THE BEATLES' HELP @ 60

Retrospection tells stories that were not known to the participants at the time. A backward look compels the stories, though. Until The Beatles reached the end of 1965 their albums were received with approval but the arrival of Rubber Soul put them at a level of importance among critics that has never been reversed. That lead up does tell a story though: two LPs of live sets cleansed in the studio with audible peaks in the originals, a fully original set to go with a movie that presents a new integrated sound, a mixed bag that industrial pressure had squeezed out and now this one, their fifth, that went with another movie. It looks like a staggered climb from influences to influence, from the tangible club band to stardom and here, now, in this one, a sustained push at the formulae to breaking point. 

It gives the first wave of records a sense of motivation. It's almost nonsense, though, made up by people like me. The band was building on the success it had established and through sheer application they responded to a continual positive feedback to sharpen their focus. The wonder of it is that it worked. Most bands were happy with the strike rate of something like Beatles for Sale, a handful of bangers and proven covers. There are covers on this one but by now they feel alien.

The originals stun. The title track kicks off with a shout, putting what might have been a middle eight as the introduction, an audible cry for help. The cry gets higher each time until it's pushed into falsetto. A deft, rapid arpeggio brings it down as the song moves forward with a confession in Lennon's tight rasp about being aggressively independent until he in confronted with his need for others. As with the opening, there is a call and response as he trades his strong lead with a gentler backing from George and Paul who anticipate his lines. The counterpoint of it, as though thoughts compelled the outward statements, works because of the texture of the voices as much as the weave of melodies. The chorus lifts to urgency as Harrison's low strings guitar figures step down between Lennon's vocal lines. A third verse strips the backing down to acoustic guitar and lead vocal, picked up halfway through by the rest of the band, leading to the final chorus and falsetto finish. Lennon later said that the song really was a confession of need. There is nothing fanciful about the claim. All of the track's musicality suggests it in under two and a half minutes.

Next up is Paul's The Night Before which begins with the first appearance of electric piano on a Beatles song. The chords rise until MacCartney's soaring vocal reaches to a note that glides down and blends with smooth harmonies in an infectious melodic figure. The middle eight is more of a shuffle but ends with a Paul flex as he screams the high end of, "it makes me wanna cryyyyyyyy". He plays the lead guitar in the break and at the end in this one (as well as two others) and it sounds like its doubled with either the electric piano or another guitar. This one is all flavour and scope. The second Anthology compilation of the '90s included an outtake from these sessions called That Means a Lot. Distinct from this melodically, it carried the larger production sound to Phil Spector density. It was given to PJ Proby who did it brilliantly but I wish it had made it on to side two of Help. Anyway...

Up third is You've Got to Hide Your Love Away and a vision of the future. Lennon sings a song of wounds. The first lines are gentle but for the next, the voice hardens until, after a folky descent, the chorus rises to a shout. Repeat and end with an unusual double flute playing of the verse melody. That acoustic sound, like whispering guitars, bugged me for years until I realised it was a combination of Harrison playing at standard pitch, Lennon playing a 12 string capo-ed, and, if you listen carefully, a ride cymbal played with almost imperceptible lightness. But the elephant here is Bob Dylan. Dylan had met and befriended The Beatles the year before and his growing influence on the entirety of western pop music extended into the Beatle citadel. The previous album's I'm a Loser was a great first take but this one uses influence more cannily, the way they'd gone to write an Everly Brothers song with Love Me Do and ended up sounding like themselves. I'm a Loser sounds like that but Hide Your Love sounds more like a hard absorption. It's going to be there until Donovan teaches them finger picking. There is an urban legend that this one is a veiled tribute to manager Brian Epstein's closeted gayness to which I say, "who knows?". The chorus could easily point to that but it could also be a hooded confession about straying from marital fidelity (hey, Norwegian Wood was just around the corner). It's pleasant to think it's a nod to Brian, I'll admit.

