55 Years Ago: The Beatles Start Shooting 'Help!'

On Feb. 23, 1965, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr began filming the second Beatles movie. Originally named Eight Arms to Hold You -- an innocent but prophetic phrase that was definitely better than the working title Beatles 2 -- the title was eventually changed to Help! And that's exactly what the band needed around that time.

The four knew their fabness was waning. Beatlemania was taking its toll, making it impossible for them to escape the bubble of fame that surrounded them, leaving the quartet detached from the kind of everyday world that inspired the songs that helped blow up that bubble in the first place.

Lennon knew what he was doing when he wrote the title track. “I meant it, it’s real,” he said later. “It was just me singing ‘help’ and I meant it.” Separately, he told Playboy in 1980 that, at the time, he “was fat and depressed, and I was crying out for help.”

McCartney more recently concurred: “He didn't say, 'I'm now fat and I'm feeling miserable.' He said, 'When I was younger, so much younger than today.' In other words, he blustered his way through. We all felt the same way.” Still, “Help!” remained one of a handful of Beatles songs Lennon didn’t criticize, though he noted, “I don’t like the recording that much; the song I like. We did it too fast to try and be commercial.”

Source: ultimateclassicrock.com

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