1965 The Beatles: Help!

Back in 1986, long defunct music weekly 'Sounds' printed its 'All Time Top 100' singles list. Largely made up of suspects so usual they don't need to be lined up, the sole entry from The Beatles (way down at number 57) was 'Help!'. What did they hear in it for it to be singled out from the rest of the canon I wonder? Maybe the same thing The Damned did - one place below it in the same chart was the latter's 'New Rose', unique as the first punk single and one that had a cover of 'Help!' on the B side. Interesting.

"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down" - the 'artist' getting all angsty is usually a cue for me to reach for the off button; there's a whole raft of 'confessional' songwriters who set sail in the sixties and seventies whose output is impenetrable to me to the point I'd happily see the whole lot tumble off the edge of a waterfall. It might seem churlish to single anybody specific out for the bumps, but I'm going to anyway:

"I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
Won't you look down upon me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day"

So sang James Taylor in 'Fire And Rain'. In 'Help!', Lennon sings:

"And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I've never done before."

In many ways the two songs are blood brothers, there's little to separate them on the surface but I find Taylor's solemn self pity in no way endearing. Any catharsis through presenting these lyrics is Taylor's own and not shared by anyone listening, making it music as therapy and no less self indulgent because of it - Mr Taylor has his fans, but I'm not counted amongst their legion. Lennon's lyric by comparison is remarkably direct, almost a one side transcript of a late night conversation with The Samaritans - you could imagine the same being spoken as prose by a character in a play, which is how Lennon saw himself in 1965 when his meteoric rise to fame came with the downside of a life no longer his own.

It's easy to see what The Damned saw in this - that explosive opening shout of "Help!" (if ever a songtitle deserved it's exclamation mark it's this one!) is the starting gun for another sub-three minute power pop romp of typical Beatles bites and hooks which is exactly what their own 'New Rose' was, only this time the lyric is sharply first person personal. Every line of 'Help!' contains an 'I', 'me' or 'my' though there's none of the 'look at me, look at me' posturing of Taylor and his ilk; Lennon does not wallow in his lyric and his vocal is more angry than resigned - he is looking for sympathy from neither Jesus nor us the listener.

True, a less speedy, acoustic run at it al la 'Yesterday' would have emphasised this far better by pushing it out front, and Lennon is on record as wishing they'd recorded it at a slower pace, but I'm honestly glad that they didn't - Tina Turner does as much on her 1984 version but as a cursory listen attests, the lack of juxtaposition between lyric and music turns that cry into a whine which in turn because less appealing with every round of chorus; Lennon's take is not so nakedly needy as to be pleading "Help me if you can I'm feeling down" the way Turner does.

Rather, we are meant to take the time to break through that whipcrack of a tune to hear the honest vulnerability of song as autobiography beneath and to see beyond the grinning clown's face Lennon was expected to show the world on TV, stage and film (the actual film 'Help!' was a load of hokum about secret cults and missing jewels) night after night to the tears below. Fortunately, Lennon makes the task an easy one with a directness worthy of Occam's razor and a non specific, everyman appeal/acknowledgement of personal weakness that punk and soul singer alike could take on board - there's no mystery as to why the song has endured.