The Music of the Beatles will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the maturity of Abbey Road. While the focus will be on the music, we will also consider how recording techniques, the music business, the music of other artists, and the culture of the 1960s affected John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they created the Beatles repertory. There is probably no band or artist that has had more written about their music than the Beatles. There are many good books on the band's biography, several insider accounts offering glimpses behind the scenes, books that interpret the meaning of the songs, and even books that catalog dates and people regarding the band. This course will try to synthesize much of that information into an account of the Beatles' development as musicians and songwriters.
Help! The Album
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The Music of the Beatles
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From the lesson
Pop Maturity
Increased experimentation, still mostly within the context of the pop single. The increasingly important role of the recording studio and recording techniques and innovations. Help!, Rubber Soul, and singles from this period.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
We turn now to the Help Album. Finally!
He's going to talk about the music, you may be saying.
Well, indeed we will.
This album recorded mostly in February, in June of 1965,
was released as I said before in August of 65.
The UK version went to number one, and the U.S. version also went to number one.
But, as we've, as we've said before, had far fewer songs here, like the Hard
Days Night, soundtrack.
Because they could fit in other, incidental music and scrape off even more
tunes in the U.S. to use for albums that were never released in that way in the UK.
As I was saying in a previous video.
The Beatles move closer to the art, the artist aesthetic.
Using a broader range of instruments on this album and
more developed lyrics, which we'll talk about in a second.
There's a drive, as I said in the last video,
toward more authenticity, you really are who you seem to be.
A little bit more of, of sort of, upfront,
talking about their own self and their own feelings.
It's interesting on this album that Paul McCartney is playing some guitar.
Paul had always been a guitar player in the group
and only went to bass because nobody else would do it.
So he's on some of the
guitar leads here, Another Girl features a Paul guitar solo in it
and Ticket to Ride is also Paul on the on the guitar.
George Harrison discovers the sitar at about this time.
Something that he discovered while they were filming the Help movie.
And went into a kind of a junk shop or a, a, a bazaar
or something and sort of found a, found a sitar and decided to take
it home.
Eventually, ended up taking lessons with Ravi
Shankar and became quite an accomplished sitar player.
If you look at the cover of the album it's got the Beatles doing what looks like
semaphore, or spelling out letters or messages using flag and arm symbols.
In fact, what that was originally supposed to be is L,P,U,S, in other words,
help us.
But somehow, in production, the photo got flipped
the opposite way so it actually says, S,U,P,L.
But the original intention was for them to be spelling out help us.
Because the name of the album, of course was Help.
So let's talk about the songs.
Again splitting it up into the John's songs
and the Paul's songs, as we've done before.
But now including the George songs and, and a couple of covers
that are also included on the UK version of the Help album.
The first John song to talk about is the title song,
Help, which was also released as a single, as we talked about.
We will in the next video do a
musical closeup where we'll talk some more about Help.
Interestingly there we'll point out that this is another
Beatles contrasting verse chorus form, and more John talking
about his misery and how unhappy he is, but we'll come back to that.
In You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, another
one that we'll talk about in the closeup coming up.
We've got John Lennon, very much under the influence of Bob Dylan with Dylan-esque
kinds of lyrics and maybe even a little bit of Dylan kind of vocal delivery.
Now we have the use of the fluter, actually two
over dub flutes so we're starting to see more instruments
besides the basic rock ensemble coming into the music.
You're Going to Lose That Girl, this third John
song on the album has got much more of
kind of a Motown influence, at least, if you
read the [INAUDIBLE], and what's talked about in there.
John talks about having been influenced by Motown, maybe
Smokey Robinson and The Miracles or something like that.
Ticket to Ride, which is another song that was released as a single.
You want to
note the guitar intro on Ticket to Ride, and we can, sort of hook
that up with some of the other
guitar intro, tunes, that we've been talking about.
Going back to things like I Feel Fine, Eight Days a Week, h,
Ticket to Ride, fits in with that
as later, well, Daytripper and Paperback Writer.
The John song, It's Only Love is another contrasting verse-chorus form.
We're seeing more
of these contrasting verse-chorus songs.
So out of those songs that I've just mentioned that are on
the album, there are one, two, three, four, five John songs here.
And when you take the singles that were released earlier in B sides, we find John
using three AABA forms, but four contrasting verse-chorus songs.
So you can see that there's a much more even and balanced distribution of
AABA forms and verse-chorus types of approaches.
Of the Paul songs there's a great tune, AABA tune called The
Night Before, which interestingly enough features John Lennon on piano this time.
Another Girl, another Paul AABA form, as
we mentioned before, featuring Paul McCartney on guitar.
Tell Me What You See, if you look at the lyrics
to that one, you can see them getting a bit more poetic.
We'll, we'll we'll come to that topic in just a minute when we discuss I've
Just Seen a Face in the musical close-up,
there's another Paul song with a Dylan influence.
And again when I talk about that one in just a
minute, I'll want to focus on the seriousness of the lyrics there.
And of course Yesterday, which is also somewhat philosophical, in AABA form.
But now using classical
strings as a way of sort of reaching out beyond the Beatles the
Beatles ensemble of base to guitars, piano maybe, drums and vocals.
So of the Paul songs we got three AABA songs, two that are contrasting
first chorus and one that's simple verse kind of song.
