User:PianoUpMyNose/The Beatles

= Help! =

"Help!"
The song "Help!" was written primarily by Lennon. He originally composed it at a slower tempo and regretted speeding it up to make it more commercial.

"The Night Before"
"The Night Before" is a "hard-rocking" song by McCartney. Gould writes that the lead and backing vocals working together prefigures the "increasingly complex and conversational relationship" between vocals in the Beatles' later songs. The track features Lennon on electric piano and McCartney and Harrison playing the guitar solo together, doubling each other in octaves. McCartney said of the song in a contemporary interview: "that sound was one of the best we got on record, instrumentally."

"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" shows Dylan's influence with Lennon's "raw" vocal delivery and the track's heavy use of acoustic guitar. Nicholas Schaffner calls the flutes at the end of the song a "substitution" for Dylan's signature harmonica. The song's lyrics also show connections to Dylan, such as the opening lines and those of "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)". It has been suggested that Lennon wrote "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" about the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein's homosexuality, which was kept private due to British law at the time. Lennon's friend Pete Shotton was present when the song was written and claimed to suggest adding the "heys" in the chorus.

"Another Girl"
McCartney wrote "Another Girl" while he and Asher were holidaying at a villa in Hammamet, Tunisia. He had been there as a guest of the British government. Steve Turner suggests the song relates to McCartney's open relationship with Asher. The track draws from country music with its backbeat and lead guitar, once again played by McCartney. A "surprising" key change occurs in the bridge, which Gould connects with the changing of girl in the lyrics.

"You're Going to Lose That Girl"
"You're Going to Lose That Girl" was started by Lennon and finished with McCartney, later crediting it 60–40 to Lennon. A "rock ballad", it revisits the theme of a love triangle previously used in "She Loves You". Both songs narrate a friend giving advice about a relationship, but in this song "the singer now offers a warning, not support." The recording features McCartney on Steinway grand piano and Starr on bongos, and shows influences of Motown and girl groups.

"Act Naturally"
After the failure of "If You've Got Trouble" and with the album nearing completion, Starr chose to sing a cover of "Act Naturally", a song Buck Owens had a number-one country hit with in 1963. Excepting "Maggie Mae", this would be the last-recorded cover song the Beatles released. MacDonald writes that it "lighten[s] the mood" for side two after the "intense" feeling of "Ticket to Ride", and Everett points out that it differs from most of the Beatles' covers in that it did not originate from their early gigging days.

"It's Only Love"
"It's Only Love" is another Lennon song of which McCartney claimed 40 percent. Lennon later said: "I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics were abysmal." Its working title was "That's a Nice Hat", which MacDonald says signifies Lennon's lack of seriousness in writing it. However, MacDonald also writes that the song "displays the group's new drive to experiment in the studio." Five guitars were used on the track – two acoustic and three electric – including one run through a Leslie speaker. The folky song also features one of the Beatles' earliest uses of capos, a development they would take much further on their next album, Rubber Soul.

"Tell Me What You See"
"Tell Me What You See" is one of McCartney's many songs of the era that detail a face-to-face interaction with a romantic partner ("I've Just Seen a Face" being another). Riley calls it a "working draft" of Rubber Soul track "I'm Looking Through You". Everett says it "vaguely" resembles Buddy Holly; Gould relates Lennon and McCartney's "breathy intimacy" in the verses to the Beatles' cover of Holly's "Words of Love". The second verse paraphrases a religious motto that was hung in Lennon's childhood home. McCartney later called it a filler track, "Not awfully memorable."

"Yesterday"
The album's penultimate track, "Yesterday", came partly to McCartney in a dream in May 1965. He described one morning waking up "with a lovely tune in my head" and working it out on an upright piano next to his bed in the Asher home. Because of its unusual spontaneity, he spent "about a month" playing the tune for people to make sure it was original, before writing "dummy lyrics" under the title "Scrambled Eggs". The song was completed slowly over a matter of weeks in mid-1965, including while McCartney was on holiday in Portugal.

"Dizzy Miss Lizzy"
The new Rolling Stone Album Guide: "Help! was a big step forward, exploring doubt, loneliness, alienation, adult sexual longing, acoustic guitars, electric piano, bongos, castanets ... Help! was utterly ruined in its U.S. version, which cut half the songs and added worthless orchestral soundtrack filler ... Help! is the first chapter in the astounding creative takeoff the Beatles were just beginning".

Several songs recorded during these initial sessions would not appear on the album.

Tim Riley compares "Help!" with "Drive My Car", "I'm So Tired", and "Carry That Weight", concluding, "No other Beatles song about fame sounds as lonely".

