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| The Help! soundtrack captures The Beatles at a transitional time. |
The Beatles evolved a great deal between their debut album, Please Please Me (1963), and their farewell album, Let It Be (1970). During those seven incredibly eventful years, the group's songs became more adventurous and experimental, both lyrically and sonically, and their albums became more ambitious in scope. There's a world of difference between Beatles for Sale (1964) and Abbey Road (1969), even though they were recorded by the same four guys from Liverpool, just a few years apart.
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| On the cusp: The Beatles in 1965. |
But the Fab Four stopped touring in mid-career, which in many ways liberated them creatively. They no longer had to reproduce their songs onstage, so they were free to make music that could only emerge from a recording studio with all its sonic trickery. The group's lyrics changed, too. While their early albums are dominated by simple love songs—boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, etc.—their later LPs could tackle any number of social or psychological themes or even indulge in surrealism and pure abstraction.
There is so much difference between the group's early work and its later work, in fact, that most fans tend to divide their albums into two major categories: Early Beatles and Late Beatles. But some experts have proposed a third category: Middle Beatles, referring to that brief but productive time circa 1965-66 when they were first showing signs of artistic growth and dabbling in Dylanesque folk rock. The two best-known Middle Beatles albums are Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). But I'd like to add a third LP to this roster: the soundtrack to the group's second movie, Help! (1965). In revisiting this somewhat-neglected and underappreciated album, I have discovered some remarkably consistent themes throughout it. Help! is so cohesive that I would be comfortable calling it The Beatles' earliest concept album, predating Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).
Does that sound preposterous? Stick with me.
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| John's breakthrough. |
We start with the unforgettable title track, which John Lennon himself considered a breakthrough in his songwriting career, as it allowed him to explore his own anxieties and inadequacies through music in a way he had never done previously on a Beatles record. "Help!" is told from the perspective of a once-confident man whose faith in himself has been shaken—by exactly what, we never learn—and who pleads to his current romantic partner to give him some sense of stability in his life. "Help me get my feet back on the ground," Lennon sings. "Won't you please, please help me?" Imagine being on the receiving end of this song; it might be daunting or even frightening.
The next selection on the album is one of Paul's called "The Night Before." It's about the frustration and confusion a young man experiences when a woman is affectionate toward him one day, then changes her mind the next day. Paul was planning on a long-term relationship with this woman, but she was only interested in a one-time fling. Instead of moving on, he begs her to reconsider: "Treat me like you did the night before." Whether this song is about an aloof woman or a clingy, possessive man depends on your perspective.
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| John was influenced by Dylan. |
Although "Hide Your Love" was unmistakably Dylan-inspired, with John doing a passable imitation of his current musical hero, I can't help but wonder if John was also thinking of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," a 1933 Jerome Kern standard given a rock-era update by The Platters in 1958. That song, too, is about a man reeling from a humiliating breakup and worried about being taunted by his peers. The lyrics go:
Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide.
So I smile and say,
"When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes."
Compare that to "Hide Your Love":
Everywhere people stare
Each and every day.
I can see them laugh at me
And I hear them say,
"Hey, you've got to hide your love away!"
Also notable and disturbing is John's line about not being able to go on. So far, all the songs on Help! have been about men who place a great deal of importance on their romantic relationships. Their sense of self-worth is largely based on these relationships. Without a girl by their side, they're nothing.
This theme continues with the first of George Harrison's contributions to Help!, a moody midtempo number called "I Need You." The narrator of this song is begging an ex-girlfriend to come back to him, even though she has told him in no certain terms that she doesn't love him anymore. George doubles down on the "I can't go on without you" motif from the previous song. He engages in emotional manipulation here, making the woman feel guilty about abandoning him: "You don't realize how much I need you." Believe it or not, this is the more positive of George's two songs on Help! He must've been in a weird place, psychologically-speaking, in 1965.
I'm not sure how much say The Beatles had in sequencing their own albums at this point in their career. They famously had no control over the rearranged (butchered?) American versions of their LPs. But the UK version of Help! has one of the great one-two punches in the entire Beatles catalog: "Another Girl" followed by "You're Going to Lose That Girl." In the first song, Paul is crowing about finding love with a new partner, only to be contradicted by John in the very next song. It's a perfect setup and punchline: boy gets girl, boy immediately loses girl by being a jerk.
"Another Girl" and "Lose That Girl" are united by their themes of vengeance and competition in romantic relationships. The whole point of "Another Girl" is that Paul wants to brag about his new girlfriend to his previous girlfriend. The weirdest part is that this mysterious ex doesn't seem to have been so bad. Paul even admits, "I don't want to say that I've been unhappy with you." It's just that this new girl is better somehow. In "Lose That Girl," John threatens to take a girl away from another man who takes her for granted. John calls this other man "my friend," though he may mean this sarcastically. And is John truly interested in this girl himself? Not necessarily. He just wants to teach the other guy a lesson. "I'll make a point," he sings, "of taking her away from you."