So again, we see, like we saw with
John, a more balanced distribution of formal
types and a kind of an inclination for
the lyrics to get more serious and
to bring instruments outside of the usual thing.
We talked before about the guys using an audio snapshot kind of approach,
now we're starting to see a kind of a transition away from that.
Even though when you're listening to the records, you would never get
a sense that it wasn't the band performing in front of you.
The fact is that different band members are performing on different instruments.
Sometimes on two different instruments at the same time because
the ability of being able to overdub instruments and things.
And so what you're getting is the illusion of an
audio snapshot, but already their starting, to that, that idea of
the audio snapshot is starting to breakdown, and by the time
we get to Sergeant Pepper, we will be almost entirely gone.
Lets take a minute to talk about the George
songs on this record.
" I Need You", an AABA form, we see George imitating
what, what John and Paul have been doing up to this point.
This one is a, you know it's a pretty good song from George,
he's often complained that he had to write his first songs in public.
Lennon and McCartney had years to write songs before any of theirs
got recorded but some of his first songs ended up being recorded.
So when we see him, the first couple songs on these earlier
albums, we're not really seeing him as a sort of as a, as a mature song writer yet.
There's still, there's still kind of a songs that
are on their way for what he will be.
But, even this week, we'll talk about some songs that are at least,
at least one song, that at least stands up to the Lennon, McCartney stuff.
You Like Me Too Much, another AABA song with kind of, very average lyrics.
Again, I think
George Harrison would have admitted as much himself.
But we are now beginning to see George
Harrison songs finding a place onto these Beatles records.
I Need You is interesting because George
Harrison uses the volume pedal on the guitar.
A pedal which controls the volume to give it that kind of violin swells.
Something he heard, another group do on a record
and sort of contacted the guitar player and said, hey,
what's that thing you're doing there? I kind of like that and sort of work that.
So you're starting to see a little bit of experimentation with
electronic kind of effects with, with the volume pedals, as well.
It's a very little thing, but pretty,
pretty soon, volume pedal effects will turn into
backward tape effects and before you know
it there will be synthesizer on the albums.
But anyway, this is a very early indication of that.
Some cover versions that we might want to, pay attention to Ringo
gets to sing, Act Naturally, a song
that had been originally recorded by Buck Owens.
Who, Americans, of about the same age of me, may remember as being
host on a show that was on during the 1970s called Hee Haw.
A television, show devoted to country music.
Buck Owens and Roy Clark" I'm a Pickin' and I'm a Grinnin'."
Well, anyway, Buck Owens, part of the Bakersfield sound
in country music in the 1960s, had a hit with
Act Naturally, a number one hit in 1963.
And Ringo, being a big fan of country music, wanted to do that song.
They also did a song called Dizzy Miss Lizzy with John on lead vocal.
This is a song that had originally been recorded by Larry Williams in 1958.
The song was not a hit and came from the Beatles Hamburg sort
of, cavern days.
During these same sessions, they recorded another cover version that didn't
make the album called Bad Boy with John on lead again.
Again another Larry William song from this time, from 1959.
That was released in the U.S. only at
least initial, initially on Beatles 6 an album
one of those sort of made up albums that never really were released in the UK.
As we look over all of the songs together
before we go into the musical close up to look at to look at four
of them very closely as we look at them all, kind of as a group.
What do we see on Help?
Well, we see the lyrics
become increasingly serious minded and philosophical.
It's not so much now about teen relationships or teen love.
It is now trying to get into more serious or at least more mature
approaches to love relationships.
We see the acoustic guitar being more prominent in Beatles'
music and there's a bit of an audio illusion there.
Because even though now, we're really used to
the idea of somebody getting up with a band
that's got drums and loud guitars and stuff, and
playing an acoustic guitar because amplification is pretty easy.
Back in those days, you really couldn't get an acoustic guitar amplified quite
the right way live, at least not the way it sounds on those records.
So, you're really getting kind of a sound, which appears to be an audio
snapshot but really, is a sound very much mediated by the recording studio itself.
Anyways, I think the acoustic guitar is a pretty good
indication of the folk influences, in some case, country influences.
But in this case, the folk influence and the Dylan thing, and the saying
something, and the earnestness, and the sincerity
that's perceived to be associated with folk music.
We still have plenty
of AABA form in these songs but
its balanced with more contrasting verse-chorus form.
So I take that as an indication of when the Beatles
don't write a song in the AABA form, it's on purpose.
And one of the purposes could be to kind of try
to get away or break away from what they've been doing
so much of in the past as they're sort of
pushing the boundaries looking for new ways to take their music.
Again, we talk a little bit about the use of effects.
And here, I can kind of only really point to the volume pedal on the
George Harrison song, I Need You, but we're
going to get more of that coming very soon.
And use of instruments outside of the rock ensemble.
So, even thought they've used organ and, and piano in the past here,
we've got use of the flutes and we've got the use of chamber strings.
So, we're starting to see some of those futures I talked about being
indicative of a more artist approach.
with, a kind of lyrical approach that really lends itself more
towards this image of authenticity that's forming as we go through 1965.
So in the next video, let's do some song close-ups.
Let's look at Help, You've Got the Hide Your
Love Away, I've Just Seen a Face, and Yesterday.
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