When I was young and so much younger than today..

John Wallace looks at the recently restored film Help! starring The Beatles
What impressed John Lennon about Paul McCartney when they first met in 1957, was that the 16-year-old McCartney could tune his own guitar. Lennon could not. Paul could also play When the Saints Come Marching In on the trumpet.
So, he had no choice but to let McCartney join The Quarry Men, a skiffle band led by Lennon. Soon George Harrison, aged just 14, also joined up. Stuart Sutcliffe joined the group in 1960. He brought an air of ‘bohemian cool’ to the band, before he died of a brain hemorrhage, aged 21, in 1962.

The group had long periods without bookings as Rock & Roll was not tolerated in the Cavern Club in Liverpool. Fortunately, the ‘Silver Beatles’ got a series of engagements in Hamburg — provided that they got a drummer.
In came Pete Best. Playing six-hour stints, they got better by the week. The band appealed to drunken sailors, good-time girls, tough bouncers and the occasional aberrant medical student. They were, however, soon deported for being underage and for committing other ‘misdemeanours’.
When the new, toughened and streamlined Beatles reappeared back in Liverpool they had a major impact. Record shop manager Brian Epstein first saw them in 1961 and was impressed. He promised them a record deal, but only if they wore suits.
h4. Led to their break-up
Epstein proved a calm presence. However, in August 1967, aged just 32, he was found dead in his London home having accidentally taken extra barbiturate tablets. The band’s failure to find a suitable replacement for him as manager would eventually lead to their break-up.
Though the Decca label initially rejected them, by 1962 the Beatles’ tapes reached record producer George Martin at the EMI label Parlophone. A failed classical pianist, Martin quickly became, according to Paul McCartney, ‘part of the magic’. He was flexible, skilful and imaginative. Martin took on The Beatles but insisted that drummer Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr who, at the time, was playing at Butlin’s.
In September 1962 the band recorded Love Me Do. It peaked in the charts at number 17 and their national reputation quietly began to escalate.
h4. Please Please Me
The Beatles kick-started 1963 with their second single, Please Please Me. It went to number one in the NME charts, while they were still touring with Helen Shapiro. Their intense, swift rise to stardom was due to a combination of collective good humour and total professionalism.
Their third single, From Me to You, appeared in April. When She Loves You appeared in August, Brien Epstein began booking them into theatres, as opposed to clubs or ballrooms.
The screaming fans had parents (and sociologists) scratching their heads. She Loves You was number one all Autumn, to be replaced by I Want to Hold Your Hand in December.
Britain and Ireland had succumbed to the band; now it was the turn of the rest of the world. While the Parisians naturally preferred Trini Lopez, in the USA 73 million people watched the Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
h4. A Hard Day’s Night
The title song wrote itself, according to the film’s director, Richard Lester. Eartha Kitt had recorded an obscure song in 1963 called ‘I Had A Hard Day Last Night’. However, the Beatles’ tune got its title from an actual Ringo saying. Filmed in just eight weeks, it was shot in black-and-white in order to save money.
Liverpool playwright Alun Owen worked with the group on the script and Irish actor Wilfred Brambell, of Steptoe and Son, starred. The film was a hit world-wide and generated $14 million in its first run. A Hard Day’s Night had caught the spirit of the time.
h4. Help!
In February 1965, the Beatles began filming Eight Arms to Hold You, also called Beatles II. The band was not creatively involved in the film, beyond providing the songs. The Beatles preferred not to produce an up-market, colour version of their first film. Director Richard Lester did not want another fictionalised documentary of the band member’s lives. Two days before filming the title sequence, John and Paul sat at the studio piano and composed the title tune, with McCartney providing the counter melody on the backing vocals.
Help! was recorded next day, April 13, at the EMI studio, Abbey Road, with Lennon playing acoustic rhythm guitar.
When I was young and
So much younger than today.
I never needed anybody’s
help in any way.
The title track was Lennon’s most autobiographical song to date and remained a personal and emotional favourite for him.
h4. Ticket To Ride
The film Help!, produced by Walter Shenson, with a screenplay by Marc Behm, was released August 5, 1965. Director Richard Lester wanted an element of holiday about the film and also a concentration on Ringo. The ‘Ringo-in-peril tale’ is a story of ‘transcontinental capers’ with actor Leo McKern in charge of the ring-seeking sect.
The band members were passive recipients of an outsider plot that revolves around Ringo’s possession of a sacrificial ring. In the witty script, the band is chased by cult members from London to the Austrian Alps and then the Bahamas.
The 11-week shoot began in February 1965 with most screen time focused on Ringo, ‘the least screen-resistant’ of the group. At £600,000, the film had a budget three times that of A Hard Day’s Night.
It features seven classic Beatles’ tracks including Help!, You’re Going To Lose That Girl, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Ticket To Ride, The Night Before, I Need You, and Another Girl.
Bob Dylan had urged the band to take their lyrics seriously and Help! was John Lennon’s most autobiographical piece to date with Ticket To Ride perhaps the most intense song.
The Ticket To Ride skiing scene was inspired — as was the brilliantly-lit studio recording of You’re Going To Lose That Girl.
h4. Joie de Vivre
Lester took the movie at a tremendous pace, reflecting the band’s joie de vivre. Indeed, the Beatles chose Richard Lester for their films because of his work with radio comedians, The Goons.
Lester was a musician and television presenter who moved from Philadelphia to London in 1955. A friend of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, his films were always light and playful.
The director said that Help! was a comic-strip adventure, a pop-art fantasy filmed in innocent, pre-Vietnam times. It portrays an image of joyful collaboration and the movie influenced a number of television series such as Batman and The Monkees.
h4. A long-vanished world
The restoration of the film was a long process and has just been completed recently. The restoration was supervised by Laura Gross at the Triage Motion Picture Service.
The newly restored film package includes an appreciation by director Martin Scorsese. He says that, for him, the mention of the word ‘Beatles’ brings back an entire world, now long-vanished.
But now those days have gone
And I’m not so self-assured
Now I find I’ve changed my
mind
And opened up the doors.
* The restored version of Help! is now available on DVD, courtesy of EMI. The Beatles by Chris Ingham is published by Rough Guides, London.
* John Wallace is medical doctor with an interest in biography.