Help! (song)

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Help! is the title track of The Beatles' 1965 album of the same name. It was also the title track to the film.

Contents

Writing

Most of the song was written by John in his home in Weybridge. "I wrote it in my house" John said, "I had a little bit of a song, which I’d played around at writing, called something like ‘Keep Your Hands Off My Babe’. Anyway, it was floating around for a long time, and, when Paul came over, we decided to adapt it." John had apparently been urged by journalist Maureen Cleave to use longer words in his songs, because she thought the earlier songs were written too simply. The song was written after the film was named in mid-April. As Paul said, "I seem to remember Dick Lester, Brian Epstein, Walter Shenson and ourselves sitting around, maybe Victor Spinetti was there, and thinking, What are we going to call this one? Somehow Help! came out. I didn't suggest it; John might have suggested it or Dick Lester. It was one of them. John went home and thought about it and got the basis of it, then we had a writing session on it. We sat at his house and wrote it, so he obviously didn't have that much of it. I would have to credit it to John for original inspiration 70-30. My main contribution is the countermelody to John." Although it is believed that John wrote most of the lyrics to the song, Paul has said that he wrote the instrumental parts. Paul once said, "Once we'd done our writing session there was nothing left to be done except put the instruments on. That's what I was there for; to complete it. Had John just been left on his own he might have taken weeks to do it, but just one visit and we would go right in and complete it. So we came down and played the intro, into the verse, descant coming in on the second verse. It was all crafted, it was all there, the final verses and the end. 'Very nice,' they said. 'Like it.'" The song had been originally written as a ballad, however, like Please Please Me, the song was slowed down. Later, John said, "I don't like the recording too much; we did it too fast trying to be commercial... I might do I Want To Hold Your Hand and Help! again, because I like them and I can sing them." He had written it originally out of the negative self-image he had. In a 1970 interview, he explained, "I meant it - it's real. The lyrics is as good now as it was then. It is no different, and it makes me feel secure to know that I was aware of myself then. It was just me singing 'help' and I meant it."

Recording

The song was recorded in twelve takes on April 13, 1965. The first eight takes were instrumental, with the vocals first overdubbed onto Take 9. The last take was considered the best, and tambourine and more guitar were overdubbed onto that take. Surprisingly, the mono and stereo versions use two different vocal overdubs. In the stereo version, there is also a tambourine in the song. On the mono version, it is missing.

Release

The song was first released as a single in the US (July 19) and the UK (July 23) in 1965. It topped the the charts in both places. John later said, "The Help! single sold much better than the two before it: I Feel Fine and Ticket To Ride. But there were still a lot of fans who didn't like Help!. They said, 'Ah, The Beatles are dropping us. This isn't as good as A Hard Day's Night.' So you can't win. Trying to please everybody is impossible - if you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it."

Personnel

The Beatles

Production

Available Versions

Available On

Cover Versions

  • The Beatles Tribute Project
  • Bon Jovi
  • The Carpenters
  • The Damned
  • Howie Day
  • dc Talk
  • Deep Purple
  • Andy Ellison
  • John Farnham
  • Jose Feliciano
  • Henry Gross
  • Kids Incorporated
  • Richard Marx
  • Mcfly
  • Kylie Minogue
  • R. Stevie Moore
  • Oasis
  • Dolly Parton
  • Rosenberg Trio
  • Roxette
  • Peter Sellers
  • Sonderbar
  • Michael Stanley
  • Tina Turner, from her 1988 album Tina Live in Europe
  • U2

Source

Retrieved from "http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/Help%21_%28song%29"
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