#331 - The Beatles - Help! (1965)

MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:

THE BEATLES BIO

We all know the basic history of the Fab Four - formed in Liverpool in 1960, consists of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They're music ranges across many genres, stemming from 1950s rock and roll but also including traditional pop, classical music, ballads, hard rock, and psychedelia. Beatlemania was feverish in the UK, United States, and around the world in the 1960s. They're first official release was in 1963, and they were international stars by the following year. Leading us into today's album, they had already released "Please Please Me", "With the Beatles" in 1963, and the film/album combo "A Hard Day's Night" and "Beatles for Sale" in 1964. That leads us to today's discussion, another film/album combo, "Help!"

BACKGROUND – HELP!

This is the 5th studio release by the English rock band (8/6/65), and 7 of the songs (Side 1) served as the soundtrack to the accompanying film. It was recorded in London during the months of February-June in 1965. A different version of the album was released in the United States a week later, with instrumental tracks from the film (From Me To You Fantasy, In The Tyrol, Another Hard Day's Night, The Bitter End/You Can't Do That, and the Chase) being included on the American Version, but excluded all of the Side 2 tracks from the British release. 

It sold over 1.3 million copies in the United States by the end of 1965, and peaked at #1 on both the UK Albums and US Billboard Top LP charts. 

This was nominated for Album of the Year at the 1966 Grammy's, which was the first time a rock band had been recognized for that category. It lost to Frank Sinatra's September of My Years (Barbara Streisand's My Name is Barbara, The Sound of Music soundtrack, and My World by Eddy Arnold were the other nominees). This was also voted 119th best in the All Time 100 Albums Poll in 2000. 

There was more use of keyboards on this album compared to previous releases, and John Lennon used the acoustic guitar much more on this album compared to previous albums. 

The accompanying film with this album was Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of Bond", it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. McCartney said: "Help! was great but it wasn't our film – we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong." 

The album cover shows the Beatles with their arms positioned to spell out a word in flag semaphore, basically like a Morse code with arms. According to cover photographer Robert Freeman, "I had the idea of semaphore spelling out the letters 'HELP'. But when we came to do the shot, the arrangement of the arms with those letters didn't look good. So we decided to improvise and ended up with the best graphic positioning of the arms.”