George Harrison had progressed from covers and Lennon and MacCartney numbers given to him to produce his own songs and they were gearing up. I Need You starts with a guitar figure made plaintive through a volume pedal. Against a country canter, George sings a confession of pain and vulnerability in the face of rejection. With the movement through the relative minor and showbiz changes, this one reaches back to an earlier Beatles aesthetic but it's never unwelcome in the sequence.

Another Girl finds Paul again trying for a Spectorish density with a busy blues shuffle and a message of young adulthood spite. But is it? He's saying his ex was fine but this new one is so much better. As this is delivered to a second person (the ex) it rings like a long groovy thumbed nose, not just flexing but cruel. The melody carries on from the more modal, non-diatonic style of The Night Before but sticks to its limits (very like Can't Buy Me Love) until the middle eight which broadens out and surprises with shifts between major and minor. Paul plays lead but it's mostly illformed and noodly. The production is big on reverb and bass boom. A bitchy but enjoyable number.

I used to dislike You're Going to Lose That Girl, mainly for what I took as a reliance on old '50s formulae. But the more I hear it, how deftly it moves between the warnings in the verse where Lennon shows how he can make a vowel sound percussive ("if you don't take her OUT tonight") in a harsh but solidly melodic tone and then singing the word lose in purest falsetto. This makes the transition to the middle eights creamy with a melismatic curl for the ages. The harmonies of the other two in call and response throughout with a complication in the bridge is bliss and the final collision of the falsetto and harmonies just makes you want to hear it again. Rubber Soul really is just down the road.

Ticket to Ride begins with a fanfare-like figure on George's 12 string before the drums roll in like a panzer division with the bass and rhythm guitar hitting the one and an anticipated three in the bar along with the kick drum. Lennon comes in solo for the first two lines before MacCartney brings the magic with a high chest voice descant. The middle eight adopts a shuffle beat which makes the giant twanging verse rhythm all the more lumbering when it returns. Paul plays lead again but with much more tasteful figures that serve the transition between parts. The song ends on a new vocal motif, "my baby don't care". This is the end of side one and all the new Beatle songs played in the movie which were shot like music videos and are probably the best way to watch the movie if seen as a string.

In the U.S. a flip of the LP led to a side of deft but unengaging out of context orchestrations of Beatle songs by George Martin. This was a step up from the American Hard Day's Night LP which featured the same kind of thing but played as session musicians as a fake beat band playing robotic instrumental covers.

The U.K. original album is a different beast, kicking off with Ringo's cover of the Buck Owens' Act Naturally. This fits with the movies and Ringo's self-effacing charm. George provides expert licks on the Gretsch and Paul adopts a Southern twang for his harmonies. If you know the original, this will sound like a pub cover played in lab conditions. Owens has a real nuance to his vocals that added a pathos to the lyric of a guy got lucky in his career but knows it's not because of talent. He also had the efforts of his lead guitarist, Telecaster maestro Don Rich who provided the note perfect harmonies which Paul is emulating. The deep twang solo is done twice here but only needs to happen once in the original so that its mock seriousness stands out and keeps the joke alive. It's a decent enough cover but, like many, if you know the swaggering and good natured original you'll miss so much of it, here.

It's Only Love is one of my favourite Lennon melodies and a song he regarded as an embarrassment. It's chromatic lilt and vocal tone shift for the chorus always win me over. It's a kind of companion to You've Got to Hide Your Love Away but there are reasons why that is on side one and this on side two. Vox amp tremolo is used to great effect on the electric figures and, as it's two electrics playing (one without tremolo) it sounds a little wobbly, like future chorus pedal. 

George's second song on the album is a cheerful country number that opens with some George Martin bar room piano. An electric piano forms what would have been an electric rhythm. The verses and harmonies have a distinctly folky feel. I can imagine The Seekers doing this one. The pair in the lyrics tease each other but always make up. That's about it. George's solo is all Chet Atkins and enters and exits in seconds as the summer holiday middle eight takes over and a verse and chorus take it to the end.

