The Beatles "Help " Parlophone PMC 1255 Mono 549-2/550-2 1965 Emitex Inner
£
22
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29
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Description
The Beatles ? "Help!" Parlophone ?PMC 1255
Mono Vinyl, LP, released in 1965.
The vinyl appears to have been lightly played and is in great condition. It plays through beautifully on my stereo - no hop, stick or click. The LP is housed in its original 'Emitex' inner sleeve which has a couple of small tears but which is otherwise in good condition. The sleeve shows minimal signs of wear, although a previous owner has written "7 April 1972" on the back. The spine is intact and completely legible. There is no Tax Code on the labels. Matrix / Runout Side One : XEX 549-2 Matrix / Runout Side Two : XEX 550-2
"Help!" is the Beatles' fifth studio album and the soundtrack from their film "Help!". It was released on 6 August 1965. Produced by George Martin, it was the fifth UK album release by the band, and contains fourteen songs in its original British form. Seven of these, including the singles "Help!" and "Ticket to Ride", appeared in the film and took up the first side of the vinyl album. The second side contained seven other releases including the most-covered song ever written, "Yesterday". The original LP's format of featuring songs from the soundtrack on side one and non-soundtrack songs on side two follows the format of "A Hard Day's Night".
The album cover shows the Beatles with their arms positioned to spell out a word in flag semaphore. According to cover photographer Robert Freeman, "I had the idea of semaphore spelling out the letters 'HELP'. But when we came to do the shot, the arrangement of the arms with those letters didn't look good. So we decided to improvise and ended up with the best graphic positioning of the arms." On the UK Parlophone release, the letters formed by the Beatles appear to be "NUJV", whilst the slightly re-arranged US release on Capitol Records appeared to indicate the letters "NVUJ", with McCartney's left hand pointing to the Capitol logo.
The album includes Paul McCartney's "Yesterday", arranged for guitar and string quartet and recorded without the other group members. John Lennon's "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" indicates the influence of Bob Dylan and includes flutes. McCartney's "I've Just Seen a Face" had a country flavour.
"Ticket to Ride", also released as a single, was felt by Lennon to be "heavy" in its sound compared to the group's previous output and daring in its reference to a boy and girl living together. McCartney called the arrangement "quite radical".
George Harrison contributed "I Need You" and "You Like Me Too Much", his first compositions to be included on a Beatles album since "Don't Bother Me" on 1963's "With the Beatles".
The record contained two cover versions and a few tracks more closely related to the group's previous pop output, but still marked a decisive step forward. The record sleeve-note shows that Lennon and McCartney made more extensive and prominent use of keyboards, previously played unobtrusively by Martin. Four-track overdubbing technology encouraged this. Lennon, for his part, made much greater use of acoustic guitar, forsaking his famous Rickenbacker.
Writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rob Sheffield said that the US version of "Help!" was "utterly ruined" through the replacement of the Beatles songs with the soundtrack music, and that, as a result, the album remained relatively overlooked. He described the full album as "a big step forward" and "the first chapter in the astounding creative takeoff the Beatles were just beginning".
Mark Kemp of Paste considers it to be the equal of "A Hard Day's Night" and cites "Help!", "Ticket to Ride" and "Act Naturally" as highlights, along with Harrison's return as a songwriter. Kemp identifies "Yesterday" as "the album's masterpiece" and a song that "set the stage for one of the most groundbreaking and innovative periods in The Beatles' career, not to mention pop music in general". Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph says that the album evokes "a band in transition, shifting slightly uncomfortably from the pop thrills of Beatlemania to something more mature", with Lennon's writing increasingly autobiographical and the group's sound growing more sophisticated. McCormick concludes: "Help! may not be their greatest album, but it contains some of their greatest early songs."
In 2012, Help! was voted 331st on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
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