Help!

• 1. A Cover That Lied

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  Help!, the fifth studio album by the Beatles, was released by Parlophone on the 6th of August 1965, packaged as both a standalone record and the soundtrack to their second feature film. The cover showed the four musicians with their arms in positions intended to spell "HELP" in flag semaphore. Photographer Robert Freeman later explained that when the band tried the intended formation, the letters looked visually wrong. They improvised. On the UK Parlophone pressing, the resulting positions spelled the letters "NUJV". The US Capitol release adjusted them slightly to "NVUJ", with McCartney's left hand aimed toward the Capitol Records logo.

  Fourteen songs filled two sides of the record. One of them had been written under the working title "Scrambled Eggs", a melody its author spent roughly a month verifying he had not borrowed from somewhere else. The title track held a more private history than its fast tempo suggested.

  The album's name had taken time to settle. Its working title was "Eight Arms to Hold You", a phrase coined by Ringo Starr. It remained in use long enough to appear on the US pressing of the "Ticket to Ride" single before "Help!" was chosen instead.

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• 2. Lennon's Dylan Period

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  John Lennon described "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" as the clearest example of what he called his "Dylan period". Bob Dylan had introduced the Beatles to cannabis in 1964, and the band smoked it throughout the filming of Help!. In spring 1965, they first encountered LSD.

  According to music writer Alexis Petridis, these experiences drove the Beatles toward "new emotional depths" in their songwriting. Songs like "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and "Ticket to Ride" reflected that shift. Author Mark Hertsgaard had noted that while Dylan's influence was "evident" on their previous album Beatles for Sale, Help! was where it became "fully realized".

  Lennon had originally conceived the title track at a slower tempo and later expressed regret at speeding it up for commercial reasons. In interviews, he recalled the period in direct terms: "The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. I was eating and drinking like a pig and I was fat as a pig, dissatisfied with myself." He described it as his "fat Elvis period". From the Beatles' break-up until his death, he called "Help!" his favorite song he ever wrote.

  Kenwood, Lennon's house in Weybridge, was where most of the album's songwriting happened, according to McCartney. McCartney wrote "Yesterday" and "I've Just Seen a Face" at 57 Wimpole Street in London, the family home of his girlfriend Jane Asher. He also wrote "Another Girl" at a villa in Hammamet, Tunisia.

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• 3. What Was Left Behind

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  Studio Two of EMI Recording Studios, now known as Abbey Road Studios, hosted all of Help!'s recording sessions. The first set began on the 15th of February 1965 with "Ticket to Ride" and continued through the 20th. The group then flew to the Bahamas to begin filming. Director Richard Lester and producer Walter Shenson received a tape of the eleven recorded songs to decide which ones to use.

  Several songs from these initial sessions were not included on the album. Lennon's "Yes It Is" was placed on the B-side of the "Ticket to Ride" single. A cover of Larry Williams' "Bad Boy" went to the North American album Beatles VI.

  Two Lennon-McCartney compositions were rejected entirely. "If You've Got Trouble" had been written for Ringo Starr as his required lead vocal. One take was attempted on the 18th of February before the song was abandoned. "That Means a Lot" fared differently: two versions were attempted, one on the 20th of February and another on the 30th of March. The song was then given to singer P. J. Proby to record, and Proby's version reached number 30 on the UK chart. Both "If You've Got Trouble" and the first take of "That Means a Lot" were eventually released on Anthology 2 in 1996.

  "Wait", completed in the February sessions, was held back and placed on the Beatles' next album, Rubber Soul, later that year.

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• 4. Fourteen June

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  Mark Lewisohn described the 14th of June 1965 as "a remarkable day's work" that showed McCartney's ability to range across musical styles. On that single day, the Beatles recorded "I've Just Seen a Face", "I'm Down", and "Yesterday".

  "Yesterday" began with McCartney singing and playing acoustic guitar alone. He had carried the melody for roughly a month. He played it to people to make sure he had not borrowed it from another song without realizing. His working title was "Scrambled Eggs".

  McCartney and producer George Martin then chose to add a string quartet. Martin later described the session as the moment "I started to leave my hallmark on the Beatles' music, when a style started to emerge which was partly of my making." This was the first time the Beatles had drawn on what is described as Baroque sensibilities in their arrangements.

  "Yesterday" was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most-covered pop song in history. It became one of the very few Beatles songs McCartney performed regularly with his later band Wings.

  "I'm Down", also recorded that day, was not placed on the album. It appeared as the B-side of the "Help!" single. "I've Just Seen a Face" made side two and outlasted the album in McCartney's own repertoire. The string quartet session, meanwhile, pointed toward a broader push into new instrumental territory that the album's remaining sessions would continue.

