THE BEATLES - “Help!”
(7th August 1965)
Such a strange way to begin a song: “so much younger than today” - nostalgia? regret? at their age? at this of all points, with medals round their necks, with the pop future they helped create expanding by the week? But there it is - The Beatles aren’t happy. Or John Lennon isn’t, but the group still sound like a collective, something the tight harmonies here only emphasise.
(I’ve always assumed, as an aside, that nobody in the audience really cared until later which Beatle wrote what. That the “Lennon/McCartney” conceit fooled most of the people, or that they let themselves be fooled, maybe even until the band split.)
Up until 1965 the Beatles’ singles are all first person - an “I”, a “you”, a tension. Most hits then were first person, most still are, but from ‘66 onwards the Beatles often drop the directness of the “I” for singles that work as narratives, or as advice, or they locate the “I” firmly in childhood or the Liverpool past. Most Beatles books put this introspection and diffusion down to drugs or music hall or both. At the same time the Stones were on a run of hits that turned the pop “I” into something focused and hostile, working through its implications in ways other bands turned away from.
Meanwhile, with “Help!” the Beatles make one last barbed beat boom hit. The music - bright, brisk, remorseless - taunts the lyric, McCartney’s bass dancing smartly through the song, chivvying the singer even as he’s cracking up. It sounds like what it is - a knockabout soundtrack to a bit of slapstick business, professionally turned out to tip-top standards. The band keep the quality high even as they’re admitting that this particular brand of fun has run out of puff. 7
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Alan Connor on March 14th, 2005
My memories of “Help!” are, more than a track on my parents’ Red Album, more even than Bananarama & La Na Nee Nee Noo Noo’s cover, some sitcom which I seem to remember was shit.
I wonder what proportion of the ’60s #1s were brought back into service for TV themes, ads, soundtracks etc in the 1980s?
Anonymous on March 14th, 2005
“The music - bright, brisk, remorseless - taunts the lyric.” Excellent insight, Tom. I think that for a long time “Help!” was placed by many (if not most) into the category of “beat song” without much regard for the lyrics. Indeed, if anyone were really listening to the lyrics, the song would undermine its function as the theme song of a film which, after all these years, I find almost too painfully stupid to watch. (All the same, the bogus “Third World” terrorists and the assassination attempts on the Beatles have, in their way, proved all too prescient for comfort.)
I have to wonder if, to some degree, Lennon was responding in agitation to being forced into performing such juvenile nonsense, hence the sense of feeling “so much older.”
While this is a very good Beatles recording, what keeps it from being a great one are those incongruities Tom has observed.
Doctor Mod
Tom on March 14th, 2005
I actually think the incongruities make it better - set up an interesting tension in the song.
Re. Lennon - yes quite possibly. The band’s expected work schedule must have been huge (3-4 years in the public eye is the current pop band lifespan before frustration and burnout seem to inevitably set in, and I doubt the circuit was much easier in the mid 60s) and this as much as boredom with the material would make someone feel old.
Anonymous on March 14th, 2005
From Allna W Polloack Notes ON Series :
Even in this context, though, the song “Help!” would appear to have pushed the envelope, given its chronological place within the cannon, just shy of mid-career, and its rather “psychiatric” choice of words.
Check your lyrical concordance; it’s the only Beatles song where you’ll find the words “independence,” “self-assured,” or “insecure.”
- But don’t be fooled into thinking that we’re dealing with a kind of perverse impulse to recklessly cast John “against type,” running the risk, big time, of blowing such a carefully cultivated image.
- Rather it’s precisely *because* of the cross casting here that the overall production it work as well as it does! Consider the alternatives. Tough guy singing tough songs is okay but predictable. Nebbish singing nebbishy songs is, yech, pathetic. Nebbish singing tough songs not fully believable. But take the one who always jokes and laughs like a clown and have him admit to his private indulgence in copious tears that fall like rain from the sky — and now you’ve really got something. Maybe those PR folks really knew what they were doing :-)
Frank Kogan on March 14th, 2005
The Beatles aren’t happy. Or John Lennon isn’t…
Wait, did he sound brimming with delight in “Ticket to Ride”? Or “Not a Second Time” or “You Can’t Do That” or “I’m a Loser” (another song in which he presented himself as something other than invulnerable) or “Hey You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (not to mention “Anna” and “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me” and “Money”)? The incongruities (if that’s what they are) are in the music from the get-go - “Please please me like I please you,” i.e., why aren’t you keeping your end of the bargain? - the color and the flash and the fantastic harmonies and the “Yeah Yeah Yeah” all accompanying the doggedly unhappy love life and the pang that’s always in John’s voice.
This is what a lot of pop does, like putting tension in the plot, which is why I wouldn’t think “incongruities” is the right word.
Also, the “I” remains in John’s songs, implied when not stated, though as he goes on he’s addressing the listener more, starting with “Nowhere Man,” so the “you” isn’t necessarily some girl, it’s, you know, you. “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao…” and it’s John talking to you. Except when he’s talking to himself, trying to convince himself it’s gettin’ better all the time (and he’s no longer cruel to his woman, no longer beats her and keeps her apart from the things that she loves?) (yeah, he divorces her instead).
Marcello on March 15th, 2005
The Bananarama cover was for Comic Relief, with French & Saunders and Kathy Burke.
Tom on March 15th, 2005
Frank - yes, “happy” a lazy choice of words there, it’s the implication of age and weariness that separates “Help!” from those other songs.
My gut feeling is that an implied “I” has different effects from a stated “I” but I’ll have to think about how/why/what.
Anonymous on March 15th, 2005
I think Alan Connor was referring to a late-80s sitcom starring a minor McGann - a sort of Bread lite. Nimble. I expect the Bootleg Beatles provided the theme.
MJ.
p^nk s on March 15th, 2005
haha “check your lyrical concordance”
i seem to have left mine somewhere!! along with my wisden’s and my bradshaw perhaps!!
Marcello on March 15th, 2005
“Help!” is best heard in tandem with “In My Life” from the same year. 25 years old and Lennon’s already mired in rueful nostalgia (”Some are dead and some are living”). Although we are supposed to be reassured by the concluding sentiment that the present (”I love you more”) is always preferable to trying forlornly to recapture a past, the traumatic sob of the song’s title as the music pauses (to die?) right before the end indicates a greater grief which makes the song the other bookend to “Cold Turkey.”
p^nk s on March 15th, 2005
cf “julia lennon theory 101″ of course!!
Alan Connor on March 16th, 2005
You’re absolutely right, MJ: I can see the Bootleg Beatles’ name on the closing credits now.
Ah, I see. Stephen McGann. Rescheduled as a children’s show? And thanks for the Nimble laughter.