On Boxing Day 1964, Another Beatles Christmas Show opened at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. The idea was ostensibly to repeat the previous year’s highly successful formula, with a cast of contemporaries including The Yardbirds, Freddie and the Dreamers, Sounds Incorporated and Elkie Brooks.
The Fab Four appeared throughout the show in various sketches, such as one in which they played Antarctic explorers on a quest to find the Abominable Snowman.
The fans came in their thousands, screaming from start to finish, and while the show finished with an 11-song set from The Beatles, they were very much wearying of such engagements.
Since they first became national figures in early 1963, they had joined in with the staples of the British light entertainment industry, from these Christmas shows, which echoed the UK’s tradition of pantomime, to performing skits on popular TV programmes like The Morecombe & Wise Show, mixing comedy with music.
But as this Christmas run dragged on, they grew to hate the pantomime pieces so much that they never played the traditional British entertainment game ever again. From here on, things would be different.
Long, cold, lonely winter
It was a particularly cold winter as 1965 tried to get going in the UK. Heavy snow interspersed dry, grey, dull periods and temperatures remained chilly into early spring.
The boys took advantage of almost a whole month off between the end of the Christmas run and the start of work on their next project – this was their first break since coming back from Hamburg in October 1960. John went skiing in the Alps, Paul headed to Tunisia, George stayed home and Ringo got married.
On 15 February 1965, they returned to EMI Studios on Abbey Road to begin work on what would become the Help! LP. Over six days they managed to tape 11 songs, before heading off to the Bahamas to begin work on their second movie, tentatively entitled Eight Arms To Hold You.
Where working on their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night (1964), had been new and exciting, the second found the group in less-enthusiastic mode (they later complained that they’d been extras in their own movie).
For those who haven’t seen it, the plot (such as it is) is that a fan has sent Ringo a ring that turns out to be sacrificial in some decidedly dodgy-by-today’s-standards eastern religion, whose followers then chases the poor unfortunate Beatles from the pub to Buckingham Palace (actually Cliveden House, the sprawling Berkshire mansion central to the recent infamous Profumo Affair) to the Alps and then off to the Bahamas.
And while there are some genuinely hilarious scenes, it’s clear that John, Paul, George and Ringo are no longer taking it seriously in any way.
Flying high (in the friendly sky)
It wasn’t just the film they weren’t taking seriously by this point. Possibly to escape the PTSD-like madness of Beatlemania, the boys had retreated into a marijuana fug, locked together in their own almost-telepathic sense of humour, giggling endlessly.
George Harrison later recalled their flight to the Bahamas: "Brandon De Wilde was an actor, a James Dean type. He liked The Beatles’ music and he heard we were going to film in the Bahamas, so he came over from the States with a big bag of reefer.
"We smoked on the plane, all the way to the Bahamas. It was a charter flight, with all the film people – the actors and the crew – and we thought, 'No, nobody will notice.' We had [road manager] Mal smoking cigars to drown out the smell."
They took with them a tape of the tracks they’d cut in February. Of those 11, they ditched two Lennon/McCartney songs (‘That Means A Lot’ and ‘If You’ve Got Trouble’), and ‘Yes It Is’ became a b-side for ‘Ticket To Ride’.
Clearly, they weren’t satisfied with all of their work so far, which demonstrates that while they may not have been taking much else seriously, they were now doubling down on recording, as they began to seek greater control over their music.
They were left with eight songs: ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘Another Girl’, ‘I Need You’, ‘The Night Before’, ‘You Like Me Too Much’, ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’, ‘Tell Me What You See’ and ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’.
With principal photography for the film nearing completion, the boys met up with producer George Martin back at EMI Studios at the end of March and began work on completing the album.
But with only occasional slots in the diary into which recording sessions could be squeezed, it wasn’t until mid-June that recording resumed in earnest, with a noteworthy day’s work on Monday 14 June seeing them record the Little Richard-esque rocker ‘I’m Down’, the folk-rock ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ and the ballad ‘Yesterday’.
Not bad for a few hours’ work.
Within a few days, the album was complete – just in time for a tour of France, Italy and Spain before the summer’s big event: their second full concert tour of the US.
What made Help! so different?
