help! (1965)
the beatles
i think there'd be little controversy if i said the beatles had two clearly disparate careers: the first as the world's most popular pop group, beloved by teens and grandmas the world over; and the second as the world's most important artistic force, on a different plane altogether from the rest of the hippie '60s, with arguably only brian wilson and bob dylan as peers. where debate enters, then, is the timing of the pivot point where the modus operandi of the group shifted from world's biggest band to world's best. an obvious pick would be december 1965, when the world first heard the revolutionary "rubber soul". i'm looking four months earlier to their previous release, the soundtrack to the film "help!"
the actual film is a silly and trite knockoff and, rush recorded in a nine days between touring and shooting the film, you'd assume the soundtrack was too. however, despite the harried pace of production and throwaway nature of the film they were supporting, these songs are different than anything they'd previously done. this, for me, is the point where the beatles become interesting to listen to. "ticket to ride" blends a blues premise, pop songwriting structure (& harmonies), and an r&b backbeat and 'tude. and cranks the volume. according to a jaded, hyperbolic '70s lennon, "help!" and "strawberry fields forever" were the only two songs he wrote with the beatles that meant anything to him. indeed, a catchy chart-topping feature film title track is a great place for a pop star to hide a deeply personal confessional. "yesterday", at the time famously a ballad, is today probably more significant as predating future innovations in pop arrangement like "within you, without you", "she's leaving home", "a day in the life", and of course "eleanor rigby". but perhaps most significantly, this album features surprisingly straightforward genre outings like "i've just seen a face", "you've got to hide your love away", and "act naturally". are these homages, exercises, pastiches, or merely what happened to flow from the rapidly waking muse? a better exploration of this question is probably best left for a discussion of their white album, but regardless this is the place so many of these threads were started, to be explored with greater mastery and to more satisfying end results in succeeding releases.
- cf 3/29/11
