NUJV!

When I was little I could never understand why my parents disliked the Beatles film Help! So much. Me and my friends loved it, especially as it revolved around our favourite and most talented Beatle, Ringo having all manner of japes in foreign lands with ethnic stereotypes.

Now my life has changed in oh so many ways I understand that they preferred to remember their generational-consciousness-expanding counter cultural heroes in more artistic terms.

Still, some cracking songs here.

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Some good Beatles trivia here, you know the cover picture of Help! where the four lovable moptops spell out the LP title in semaphore? well, they are actually spelling out NUJV! apparently the letters for H-E-L-P did not look as good/striking. True story.

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Help! marks the last time the Beatles put out an LP that was a collection of songs, rather than as a cohesive, carefully curated and considered entity in its own right*. Side A is all seven tracks featured in the film and the rest are just some other stuff they wrote to fill up the space, all topped off by the then-traditional rock ‘n roll cover to finish the LP off.

The title track can be my favourite ever Beatles track some days, that melody, that tempo and Lennon’s brilliant lyrics are something I never get tired of. I don’t know how old I was the first time this track registered with me, 5 or 6 maybe? but I have loved it ever since. As a physical, if not emotional, grown-up it strikes me just how plaintive and desperate the lyrics are compared to the music’s bustle, it is such a neat trick; ‘My independence seems to vanish in the haze‘, tell me about it!

‘Ticket To Ride’ is another great tune, the Beatles sounding instantly like themselves and nobody else, ever. John Dylan’s ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ is another one I love, the folk form of singing and the ambiguous lyrics still entertain me. Okay so there is some comparative fluff on Side A, none of it bad, none of it unworthy, some like ‘Another Girl’ is naggingly good. Honourable mention for ‘The Night Before’, my favourite one-night stand song, another tune I just love the bones of, it’s the vocal harmonies I think.

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Our favourite Beatle gets to sing on the cover of ‘Act Naturally’ that opens Side B, I had always thought until today it was a Beatles song. I still enjoy all of Ringo’s vocal numbers, despite being 49 now and this is no exception.

Then we do hit a bit of a comparative lull, as Help! serves us up four quite average tracks. But even as I type that I have to say that I do like their sound, they were quite good at music and stuff those Beatles, the songs are straight forward and very melodic and each one has some interesting touches, such as ‘You Like Me Too Much”s piano intro.

Anyway it all ends with a bang as Lennon gets to rave it up on a cover of ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’, with some great insistent guitar to bring NUJV! to a close.

Oh and there’s one called ‘Yesterday’ hidden away near the end, which they really should have given to Ringo to sing, preferably over a backing track of fart noises, kazoo and swanee whistle. It’s a missed opportunity, it could even have been as great as ‘Octopus’s Garden’ if they’d tried hard. Sad.

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Help! is a really good listenable LP equipped with a smattering of utter classics and ably brings the early era Beatles to a close. Don’t worry Beatles fans you’d only have 120 days to wait between Help! being released and them changing the course of popular music with Rubber Soul. Bands used to work for a living back then.

1089 Down.

*whilst they were active as a band, you pedant!