Track Listing

1. Help
2. Night Before, The
3. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
4. I Need You
5. Another Girl
6. You're Going To 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 Lizzy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7757 in Music
• Released on: 1988-11-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Enhanced, Soundtrack
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
How John Lennon's confessional song became the title for a silly James Bond spoof is still inexplicable. The funny thing is, it works both ways--as a young man's personal statement about learning to open up to others, and as the frantic theme for an exotic espionage chase comedy starring those loveable mop-tops (this time in COLOUR). Like A Hard Day's Night, only the first "side" of this album actually contains songs from the movie--the biggest hits being the eponymous cry for assistance and "Ticket to Ride". But part two has a few nice tunes as well, like "It's Only Love", "I've Just Seen a Face" and a little ditty called "Yesterday". And it's always fun when they do an all-out screamer like "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", which sounds like John's raucous answer to Paul's "Kansas City / Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey" vocal on Beatles for Sale. --Jim Emerson

CD Description
HELP was the last Beatles album to feature a cover version (Larry Williams's "Dizzy Miss Lizzie"), and is considered a turning point in the quality of their songwriting. Like the previous album's "Im a Loser", "You've Got To Hide Your LoveAway" was Lennon's nod to the influence of Bob Dylan. McCartney's gift for melody was obvious in "I've Just Seen A Face". And Harrison's songwriting contributions grew to two tracks.
Instrumentally, "Ticket To Ride"'s off-beat rhythm was Ringo's masterpiece, while the string quartet in the huge hit "Yesterday" was unusual for a rock band at that time; itwas the start of a stellar series of McCartney ballads withstrings ("Eleanor Rigby", "She's Leaving Home").

Customer Reviews

Pre-psychedelia pop masterpiece.
A lot of bleating goes on about the Beatles' work from Rubber Soul onwards. Their studio experimentation, massive success, refusal to conform to the boundaries of pop music and simply brilliant songwriting from the second half of 1965 onwards cannot be downplayed (outside of Magic Mystery Tour/Yellow Submarine). However, there is often a reluctance to accept the pre-Rubber Soul Beatles as being anything better than a very good pop band.

I beg to differ. I think that the Help album, while in posession of a duff track or two, is a simply magnificent, life-affirming 35 minutes of wonderfully written pop. Pop, yes, but - at the risk of becoming Bones McCoy - not as we know it. This is the catchiest, most well written pop with a great attention to detail.

One thing that has to be pointed out is that the 'classic' standout songs from this album - 'Yesterday' the most covered song ever, 'Help!', the most confessional of John's earlier songs - as good as they are, are not necessarily any better than the lesser known moments here. Both of George Harrison's contributions, while ignored by the man himself in his book I Me Mine, are great. Paul McCartney's 'Another Girl' sets a slightly vicious lyric to a quirky tune, preluding his dumping of Jane Asher for Linda Eastman by three years. 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie,' while being a shameless attempt to emulate their early cover of 'Twist And Shout', is underrated. While the guitar riff is somewhat meek, the constant crashing cymbal and Lennon's throat-shredding vocal make it a wonderful closer.

The only slack moment is Ringo's vocal turn on 'Act Naturally,' a cover of an artist the name of which escapes me, but even that is perfectly listenable when in the right mood.

This is a perfectly tuned album of pop genius. Avoiding this based on the later quality would be a big mistake.

Effortless Class
For some reason this album has quite often attracted less than flattering reviews complaining that The Beatles were tired and such like. Yeah right. I wouldn’t mind being tired if it meant I could churn out tracks like ’Ticket To Ride’, ’Yesterday’, ’I’ve Just Seen A Face’ and ’You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.’ Perhaps it was because from their next album ’Rubber Soul’, released just a few months after this one in 1965, the music The Beatles produced was taken to such heights that it was virtually beyond criticism. So this was the poor relation after the exuberance of ’A Hard Day’s Night’ and before the psychadelia of the mid 60s output? Well that would be a pretty ridiculous conclusion. This album’s songwriting was for the most part far superior to that on ’Beatles For Sale’ from the previous year and only marginally less consistent than ’Rubber Soul’.

When discussing a weaker link amongst Beatles albums, one does not think of Anne Robinson. And this album was way above what most bands were producing at the time and still sounds remarkably fresh and vibrant 40 years later. If you can I would avoid purchasing Beatles compilations. Their original albums are so much more rewarding. They each give a snapshot of where they were at the time. But blink and you’ve missed a few beats as the next album was always different. Other artists have successfully reinvented themselves it is true. David Bowie, Dylan, even The Stones on occasions. The Beatles did it with practically every album.

Other tracks worthy of note here are ’The Night Before’ from Paul, a fast catchy number with great backing vocals. ’I Need You’ is a simple but effective and quite charming Harrisong (check out Tom Petty’s version on Concert For George). ’You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’ is one of those lost Lennon classics that one finds on most Beatles albums. Among the covers, ’Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ is delivered with gusto and ’Act Naturally’ is a suitable vehicle for Ringo’s country vocal (he was to do a whole album of country songs in 1970 after the split entitled ’Beaucoups Of Blues’, to great effect).

A couple of the other songs are a little ordinary but only by this band’s Everest High standards. The title track was a genuine cry for help from Lennon (or so he said later) but is actually one of their less engaging singles. Not that it’s bad or anything. On the whole this album finds The Beatles at or very near their peak. I rediscovered it recently and it was great. It is the kind of album that you forget how good it is. And surely ’Ticket To Ride’ is their most majestic single for their early-mid period.

The last of the Beatles' albums from the "early" years
I was listening to the CDS for both "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" when I suddenly realized that once again the Beatles were probably innovators ahead of their time. "Help," as with the album from the first Beatles' movie, has songs from the film only on "Side 1." Today we take for granted that soundtrack albums are filled with songs that never appear in movies or are at best "inspired" by a film. Well, the Beatles were doing that way back in 1965. Here is a "soundtrack" where one of the leftovers only happens to be the most recorded song in the history of human existence (it would be #13 on the play list for those of you who need a look before you go "duh").

"Help!" is the final album of what in retrospect are the early Beatles. Next comes the short middle period of "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" before the "Sgt. Pepper" period. Lennon & McCartney have 10 solid songs on this collection; their least impressive songs, "Another Girl" and "Tell Me What You See," are still as good as anything else any other group was doing in the mid-Sixties. The title song and "Ticket to Ride" are biggies and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and "I've Just Seen a Face" are just a step below. The album earns only four stars because George gets two tracks on this album are they are both lesser examples of his work (he does much better next time out). Then add (subtract) the fact that is the last Beatles album in which the group covers songs written by others and neither "Act Naturally" nor "Dizzy Miss Lizzie" was worth the effort. Even with those caveats this is not a Beatles album you would exclude from your music library. Actually, no such animal exists; even the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack has a couple of solid songs beyond what we have already heard elsewhere.