal and bass, George on rhythm guitar, Ringo on drums, and John played a Hohner Pianet electric piano for the first time. Paul doubled his vocal, and Ringo added maracas. As for the guitar solo, it seems that Paul and George played in duo, doubling each other at the octave. However, George Martin mentions only George in All You Need Is Ears,”3 while Barry Miles mentions Paul in Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now.4 It is likely they played together; the four-track recording obliged them to save space. The song was mixed in mono on February 18, and stereo on February 23. Another stereo mix was made on April 18 in Room 65 for United Artists, but it was never used.
You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away
Lennon-McCartney / 2:08
1965
SONGWRITER
John
MUSICIANS
John: vocal, rhythm guitar
Paul: bass, maracas
George: rhythm guitar, classical guitar
Ringo: drums, tambourine
Johnnie Scott: tenor and alto flutes
RECORDED
Abbey Road: February 18, 1965 (Studio Two)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 9
MIXING
Abbey Road: February 20 and 23, 1965 (Studio Two)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Norman Smith
Assistant Engineers: Ken Scott, Malcolm Davies
Genesis
John Lennon’s childhood friend, Pete Shotton, had the honor of witnessing the creation of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” When John played his song for the first time for Paul, he mistakenly sang, I can’t go on feeling two-foot small instead of … two-foot tall. “All those pseuds [pseudointellectuals] will really love it!,” laughed Lennon, referring to the music critics Lennon felt misinterpreted his lyrics.1 Pete claims he suggested the Hey at the beginning of the backing vocals.
Bob Dylan had a strong influence on the composition of this song. John discovered a realism and commitment in the poetry of the American singer’s protest songs that brought a total rethinking to his approach to lyric writing and allowed him for the first time to express his true feelings: “Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I’d done in my books [In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works]. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that—not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.”2 Paul also recognized the significant influence of Bob on John at this time: “So Dylan’s gobbledygook and his cluttered poetry was very appealing, it hit a chord in John. It was as if John felt, That should have been me.”3 Some saw in the lyrics to “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” an allusion to Brian Epstein and his homosexuality; others to an adulterous adventure. What was certain was that John spoke of painful feelings and feeling different, alone against the world. After Help! John revealed the darkness of his soul, which, in spite of success, was in pain. He said in an interview with Playboy: “I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.”4
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
On February 18, while the Beatles were in the studio, their publishing company, Northern Songs Ltd., made its debut on the London Stock Exchange.
Production
Thursday, February 18. For a fee of £6 [$9.00 U.S.] per session, flutist and musical arranger Johnnie Scott became a legend. Although he was not credited on the album, it was the first time the Beatles called an additional musician into a session, not including Andy White, who had replaced Ringo on September 11, 1962, to play drums for “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You.” Johnnie Scott created the solo by doubling an alto flute with a tenor flute.
The song was based around John’s and George’s acoustic guitars. Dylan had not only influenced the lyrics for the song, but also the atmosphere. “You’ve Got to
Hide Your Love Away” was recorded in nine takes. The first track was reserved for the rhythm. John played his twelve-string Framus Hootenanny; Paul was on bass; George probably used his José Ramirez classical guitar; and Ringo his brushes. John’s vocal was recorded on the second track and, strangely, was not doubled. While on track 3, George also played his twelve-string guitar, Paul played maracas, and Ringo tambourine. Finally, on the last track, Johnnie Scott recorded his flute solo, imitating John’s vocal on the second track. The mono mix was made on February 20, stereo on February 23.
I Need You
George Harrison / 2:28
1965
SONGWRITER
George
MUSICIANS
George: vocal, lead guitar
John: backing vocal, snare drum, rhythm guitar
Paul: bass, backing vocal
Ringo: drums, cowbell
RECORDED
Abbey Road: February 15–16, 1965 (Studio Two)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 5
MIXING
Abbey Road: February 18 and 23, 1965 (Studio Two)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Norman Smith
Assistant Engineers: Ken Scott, Jerry Boys, Malcolm Davies
Genesis
Curiously, George Harrison never commented on “I Need You,” nor did he mention the title in his autobiography.1 Yet, it was one of the first songs—after “Don’t Bother Me” for With the Beatles—that George Harrison wrote for the group. In this love song, no doubt inspired by Pattie Boyd, George revealed his feelings: he needed her! Richard Lester thought this song was strong enough to be included among the seven songs chosen for the movie. The sequence, filmed at Salisbury Plain, features George singing with his friends in the middle of military tanks, obviously worried about the imminent arrival of the rain!
All the Songs Page 16
