Help (1965)


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

 

The next Beatle album in the catalog was also their second full length feature film. Wanting to capitalize more on the success of the fab four, arrangements were hastily made for another movie, this one telling a pretty goofy and forgettable (but somewhat charming) story of a mad scientist attempting to get a "magic ring" off of Ringo's finger. The band had a lot of input in terms of locations in the script and the shooting schedule took the boys all over the world to many glamorous locations that they wished to visit.

Well, you couldn't have a Beatles film without Beatles music now can you? So, another 14 songs were recorded, and of course, not all were acutally in the movie itself (the original U.S. version only included one side of music, the other being the score to the film). The great thing here is that the music doesn't sound rushed. Although later albums would mark the bands "creative" phase, they actually starting experimenting slightly on this release. They use acoustic instruments, particularly the guitar, frequently, that give the whole album a slightly more laid-back approach. You see this such tracks as You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, It's Only Love, and, possibly the most well known Beatle classic of all time, Yesterday.

That's not to say the boys have forgotten how to rock. Help! starts things off very nicely and remains one of the most catchy songs ever recorded by the group.Ticket To Ride also serves as one of the most memorable songs on the album, and is in fact the first Beatles song ever to be longer than 3 minutes. The closing track Dizzy Miss Lizzie seems a little too hard and out of place here, but it's still a great closing track and is reminiscent of the band's "early" Hamburg days. Also memorable are Ringo's cover of Act Naturally that has him in his "country - twangy" style that Ringo does best, and Paul's rockabilly toe-tapper I've Just Seen A Face.

This whole release may not play consistently from beginning to end, but it does nothing to hurt the band's reputation. Although you could argue that the "Beatlemania" phase ended here, they would definitely grace the public with masses of superb material in the years to come.

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