Help! (song)

• 1. Introduction

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  "Help!" is a song that John Lennon would later call one of the most honest things he ever wrote. It arrived in the summer of 1965 dressed as a pop single, racing along at a tempo that Lennon himself came to regret. Beneath the exclamation point and the jangling twelve-string guitar was something more raw than the fans crowding into concert halls had any reason to expect. Lennon was, in his own words, fat and depressed. He was crying out for help.

  The song reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic and held that position for three weeks. It was the fourth consecutive number-one single the Beatles placed on the American charts, sandwiched between "Ticket to Ride" and "Yesterday". It would eventually be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. But its chart life tells only part of the story. The deeper question is what Lennon was actually saying, and whether anyone around him was listening.

• 2. Written Under Pressure

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  Stanley Parkes, Lennon's cousin and boyhood friend, supplied one of the most vivid accounts of how the song came to exist. According to Parkes, Lennon came home from the studio one night with a fresh problem: the film he had been working around had just been retitled "Help!", and he now needed a song to match it. That origin story, born of a title change, sits alongside a more personal account Lennon gave repeatedly over the years.

  In the Rolling Stone interviews known as "Lennon Remembers", recorded in 1970, Lennon described "Help!" as one of his favourite songs among everything he wrote for the Beatles. He placed it alongside "Strawberry Fields Forever" as one of only two Beatles songs he considered genuinely his own rather than pieces manufactured on demand. Writer Ian MacDonald read the song as the first visible crack in the emotional armour Lennon had constructed around himself during the group's rapid ascent to fame.

  McCartney was called in to finish the song on the 4th of April 1965 at Lennon's house in Weybridge. His contribution was the countermelody arrangement, the spiralling vocal responses that shadow Lennon's lead. What started as a private admission became, in that collaboration, something built for radio.

• 3. Thirteen April in the Studio

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  On the 13th of April 1965, the Beatles entered the studio and recorded "Help!" across twelve takes. The process was methodical and, at points, difficult. The first nine takes concentrated on the instrumental backing. A descending lead guitar riff that opens each verse presented enough of a challenge that by take four the decision was made to hold it back for a later overdub.

  To guide George Harrison when the overdub came, Lennon thumped the beat on his acoustic guitar body throughout those early takes. That thumping was captured in the final stereo mix and remains audible to anyone listening closely. Lead and backing vocals were also laid down onto take nine, along with a tambourine. A reduction mix across takes ten through twelve freed up one of the four available tracks for Harrison's guitar work. This was, notably, the group's first use of two four-track machines running simultaneously for the purpose of bouncing tracks.

  Vocals were then re-recorded on the 24th of May 1965 at CTS Studios, a facility that specialized in post-synchronisation work for film. Part of the reason may have been practical: the tambourine had been recorded on the same track as the vocals, and no tambourine appears in the film sequence. The mono mix made at CTS that day was built from a splice of the opening chorus of take twelve, edited into the remainder of the CTS recording. Because the CTS session combined all instruments onto a single track, a stereo mix could not be drawn from it; that version came entirely from take twelve.

• 4. Commerce and Confession

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  Cash Box, reviewing the single on release, described it as a "hard-driving, rollicking ode about a poor lad who loses some of his independence after he becomes involved with a new gal" and predicted "instantaneous sales acceptance". Record World went further, correctly predicting it would reach number one. Neither publication appeared to register what Lennon was actually singing.

  Lennon later expressed regret that the Beatles had pushed the tempo to make the track more commercially appealing. In a 1980 Playboy interview he was direct about it: the whole Beatles phenomenon had become incomprehensible to him, and the song was an unconscious cry for help rather than a crafted pop statement. He felt the pace undermined what the words were doing.

