Help!

surprised you about the American Rubber Soul?

It's strange to put Rubber Soul on and suddenly be greeted with, I've just seen a face, from what I had on the British copy of Help, as opposed to starting it with the big bang that is Drive My Car.

And there were some other bits as well, like Nowhere Man, it was weird not having that But then again, the American record companies were a bit shrewd with their ordering of songs on albums, weren't they?

Yes, and that all lays at the feet of Dave Dexter, who was the head of A&R at Capitol at the time.

You'd have to go to eBay or Reverb.

The mono mix in the original 1965 stereo mix, that went for...

Rubber Soul as well as Help, because those were the two albums that were remixed specifically for CD.

And so it made sense when they put out the mono box set on compact disc that there was room to put both of those albums on one disc.

That's yours.

So next week, we're going to be back with the Beatles' Help, the album and the movie.

Very good.

And please join us then.

We've had a couple shows with Cameron and Jack on bags of musical tricks Beatles employed over their career.

We've done a deep dive on the Help album about a year ago, I think.

But this one is A Hard Day's Night, which is the subject of their upcoming semester, which begins in November at RPM School.

So in this one, we've got them checking out three specific songs, the title track, If I Fell, and And I Love Her, and breaking them down, deconstructing them, showing how they were put together, and basically showing how as magical as we think these tracks are, once you sort of understand the workings of them, it's stuff that not only can you pick up on if you're a musician or aspiring one and want to play the music yourself, or if you're a songwriter, tricks that they used and reused throughout the course of their career that you can see, oh, okay, this is where they're using this, where they've used it before, where they're using it down the road, and how you can make cool stuff out of it.

'Cause I know when they did, uh, Catch Me Now I'm Falling, was that the one that they got accused of ripping off Jumping Jack Flash? 'Cause there's that...

[upbeat music]

Help me now, I'm calling you.

Catch me now, I'm falling.

But Ringo had actually done that drum lick twice before.

He had done it on the Help! album.

He used a, like, a side stick instead of a rim shot on the snare, but the pattern was exactly the same, and it's on It's Only Love, which actually [laughs] shows up-

Yeah.

Wait till I come back to your side.

We'll forget the tears we cried.

[singing] The basic track for Wait was recorded during the Help! sessions some six, seven months earlier, and they were short on tracks for Rubber Soul, so they grabbed that song and brought it forward and threw some overdubs, a little extra guitar, some extra tambourine, and put lead vocals on it.

But that was one of the issues in mixing the Help! album, was that there were sonic issues with the bass and the drums in some places.

I've got it set up already.

Help a little guy and his family get

to

Germany.

If you listen to a lot of that indie Britpop landfill from the mid nineties, a lot of brass going on, never reached the heights of that song, but a big, a big, a big reference point for mid nineties bands.

Yeah.

Then I go into the lovely Dylan-esque number, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away from Help.

Yep.

Uh, first record you ever bought.

Help.

I didn't actually buy it.

A friend of mine, I was going to England from Beirut, and I gave him 10 pounds, Lebanese, and said, "Get me something from England." And he brought me back Help, the album.

I wasn't even particularly a Beatles fan, but I memorized that album.

First concert you ever went to.

Well, here's the thing.

You know, they put out the Help album with a concurrent single from the Help album.

So when Help came out on the same day as Ticket to Ride, you know, so they did have form.

They weren't totally agnostic about taking a single off an album as long as the single came out on the same day as the album.

You know, Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine came out on the same day as Revolver.

It was in a period where he was a bit dissatisfied with what was going on.

However, it led to a very good song.

Well, Lennon talks about a lot in 65, you know, Norwegian Wood and with the song Help as well, about writing these songs where he's trying to actually hide what he's saying, because either A, he doesn't want to reveal the truth to his wife or his fans or even to himself, or he's, you know, trying to, you know, he's a guy who doesn't realize yet that, you know, maybe he needs a little bit of... therapy of some type, you know, and I think the gift about Nowhere Man is that it's written in this kind of third person style.

They're at a whole new level of sophistication in terms of recording quality.

We talked about this on the Help album, in that they feel like part of the same...

They sound in a way, but just rubber soul is just deeper.

And yeah, the best part to help and more is like, yeah.

And even growing up, I just feel like I had heard it before I knew the Beatles and sat down and listened to it.

As we've talked about, Help was not one of my main albums, so I didn't think about it like, oh, that's a song on Help.

It was its own little thing.

I'm sure my parents played it for me when my mom was carrying me, so...

You know, you want to always be putting out something original.

So I get it.

When filming Help, he had a piano always available on the set so that he could write the song.

And apparently this really annoyed the director, Richard Lester.

You're almost...

You look like the, the Help album by The Beatles.

Everyone...

Y-you'll be stood on one mountaintop trying-