The Plastic Ono Band album shocked critics and fans back in 1970 and it still has the power to provoke feelings fifty-five years later but it didn't come out of nowhere. By means of promotion (of a sort at any rate), Lennon sat down with Rolling Stone magazine's founder and editor Jann Wenner and torched his now former band's legacy. It is an extraordinary interview, one that is only slightly tempered by the numerous half-truths and outright fabrications the troubled singer shared, many of which he would later recant. Of more relevance to this review is what Lennon had to say about the songs he wrote and performed with the Fab Four that still meant a great deal to him. "I always liked "Walrus", "Strawberry Fields", "Help", "In My Life", those are some favorites," he told Wenner.
Presumably the other three songs were self-evidently brilliant because Wenner followed-up by asking simply, "Why "Help"?" Being in an especially post-breakup, primal scream therapy no-nonsense kind of mood, Lennon responded that he liked it because it was "real" before pointing out that it made him "feel secure to know that I was that aware of myself then". When he sang "Help!" he meant it. A favorite it may have been but Lennon just had to be prickly because of course he had to be. "I don't like the recording that much," he complained, "we did it too fast trying to be commercial".
Lennon's issues with one of his favourite compositions has clouded people's perception of "Help!" ever since. He had intended it to be slower but then he supposedly gave in to commercial pressure to make it more in line with The Beatles' patented beat music. It's a good story but a couple things need to be considered. First, Lennon by this point had been a regular dope smoker and was beginning to dabble in LSD. "Help!"'s slower pace early on could be down to being stoned. In addition, "Please Please Me" had also been intended to be more relaxed so this may just be the way Lennon operated, whether on chemical substances or not.
No one back in 1965 felt that "Help!" was held back by having heartfelt lyrics which clash with its jaunty melody but that is how many have heard it since the Rolling Stone interview. Even those who come away with a largely positive view of the song feel it is necessary to bring it up. But as Ian MacDonald notes in Revolution in the Head, it "retains its authenticity through the emotions inits author's voice". Though wealthy and with his creativity hitting a peak, he was unfulfilled in his personal life and it's likely that the touring was really beginning to take its toll on him. Sped up or not, you get that from listening to every wail and plea coming from Lennon's increasingly raspy voice.
Yet, many feel the need to point out this very trivial incongruity between the lyrics and music. Both Tom Breihan and Tom Ewing feel the need to point it out even though they both eventually acknowledge that in the end it's a point in its favour. A jolly tune with a depressed message? Uh, yeah, that's called pop music. No one I'm aware of feels the need to make a similar observation about ABBA's masterclass single "Knowing Me Knowing You" which operates along much the same dynamic. I have said before that groups whose mandate seems to be to bring joy to the masses, often cloak their melancholy in one way or another. But really, the most effective way of going about doing so is through a glorious pop tune. The Beatles, ABBA, Blondie, Madness, Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, Wham!,
It's hard to imagine "Help!" being many people's favourite Beatles' song. (It isn't even the strongest number on the album of the same name: both "Ticket to Ride" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" are superior Lennnon contributions while Paul McCartney's "I've Just Seen a Face" and "Yesterday" are at least equal to it) Yet, it is one of the Fab Four's bedrock songs, like "She Loves You", "A Day in the Life" and "Hey Jude". The group wasn't the same from this point forward and pop/rock music was left similarly altered. In a recent Mojo article, John Harris described it as the birth of angst-rock which Lennon would return to on future composition "Yer Blues". From there, it wasn't long before he had gone full inner turmoil with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
John Lennon never did re-record "Help!" nor did he ever get round to redoing other Fabs classics such as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Strawberry Fields Forever". It's impossible to say if he ever would have gone back to them. While it's easy to imagine he and McCartney playing an MTV Unplugged show with a radically altered "Help!" (not unlike the way his old pal Eric Clapton managed to rework his old rock classic "Layla"), I don't know if it would have gone over that well in the longterm though. People like what they're used to. Whatever the critics and Lennon - his own worst critic - had to say, "Help!" is great just the way it always has been: as terrific, bouncy pop with a dark heart. No one made this type of music quite like John Lennon.
Score: 9
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