  Music critic Dave Marsh disputed the idea that the fast tempo was a compromise. Marsh wrote that the song was "bursting with vitality" and argued that McCartney's echoing harmonies, Ringo Starr's drums, and Harrison's guitar actually answered Lennon's plea rather than contradicting it. They could not cure what troubled him, Marsh suggested, but they at least made clear he was not facing it alone. The Ivor Novello Awards named "Help!" the second best-selling single of 1965, behind "We Can Work It Out".

• 5. On Screen and On Film

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  The performance footage for the film was shot on the 22nd of April 1965. The same material, stripped of the darts and credit sequences that appeared in the theatrical version, was then repurposed as a promotional clip for the single release. That clip ran on British television programmes including Top of the Pops and Thank Your Lucky Stars starting in July 1965.

  A second promotional clip was made on the 23rd of November 1965 for a year-end Top of the Pops special. Director Joseph McGrath shot it in black and white, with the four Beatles miming the song while seated on a workbench. Ringo Starr held an umbrella throughout, which proved convenient when fake snow began falling during the final verse. That November clip was included in the 2015 video compilation "1".

  For broadcast, the film version of "Help!" used the mono mix created at CTS Studios, which was later replaced on home video releases by the stereo mix. A proper commercial release of the film version was never issued. New mixes were prepared for the Help! CD in 1987, the Love album in 2006, and the Help! DVD in 2007. The American soundtrack album also included a James Bond-style introduction followed by a deliberate pause before the opening lyric, an addition that appeared on neither the British album nor the single release in either country.

• 6. Stages and Later Life

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  The Beatles performed "Help!" live on Blackpool Night Out on the 1st of August 1965, a broadcast later included on the Anthology 2 album. On the 14th of August they recorded a performance for The Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast the following month, which is available on the DVD The 4 Complete Ed Sullivan Shows Starring the Beatles.

  The most famous live performance of the song took place on the 15th of August at Shea Stadium, documented in the 1966 film The Beatles at Shea Stadium. The audio in that film was re-recorded before release. The group's performance at the Hollywood Bowl on the 29th of August was selected for the 1977 album The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. The final live performances of "Help!" came during the Beatles' UK tour in December 1965.

  The song has gathered a long afterlife in cover versions. Deep Purple recorded it on their 1968 debut album Shades of Deep Purple. John Farnham released a slower, piano-based ballad version in 1980 that reached number eight on the Australian Kent Music Report. Tina Turner recorded Farnham's arrangement before it appeared on her 1984 album Private Dancer, reaching the top forty in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK. The Carpenters recorded the song on their Close to You album and accidentally omitted the exclamation point from the title. Lennon later told Karen Carpenter directly: "I think you've got a fabulous voice."

• 7. Red Nose Day and Lananeeneenoonoo

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  In December 1988, the comedy duo French and Saunders broadcast a Christmas special sketch that parodied Bananarama, with Dawn French playing a character based on Keren Woodward, Jennifer Saunders playing Sara Dallin, and guest comedian Kathy Burke playing a character based on Jacquie O'Sullivan. The sketch depicted the three recording music, giving interviews, and making a video. O'Sullivan later described the portrayal of her character, often shown drunk and on the receiving end of hostility, as accurate.

  Comic Relief approached French and Saunders after the sketch aired and proposed a charity single with Bananarama, contingent on the band's agreement. Bananarama agreed without hesitation. The release credited the comedians as Lananeeneenoonoo, a spoof of the band's name. Two-thirds of the proceeds went to relief work in Africa; the remaining third supported work on homelessness and drug and alcohol abuse in the UK and Ireland.

  Released in February 1989 as the Red Nose Day single, the cover peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart on the week of Red Nose Day, which fell on the 10th of March, and held that position the following week. That result made it Bananarama's joint highest-charting single alongside "Robert De Niro's Waiting" and "Love in the First Degree". The music video, directed by Andy Morahan, featured both groups in matching outfits performing choreography, interspersed with footage of the members attempting to ski and ride kick scooters around the film studio. Three shirtless male backup dancers, credited as Bassie, Norman, and Paul, shared the frame throughout.