Tell Me What You See is a kind of Latin work out as far as The Beatles ever got. It's perky and sweet with MacCartney taking solo lines from the bright harmony verses. It's almost never mentioned on its own but its amiability and shift in the vocal texture make it a keeper for me. Another significant use of electric piano seal the deal.

I've Just Seen a Face is a perky acoustic folky gallop by Paul. Beginning with a dizzy rising guitar figure, Paul jumps right in with a quick vocal of love at first sight and a chorus that probably had open mic nights at folk clubs deafen with juggernaut whole crowd singalongs.

What might surprise anyone who comes across this album is that Yesterday is buried here on the second side. MacCartney is intensely proud of this song. He delights in relating how he dreamed the melody, scarcely believing he could have composed it. It was the first one of his notorious sale jobs from among his songs that the rest of the band suffered for. It is, apart from George Martin's string arrangement, just Paul on acoustic guitar and vocal. As a lyric it's all longing and regret, astutely describing the lost lover as believing in the past to a near religious extent. Musically, it is a very well turned melody with a pleading bridge and heartfelt vocal. The band did not want to push this gentle ballad and it ended here as the second last song. It went on to be one of the most covered songs in all history so, let 'em stew on that. I marvel that this perfectly modulated vocal was done on the same afternoon as the larynx-annihilating I'm Down.

Finally, like with Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby on the last LP, we end with a rock classic cover. Dizzy Miss Lizzy bangs and screams and wails its way to the end of the album. I suspect it's here as Lennon didn't have that extra song and wanted to follow Yesterday with something irreverent and gutter level. I have no supporting data for that, it's just a whimsical guess. I say it as I hate this song and wish it had been left off the record in favour of That Means a Lot. But that's just me.

Help feels like it's struggling to break free of the early career records with new instrumentation like electric piano, flutes and bowed strings as well as guitar and amp effects, and a musical expansion that allows country and folk in without irony. Paul particularly is gathering strength as a composer and has his eye on using production to add texture and character. George is showing real promise as singer and songwriter. And Ringo's drumming continues to delight with its nuance and subtlety.

For all that, though, remember those hindsight stories, it plays more as a closed chapter on the band that took it to Shea Stadium for the biggest concert in the constellation. If they'd stopped there this album would be as revered as Abbey Road is now. As it is, you have to move the heavy curtain of Rubber Soul aside to get a look at it, against encouragement. As an LP, still before the album format was the currency for rock artists, this one doesn't just have bangers but makes sense from track to track, weakening on the second side. A final bow to influences in the two covers and the stage is set for The Beatles as THE band. I wonder, if fans at the time hearing Rubber Soul winced a little at the insistent sophistication and just wanted the old pop band back.

Listening notes: I usually listen to this as a mono mix from the 2009 releases but this time added a playthrough of the 1965 stereo mix which does lift proceedings enough to prefer it. Unavailable nowehere on earth.

THE BYRDS' MR TAMBOURINE MAN @ 60

It starts so slightly but it sounds like a wave. A jangling riff rings, joined by a bass that slides up the neck, a tambourine shakes and as the drums rattle in the sound is overwhelmed by harmonies so pure and filled with light that they sound like they were singing in Florence in the 16th century. A clue to the source material comes in after the chorus as Jim McGuinn (also playing the Rickenbacker 12 string) enters with his best Dylan voice. A single verse from the many in the original is sung before the chorus re-enters with its brilliance and Bach style symmetry is evoked before the opening riff and bass slide play unto the fade. What had been an aching ode to a wandering life of discovery and daily adventure became as tightly packaged as a tin of beans and as remote from the legumes in the pods. It was like a tv commercial of a Dylan song. Dylan loved it. You could dance to it. It's meteoric chart performance brought him income he didn't have to work for. If Dylan's original was poetic and poignant, this one was all teen marketing, playing back the tasty bits with extra sugar in bite size form. Also, it's completely beautiful as music and sounds so much of its time that the charm and exquisite textures reach across decades to delight anyone who hears it. 

It got me in the mid '70s when I was foraging around for '60s sounds because the radio was almost entirely crud. It was on a compilation record from the middle of that decade. There were all sorts of stuff on the sides but The Byrd doing Mr Tambourine Man soared out past the crackles and surface hiss and filled the room. So, I liked the Byrds.

