Help!

Help! is the fifth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles and the soundtrack to the film Help!. It was released on 6 August 1965 by Parlophone. [Wikipedia]

Their fifth UK album in less than three years, Help! was again a soundtrack — this time to Richard Lester's globe-trotting comedy filmed in the Bahamas, the Austrian Alps and Twickenham. Recording was concentrated in two main bursts: February 1965 (for the film side) and June 1965 (for the studio side). The band's life had reached its absurd apex — the LP credits three film locations — but the songs were already retreating inwards.

Help! is a Beatles EP issued in the United Kingdom on 6 August 1965 by Parlophone under catalogue number PMC 1255. It sits in the band's Folk-Rock & Maturity (1965) period. It was issued the same day as the parent LP Help!.

Sessions were produced by George Martin with Norman Smith engineering, working at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. The signal chain ran through the Studer J37 four-track • REDD.51, with vocals captured on Neumann U47, U48. This combination of room, tape format and outboard chain is the same one heard across the band's other releases from the era — meaning the release shares its sonic identity with its parent LP rather than departing from it.

The release features Help!, The Night Before, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, I Need You, Another Girl, You're Going to Lose That Girl, Ticket to Ride.

Documented alternate masters and remaster passes can be found via the linked entries above; the editorial position throughout Beatles Answers is that the original UK mono master is the canonical point of reference for any EP from this era, with the 2009 and 50th-anniversary stereo remasters treated as documented variations rather than replacements. Catalogue numbers, label copy and matrix data are taken from EMI/Parlophone primary documentation and cross-checked against Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (1988).

George Martin and Norman Smith continued the four-track approach. The May session at which Yesterday was cut is the most-discussed three hours in the band's recording history: McCartney recorded the basic vocal-and-acoustic-guitar entirely solo (a Beatles first), then George Martin added a string quartet by overdub a week later (the first Beatles use of an outside chamber group). I've Just Seen a Face introduced country-style fingerpicking to the band's vocabulary; You've Got to Hide Your Love Away made Lennon's Dylan affection completely overt, complete with a flute solo by John Scott.

The title track was Lennon's confession in plain sight — 'I was fat and depressed,' he later said, 'it was a real cry for help.' Ticket to Ride was, Lennon claimed, 'one of the earliest heavy-metal records' — its leaden drag-rhythm and drone bass anticipating the heavier music of the late sixties. Yesterday became the most-covered song of the twentieth century within seven years of release.

UK release 6 August 1965; US release a week later in much-rearranged form. UK number one for nine weeks. Yesterday was held back from UK single release (Lennon objected to McCartney getting solo billing) but became a worldwide standard by other artists' covers within months.

Help! is the bridge LP between the Beatlemania Beatles and the studio Beatles — its song-craft is still in pop-song shape, but the lyrical introspection, country-and-western touches, and willingness to bring in outside instrumentation point straight at Rubber Soul and beyond.

• BPI certification: Platinum (British Phonographic Industry)
• RIAA certification: Platinum (Recording Industry Association of America)

Chart positions and certifications sourced from the relevant Wikipedia article infoboxes and citation footnotes.

• Rolling Stone 500: Rolling Stone magazine's list of the " 500 Greatest Albums of All Time "

Recognition mentions extracted from the Wikipedia article. Verify against the linked source before quoting.

• Rubber Soul