It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Help!” by The Beatles
August 11, 1965
“Help!” by The Beatles
#1 on the Record Retailer Singles Chart (UK), August 5-25, 1965
No single Beatles thing — not The Ed Sullivan Show appearances, not the teen magazine features and radio interviews, not even the music itself — played a larger part in establishing the Beatles’ personae as fun-loving, loveable chaps than the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. The group’s quick wit and vivid personalities impressed critics who had previously been skeptical of the pop idols. The accompanying soundtrack album is routinely held up as the high watermark of the Beatles’ early period, while the title song became one of the band’s biggest hits and most beloved singles.
Thanks to the enthusiastic popularity of A Hard Day’s Night (and a three-picture contract with United Artists), the Beatles swiftly followed up their cinematic debut with a more ambitious film the following year. Originally titled Eight Arms to Hold You, the movie was swiftly renamed Help!, a title more conducive to a catchy theme tune. John Lennon, who had penned “A Hard Day’s Night,” was granted the songwriting honors for the new title single. Though written only a year apart, and sharing a number of superficial similarities (12-string Rickenbacker guitar, three-part harmonies, a snappy pop tempo), the later song illustrates how quickly the Beatles were evolving both their sound and their thematic concerns.
The title “Help!” may have been assigned to Lennon, but it proved an apt vehicle for expressing his personal anxieties. In a 1980 interview with David Sheff (published in the book All We Are Saying), Lennon reflected on his state of mind when writing “Help!”:
“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. So it was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: he — I — is very fat, very insecure, and he’s completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was.”
In short, “Help!” is the cry of a once-confident man who’s suddenly found the ground pulled out beneath him — by fame, marriage, or neurosis — and is clawing at anything or anyone who might save him.
Lennon had intended to record “Help!” at a slower tempo to emphasize his anguish, but commercial concerns called for an upbeat theme tune. If anything, though, the faster pace makes the record far more panicked and intense. Paul McCartney and George Harrison’s backing vocals frequently beat Lennon to the lines he’s about to sing, as if he’s struggling to keep up with his own song. In both the intro and the chorus, the lead guitar continually descends in three note phrases, as if slowly pressing down on him, before ending in a swiftly repeating arpeggio that seems to reflect his swirl of anxious thoughts.
Lennon gets a brief respite in the third verse (actually a retread of the first verse), when Ringo Starr’s drums let up, and he gets a few peaceful moments to recall his independent younger days. But as soon as he admits to feeling “not so self-assured,” the drums start up again insistent as ever, escalating into a desperate pounding on the transition into the chorus. From then on, there’s no letting up until all the instruments drop out at the end, leaving just a meld of three voices crying “help me — ooh” as one falsetto. There’s no resolution or rescue imminent, and the bleak ending suggests it’s too late anyway.
The confessional lyrical style of “Help!” reflects Bob Dylan’s increasing influence, even if Lennon skips the poetry and politics and presents himself as a far more vulnerable figure than Dylan ever did. The bouncy shuffle of the track also owes a debt to the burgeoning folk-rock genre, which the Beatles themselves had helped invent with tracks like 1964’s “I’m a Loser,” and would come to full fruition on the albums Help! and Rubber Soul. Along with “Ticket to Ride,” released earlier in 1965, “Help!” definitively announced the start of a more lyrically mature, musically complex phase for the Beatles — even if its catchy melody and brisk tempo rendered it appropriate as the theme tune for a comedic cinematic romp.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