All of their recordings to date had been fairly similar in terms of arrangements – drums, a couple of guitars, bass and vocals occasionally augmented by George Martin’s piano. But on Help! they sought to expand the sonic palette, and began introducing new sounds.
For a start, the group began to loosen up on their allocated roles as musicians.
Paul playing lead guitar on a couple of tracks (‘Another Girl’ and ‘Ticket To Ride’) for the first time, while John switched to electric piano for ‘The Night Before’. For ‘You Like Me Too Much’, three pianos were deemed necessary, with Paul on electric piano and John and George Martin on the Steinway.
Rather than the usual guitar break, ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ featured a flute solo. As Paul McCartney recalled in The Lyrics (2021) book, "George Martin suggested we put a flute solo on it, so we thought, 'Well, we'll give it a try.' George was always very good at selecting musicians.
"He knew the pool, so we always got the top guys, often classical musicians or jazz musicians who were doing sessions to earn a little extra money. That's how we were first coaxed into the idea of having other instrumentation."
On ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’, they abandoned their electric instruments wholesale, making this their first ‘unplugged’ recording. John, George and Paul play acoustic guitars, while Ringo adds brushed snare and maracas.
And on Paul’s ‘Yesterday’, which would go on to become the most covered song in history, they go a stage further. Paul’s acoustic guitar and vocal is the only contribution by any of the group, effectively rendering it a solo song, on which Paul is back by a string quartet scored by Martin.
There are plenty of other examples of how they were trying new things out – such as George adding swells made by a guitar volume pedal on ‘I Need You’, or Ringo’s imaginative stuttering drum patter on ‘Ticket To Ride’.
Inspired by Dylan
The songwriting advanced on a number of Help! songs, with the influence of Bob Dylan particularly evident on ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’, by Lennon’s own admission: "It’s one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand/head in hand.' I started thinking about my own emotions. I don’t know when exactly it started, like 'I’m A Loser' or 'Hide Your Love Away,' or those kind of things.
"Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would just try to express what I felt about myself, which I had done in my books. I think it was Dylan helped me realise that – I had a sort of professional songwriter’s attitude to writing pop songs, but to express myself I would write [the books] Spaniard In The Works (1965) or In His Own Write (1964) – the personal stories, which were expressive of my personal emotions."
Dylan’s influence was there too in the song that became the title track. The original version of ‘Help!’ was much slower and, as such, felt more personal. In the 70s, Lennon would remark that he regretted speeding it up into a rocker, feeling it lost the sincerity of his genuine plea for help.
Regardless, the musical interplay on the song is fabulous, from the reversed call-and-response vocals, in which Paul and George’s backing vocals anticipate John’s lead vocal on most phrases, giving the impression of being inside his head. George’s descending guitar figures, echoed by Paul on the bass, makes for another clever touch.
Not every song on Help! was a mini-revolution. Constricted by time demands, and having as yet not established a new order in which albums took as long as the artist needed to make, songs like ‘You Like Me Too Much’ and ‘It’s Only Love’ are Beatles-by-numbers – Lennon later admitted that the latter was one of his least favourite Beatles numbers.
It was also the last album that was filled out by cover versions, and Ringo’s ‘Act Naturally’ is largely forgettable, while John’s ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ already feels like it comes from a different era, despite how enjoyable a listen it undoubtedly is.
Help! is the album on which they began their experiments
While their second album of the year, Rubber Soul, which would follow Help! just four months later, is rightly lauded as one of their finest albums, and a great leap forwards from the days of ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ even, that leap wasn’t made in one jump, but was a continuation of the work they’d put in during the first half of 1965.
Help! is the album on which they began their experiments and started to push back against the established norms of the pop music industry.
It was here that they started to experiment with instrumentation outside of their live setting, and so consider what they did in the studio as the focus of their creativity, rather than live performance taking priority.
Help! allowed them the freedom to break out from their conventional roles within the group. And it was with Help! that they started writing songs outside of their usual styles – now they considered nothing beyond them or off limits, and if they wanted to use orchestral musicians or try their hands at different instruments, that was to be encouraged.
As McCartney said, "After we'd seen how that was all done and we started broadening our horizons, the sky was the limit."
All pics Getty Images
Top image The Beatles, (left to right) Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon, in summer 1965