It was halfway through the following decade when I found my own copy. Like The Kinks, The Byrds back catalogue was slow to make it through to reissues. I snapped this one up as soon as I found a reprint in a shop. I was surprised when I got it home and put it on.

After the title track opens the album we plunge straight into the Gene Clark original Feel a Whole Lot Better with its hyped up 12 string riff lifted from The Searchers' Needles and Pins. It's a good contrast within a limited pallet that makes the album feel like it is going places. A slight change in tempo brings the pace down for the cool of Dylan's Spanish Harlem Incident. Again, the band shift the song into the teen market with a constant jangling guitar and bright harmonies. You Won't have to Cry is a Clark/McGuinn co-write and follows a more Beatlesque path, adding enough distinction to warrant its strident presentation.

It's Here Without You that stops the traffic, though. The minor key riff and tight harmonies move with a sombre purpose that suggest (without remotely sounding like) Gregorian chant. The middle eight breaks out within the arrangement of harmony forward vocals, ending on a major interval before returning to the quiet pain of the verse melody in a shift that still sends shivers. It's a small masterpiece that would inform a strand of melancholic songs that the band would excel in despite the overall leanings (and record company) pushing them toward happier sounds. When Gene Clark left a few albums on, he took songs like this away and the remaining writers in the band had to follow the template.

The Bells of Rhymney is a soaring rendition of a Welsh folk song, revived by Pete Seeger and taken into the celestium of folk rock greatness. This arrangement has the honour of inspiring George Harrison (who had inspired McGuinn to take up the 12 string Rickenbacker) to pinch it with a little modification for one of his songs on Rubber Soul, If I Needed Someone. The final moments are a wordless vocal climb against the 12 string flow, an ascension.

Side two starts with Dylan's All I Really Want to Do and, while it feels more perfunctory than Mr Tambourine Man, it yet keeps the band in touch with what was making them famous. Another sombre Gene Clark number I Knew I'd Want You dispenses with the band's now signature initial riff, plunging straight into the band with vocal harmonies. The rise at the end of the middle eight when David Crosby climbs in falsetto over the unison vocals of McGuinn and Clark is pure shimmering joy.

Jackie De Shannon's Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe follows with a kind of Bo Diddley jangle and perky folk rock that ends up sounding like the Byrds doing a school trip singalong. Chimes of Freedom is another Dylan workout and joins All I Really Want to Do in the band's second-tier Bob covers. We'll Meet Again is the kind of thing the Byrds would try on the next album with their goofy cover of Oh Susannah, an awkward attempt at making an old standard into a groovy beat band rocker. It falls flat on its face. It's not as embarrassing as Oh Susannah but if it ever worked, the effectiveness was locked in a dark room back in 1965.

That said, this is one of the most indicative debut albums of its era, not only presaging the next three LPs in character and tone but reaching beyond the band's abandonment of the cute kings-of-jingle-jangle role as they explored deeper expression. For me, hearing it after a few others, I was surprised to find out how playable it was. The only really icky moment is the final track and that's not a difficult skip. Their sound is one of its decade's central points of gravity, influencing all other rock bands at some point, even the one they took their inspiration from. The title track and Clark number I Knew I'd Want You were backed by the Wrecking Crew with McGuinn on his signature 12 string and the three vocalists at the mic. The rest, however, is all the band that took it on tour.

To listen to this LP is to engage with a rare moment when a group that formed from an idea of what a rock band was coincided with the ideas of an A&R department of a record company. From the bright and joyous electric 12 that lifts all the songs to the cathedral like harmonies (Clark and McGuinn in unison and Crosby descanting) were a source point that not even The Beatles quite found (they repaid the good turn on Rain which, in the best style, didn't copy The Byrds, just showed their influence). All the tiny details gathered in a happy weave that proved stronger than the simple sum of parts and conquered the ears and sensibilities of a generation. Do yourself a favour.