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• 5. Instruments They Had Never Used

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  Mark Lewisohn identifies 1965 as the beginning of a new phase. The Beatles turned toward what he called "a more serious application in the recording studio", putting less focus on live performance. Half of the songs on Help! feature instruments the band had never recorded with before, among them electric piano, flutes, and a volume/tone pedal.

  Help! was the first Beatles album to feature the Epiphone Casino guitar. McCartney had purchased one around December 1964, and it became a regular instrument for the group. "The Night Before" was the first Beatles song to feature electric piano, played by Lennon. McCartney and Harrison played that song's guitar solo together, doubling each other in octaves.

  John Scott played tenor and alto flutes on "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away". He was only the second outside musician to appear on a Beatles recording, after drummer Andy White.

  "I Need You" introduced the volume/tone pedal, making it the first Beatles song to use a guitar pedal. George Harrison wrote the song for his girlfriend Pattie Boyd, whom he had met while filming A Hard Day's Night. Harrison had not contributed a song to a Beatles album since "Don't Bother Me" in 1963. Tom Petty sang "I Need You" at the Concert for George in 2002, a year after Harrison's death.

  Lewisohn also documents new recording methods used on the album. One involved running a tape machine during rehearsals and then spooling back to record properly over that material. Producer George Martin began placing guitar parts on separate tracks from the bass and drums. According to Walter Everett, this produced "a more satisfying stereo image". These decisions shaped how the two distinct versions of the album were assembled for different markets.

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• 6. Two Albums, One Title

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  Capitol Records issued a distinct version of Help! in North America on the 13th of August 1965, a week after the UK release. The American album combined the seven film songs from side one with orchestral music from the film, composed and conducted by Ken Thorne. Thorne's score contained one of the earliest uses of the Indian sitar on a rock or pop album. It was also the sitar's very first appearance on a Beatles record.

  The seven songs from side two of the original album were distributed across three Capitol releases. "You Like Me Too Much", "Tell Me What You See", and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" had already appeared on Beatles VI. "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love" were added to the Capitol edition of Rubber Soul. "Yesterday" and "Act Naturally" were reserved for Yesterday and Today.

  The American version reached number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart for nine weeks beginning on the 11th of September 1965. The Capitol LP came in a gatefold sleeve described as deluxe, containing photographs from the film, and was priced one dollar more than standard Capitol releases. By the 31st of December 1965, the American version had sold 1,314,457 copies. Sales reached 1,594,032 copies by the end of the decade.

  Writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide in 2004, Rob Sheffield described the American version as "utterly ruined". He argued that replacing Beatles songs with soundtrack music had left the full album overlooked for years. The original fourteen-track UK version did not become the standard American release on LP and cassette until the 21st of July 1987. When George Martin prepared a new stereo remix for that release, he described the original 1965 mix as "very woolly, and not at all what I thought should be a good issue". He returned to the original four-track tapes to start again.

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• 7. A Grammy First

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  Richard Freed, writing for The New York Times in the summer of 1965, compared the Beatles' songs to works in the European art music tradition. Freed cited Leonard Bernstein and Abram Chasins among the figures who admired the group's work. This was part of a wider shift in how American mainstream critics were beginning to treat the band.

  Help! was nominated in the Album of the Year category at the 1966 Grammy Awards. The nomination was the first time a rock band had been recognized in that category.

  The album topped charts in Australia, Germany, and Britain. Derek Johnson wrote in the NME that it "maintains the Beatles' usual high standards". He called it "a gay, infectious romp which doesn't let up in pace or sparkle from start to finish". Johnson also wrote: "It's typical Beatles material, and offers very few surprises. But then, who wants surprises from the Beatles?" According to music journalist Michael Halpin, these comments angered McCartney, who believed artists should be continuously developing their work.

  Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph later described the album as evoking "a band in transition". In his view, the group was "shifting slightly uncomfortably from the pop thrills of Beatlemania to something more mature". Lennon's writing, McCormick noted, was growing increasingly autobiographical. McCormick concluded: "Help! may not be their greatest album, but it contains some of their greatest early songs."

  Rolling Stone ranked Help! number 332 on their "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2003. The ranking rose to number 266 in the 2020 edition. In September 2013, the British Phonographic Industry changed its sales award rules, and Help! was certified platinum for all UK recorded sales since 1994. In 1989, Buck Owens and Ringo Starr recorded "Act Naturally" together. More than two decades had passed since Starr had made the song his vocal contribution to Help!.

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