Side 1 of Help! ends with another of The Beatles' all-time greatest hits, one destined to be covered by many artists in many styles for decades: John's "Ticket to Ride." This is yet another gloomy post-breakup song, and the relationship it describes must have ended really badly, since John's ex is moving to an entirely different city and starting a new life. John's feelings are all over the place in "Ticket to Ride." On the one hand, his ex has given him some unmistakable feedback: "She said that living with me was bringing her down, yeah. She would never be free when I was around." Ouch. But the bridge of the song proves that John has learned absolutely nothing: "She ought to think twice. She ought to do right by me." Notice that he doesn't specify why he deserves a second chance.
The second half of the album begins with the first of its two covers: a Ringo-led remake of Buck Owens' "Act Naturally." Surprise, surprise, this is another post-breakup song. But at least the narrator of this one has a sardonic sense of humor about his situation. While John was trying to hide his love away on Side 1, Ringo was planning to capitalize on (and commodify) his misery by becoming an actor and playing "a man that's sad and lonely." He's going to put his grief on display for the whole world to see. In a way, this aligns him with the crying clown in James Darren's 1961 hit "Goodbye Cruel World."
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| George goes very dark. |
So we're in the same basic territory as "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)" by The Temptations, right? Nope. The song's second verse establishes that the guy and girl are already in a relationship, but it's not going well. "Is it right," John asks, "that you and I should fight every night?" But he later adds, "Haven't I the right to make it up, girl?" which suggests that maybe he did something to offend or hurt her. Some couples therapy is in order for these two lovebirds.
Up next is the darkest and most discouraging track on Help!: George's innocuously-titled "You Like Me Too Much." This is one of the rare times—John's "Run for Your Life" from Rubber Soul is another—when one of The Beatles portrays himself as the unquestioned bad guy in a relationship. In this song, George's girlfriend has left him again, which is "all that I deserve." but he is smugly confident that she will return soon. "You've tried before to leave me," he coldly reasons, "but you haven't got the nerve." And if she doesn't come back, George will simply hunt her down: "I will follow you and bring you back where you belong." Chilling stuff.
Perhaps to give the listener a break from the overwhelming despair, Help! then reverses course with back-to-back positive songs: a mellow John/Paul duet called "Tell Me What You See" followed by Paul's exuberant "I've Just Seen a Face." No heartbreak, jealousy, or paranoia for four and a half minutes! Then again, the lyrics of "Tell Me What You See" are what a psychopath might say to a woman he's got chained up in his basement:
Listen to me one more time, how can I get through?
Can't you try to see that I'm trying to get to you?
Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see.
It is no surprise now, what you see is me.
I think this song is about a guy trying to convince a girl to fall in love with him. Nothing wrong with that... theoretically. He's just going about it in a very creepy, intense way. It also reminds me of what a cult leader might say to his followers to get them to surrender to him.
As for "I've Just Seen a Face," what can I really say about that song in an article like this? It's the antithesis of pretty much everything else on Help! There are few songs as joyous in The Beatles' catalog, which is why I think it sounds more at home on the American version of Rubber Soul. Paul has just met this girl that he really likes, and he's so excited that he can barely keep up with his own thoughts about her. There's a breathless quality to the song, with the lyrics practically tripping over each other. The only possible negative way to interpret this song is to think of it as the prequel to "The Night Before." Imagine if they'd been sequenced that way, with "Night" following "Face." It would have been another great one-two punch.
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| A great downer. |
I've stated that Help! is a concept album, albeit an accidental one, and I think it's notable how "Yesterday" shares themes with several other songs on this same LP. You might even say this one song, a mere two minutes and four seconds in length, summarizes the entire album. One obvious cognate of "Yesterday" is "The Night Before." They're both reminders that our lives can change drastically (and for the worse) in a very short amount of time, from one day or night to another. In "Yesterday," Paul also tells us that he needs "a place to hide away," which invites an easy comparison to John's "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." And the lyrics of "Yesterday" indicate that Paul's ex has moved away, which makes this song a companion piece to "Ticket to Ride."
Ideally, if Help! were truly being sequenced as a concept album about romantic despair, it would start with the title track and end with "Yesterday." Respectively, these are the most thoughtful and introspective songs that John and Paul had written. But, as we all know, this is not how Help! ends. Instead, the closing number is a high-energy cover of Larry Williams' "Dizzy Miss Lizzy." It's always fun to hear The Beatles rocking out with total abandon, and John attacks the lead vocal with the same fervor he brings to "Twist and Shout," but there's very little to discuss here from a thematic standpoint. Perhaps it's notable that the narrator of the song wants to marry Lizzy after dancing with her a couple of times. That's a pretty big commitment, chief. Maybe think it over a little more.
In all likelihood, the Help! LP was merely meant as a souvenir of The Beatles' second movie. About half the songs on it are selections from the film, with the other half consisting of covers and some random originals the group had lying around circa 1965. In other words, this was not an artistic statement; this was a product. Nevertheless, these songs give us some insight into what was on The Beatles' minds at this crucial juncture in their careers. This collection of songs, patchwork though it may be, shows them progressing as songwriters and evolving as human beings, too.
