Help!

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.

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.