Help!

Story Behind the Album

This album, like A Hard Day's Night, is a soundtrack to a movie.  Unlike HDN, Help has much more varied effort, and there are about equal songs by John and Paul and even a couple contributions from George. The album opens with the title track written by John, and contains the songs used in the movie first.  This album contains material that is much more introspective, especially John's and you can definately see a difference in their subject matter and the feel of the music.  Much of this goes to Bob Dylan. As many people know and believe, Bob Dylan introducted the Beatles toa mind expanding drug, marijuana (note: it wasn't just bob).  The effect the drug had on the music and their lives is very dramatic.  The music began to slow and the subjects of the songs change, a change that was to continue through out their career.  As stated their is variance through the album to the writers and there is NO weak song.  John's best include, the title track, "Your Gonna Lose that Girl", "Ticket to Ride", and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away".  George's songs, "I Need You" and "You Like Me Too Much", show he is no slouch, and his compositions are gaining depth and improving sound dramatically. Paul contributes with upbeat songs like, "The Night Before", "Another Girl' and "Every Little Thing".  The most well known song on the album is a song that didn't even make into the movie, or a single, yet it remains the most well known, covered song the Beatles ever made.   Paul McCartney struck gold one morning when he woke up with a song called "Scrambled Eggs" in his head. The story is that he woke up one morning with this beautiful melody in his head that he thought he copied because it was so great. He immediately woke up and began to put words to it and what he came up with was, "Scrambled eggs,oh baby I love your legs."  On the set of "Help!", Paul would drive Richard Lester (director) insane by repeatedly playing the melody to the song over and over, finally Lester threatened Paul to stop playing it, little did he know he was criticizing, "Yesterday", which in some minds is the best Beatles song ever made. The song wasn't without controversy though. First Paul did not know what to play on it, he couldn't picture the standard bass, guitar, and drums, and by not playing those he excluded the other Beatles from any contribution and therefore it was questioned whether to call it a Beatles songs at all. George Martin thought it would be a good idea to have a string section put on it to only Paul's acoustic guitar and his voice.  A much misleading fact is that this is the first time outside muscians were called in, in fact, it was the flute player on John's "You've got to hide your love away", that was the first,but it was the first string section. Help is a definite progression from previous albums and it shows the new directions the Beatles were taking. The album incorporated new drugs, new songs, a new movies, and new sounds. It is definetaly one of their best.  (Note:info on the movies available on the movie link).

Track Listing

1. Help 2. The Night Before 3. You've Got to Hide You're Love Away 4. I Need You [Harrison] 5. Another Girl 6. You're Gonna Lose That Girl 7. Ticket To Ride 8. Act Naturally [Morrison/Russell) 9. It's Only Love 10. You Like Me Too Much [Harrison] 11. Tell Me What You See 12. I've Just Seen A Face 13. Yesterday 14. Dizzy Miss Lizzie [Williams]

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