The 500 - #331 - Help - The Beatles

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 331

Album Title: Help

Artist: The Beatles

Genre: Pop Rock

Recorded: EMI Studios, London, U.K.

Released: August, 1965

My age at release: 27 days

How familiar was I with it before this week: Familiar

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes - #266 (Up 61 spots)

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: I've Just Seen A Face

Help, the title track from the sixth studio record by The Beatles, holds a special place in my music repertoire.  Although I was aware of the band, this was the first song I truly loved. It was my childhood friend Glen who introduced me to it. Sometimes, we would commandeer his parents’ stereo to play The Beatles: Live At The Hollywood Bowl. They owned it on an 8-track cassette tape. One afternoon, while walking home from Glen’s place, I found myself singing the words to Help in my head and thought, “I’m a Beatles’ fan”.

At the time, I was a much bigger fan of The Monkees. After all, how could The Beatles compete with a group that appeared on my television set five afternoons a week. The Monkees also played catchy, up-tempo pop songs, but they packaged it with wacky storylines and broad, slapstick comedy on their television program.

As I started to understand music a little better, my Beatles fandom eclipsed their (mainly) American television counterparts. By the time I was a teen, I was borrowing Beatles records from the library and learning about their history -- from their beginnings as a mop-topped boy-band to their eventual foray into psychedelic experimentation… and everything in-between.

Without the advent of Google nearly 20 years away, it was tough to parse the facts from the fiction. It didn't matter. For teens of my generation, respect for The Beatles was a rite of passage and, as I chased scattered breadcrumbs of information on my journey of discovery, my admiration grew.

Which got me thinking.

What do today’s kids know about The Beatles?
Are the four lads from Liverpool relevant...or even remembered?

Spending six hours every weekday with 27 bright and funny students provides insight. The class I have is multicultural, with many students from first-generation Canadian families. Their parents were not raised in a North American (or even Western-centric) pop-culture milieu. What was their perspective?

So, last week I asked my crew if they would take a quick survey to help with my blog. They were, as I expected, happy to oblige. 

I posed the following questions on a printed slip of paper..

• Do you know who The Beatles are/were?
• How many Beatles were there?
• Can you name any of them?
• Are they still alive?
• Can you name any songs by them?
• Do you remember how you learned any of this information? Who introduced you to The Beatles

A copy of the slip my students completed.

The results were interesting and led to an engaging discussion about Beatlemania. Fifty-Three percent knew of the group and of them, more than half had a fairly good understanding of the band’s legacy.

Most had learned about The Beatles from their father or an older brother. Sulaiman informed me that it was an "old wizard" who was responsible for his knowledge -- (see what I mean about them being funny). I have compiled the data in the chart below.

Click to enlarge

The album Help was released in the summer of 1965, a few weeks after I was born. It is also the soundtrack to the film of the same name. Many fans see this record as part of a transitional period , marking the group's shift from pop-oriented music toward a more mature sound influenced, in part, by their admiration for the music of Bob Dylan. This can best be heard in the Dylanesque acoustic guitar work on, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away.

Promotional Poster for the movie Help!

The U.K. release included Yesterday which has become the biggest Beatles song of all time. It was voted the best song of the 20th Century by the BBC, and has been covered by other performers a staggering 2,200 times. Interestingly, none of my students mentioned it on the survey -- although one knew another hit from this week’s record, Ticket To Ride.

Single release for Yesterday & Act Naturally from the album Help

This was an interesting week, relistening to a Beatles record I haven't heard in its entirety for over a decade. I was struck, once again, by the deceptively powerful lyrics in the title track Help. The buoyant harmonies and up-tempo energy of the song belies the heartbreaking plea from the song’s speaker.

John Lennon, who wrote the song, later made it clear that it was a literal cry for help as he struggled with his mental health following the group's meteoric rise to superstardom. It was also the song I chose to play for my students.

Single for the U.K. release of Help

At the end of the week, the class and I gathered, as always, in our Friday Community Circle to reflect on the past five days. We use a process called "The Four A's" - Announcements, Appreciations, Apologies and Ah-Ha Moments to guide our discussion. At one point, a student named Malak said: "My Ah-Ha was learning about The Beatles." As you might expect, that made me smile (under my mask).

Perhaps, I have set another student on the breadcrumb trail of discovery that I went on as a teen in 1979. Maybe, like Glen, I helped make a few more fans of The Beatles...at least they have the advantage of Google.

Poster for our weekly 4 A's Community Circle Activity