Stevie Nicks

= Yesterday =

Writing
The tune that would become "Yesterday" originally came to Paul McCartney in a dream. He had been living at 57 Wimpole Street in London, the home of his girlfriend Jane Asher's family, and sleeping in a garret. He recalled one morning waking up with the tune in his head and working it out on an upright piano next to his bed. Originally without lyrics, McCartney gave the tune "dummy words", which he rarely did when writing songs, under the title "Scrambled Eggs": "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs, scrambled eggs". George Martin, the Beatles' producer, recalled first hearing the song in its "Scrambled Eggs" form "at the George V Hotel in Paris in January 1964." However, writer Ian MacDonald doubts it was written so early considering when it was recorded. Chris Dreja of the Yardbirds claimed that McCartney played "Scrambled Eggs" for the band while they were performing at the Beatles' 1964 Christmas shows, which ran from 24 December 1964 to 16 January 1965.

Because of the tune's unusual spontaneity, McCartney initially assumed he had heard it somewhere before, such as a traditional pop song or the jazz pieces his father knew. Over a matter of weeks, he played the song for people and asked if they recognized it. These included his songwriting partner John Lennon, George Martin, and friend singer Alma Cogan, all saying they had not heard it before. Once convinced it was original, McCartney "claimed it" and began further writing it.

According to McCartney, "Yesterday" took a different, slower writing process than most of his songs up to then: "Generally, John and I would sit down and finish within three hours, but this was more organic." During the shooting of Help!, the Beatles' second feature film (after A Hard Day's Night), McCartney would ask for a piano on set when possible so he could work on the song. He called this time "the incubation of 'Yesterday and said, "I think the middle eight was written on set." Director Richard Lester remembered: "he was playing his 'Scrambled Eggs' all the time. It got to the point where I said to him, 'If you play that bloody song any longer, I'll have the piano taken off the stage. Either finish it or give it up.

On 27 May 1965, following the completion of filming Help!, McCartney and Asher flew to Lisbon for a holiday in Portugal. They took a roughly three-hour, 180-mile car ride from the airport to a villa owned by Bruce Welch of the Shadows in Albufeira, in the Algarve region. McCartney said in 2021 that he wrote the lyrics to "Yesterday" completely on this car ride, though in 1997 he also said they might have taken two weeks more to finish (about the length of their stay). He thought of three-syllable words like "yesterday" and "suddenly" to match the melody and decided the song should be sad. At the house, McCartney played the song on a 1959 Martin 00-18 guitar that Welch had there.

Recording and strings
"Yesterday" began recording on 14 June 1965, three days after McCartney returned from Portugal. According to Mark Lewisohn, the day's work was "dominated" by McCartney in that two of his other songs in varying styles were earlier taped: "I've Just Seen a Face" and "I'm Down". All sessions for "Yesterday" took place in Studio Two of EMI Recording Studios (now Abbey Road Studios), with George Martin producing and Norman Smith and Phil McDonald engineering.

While preparing the song, the other Beatles found they could not reasonably add their own parts to it. With support from the group and Martin, McCartney hesitantly performed it solo. Sitting on a high stool, he sang the song while playing it on a 1964 Epiphone Texan he had acquired likely the previous summer and restrung to be left-handed. McCartney had originally written the song in G major, but it had been found to sound better in F major. Not wanting to alter his playing, he had tuned the guitar down a whole step. He said in 2021: "These kinds of different tunings are quite common now, but tuning all six strings down a whole tone was a new trick back then". Two takes were recorded, with take one being not released until Anthology 2 in 1996. Take one switches the first two lines of the second verse and shows a "more tentative" McCartney vocal according to Richie Unterberger.

After this session, McCartney and Martin agreed the song needed something more. Martin suggested a classical string quartet, which McCartney was hesitant about but agreed to give a try. The next day, they met at Martin's house to work out the composition. McCartney remembered: "we had a pleasant couple of hours, had a cup of tea, sat there with manuscript paper on the piano. ... I played it to him. 'These are my chords.' ... And he'd say, 'This would be the way Bach would do it,' and he'd play it. ... It was nice, I was getting lessons." One part that McCartney suggested was the cello line incorporating the flat seventh blue note: "George said, 'Bach certainly wouldn't have done that, Paul, ha ha ha.' I said, 'Great! John Lennon reportedly very much liked the note upon hearing it.

Recorded on 17 June, the quartet Martin assembled (for this occasion only) comprised Tony Gilbert on first violin, Sidney Sax on second violin, Francisco Gaharro on cello, and Kenneth Essex on viola. According to Martin, McCartney told the musicians to play with no vibrato. Martin reflected: "If you're a good violin player it's very difficult to play without vibrato. ... although they did cut down on the vibrato they couldn't do it pure because they would have sounded like schoolboys. I think Paul realised in later years that what he got was right." Also added on this day was a single vocal overdub heard at 0:52–0:59. The song was mixed in mono later that day and in stereo the next.

Composition
= Sources = New



New



New Old

= Another Girl =

Background and recording
Although "Another Girl" is credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, it was written primarily by Paul McCartney. On 4 February 1965, following completion of the Beatles' Christmas shows, McCartney and then girlfriend Jane Asher flew to Hammamet, Tunisia, for a 10-day holiday. Because McCartney was there as a guest of the British government, he was able to relax protected from the hassles of Beatlemania. The couple stayed at a villa that was built in the 1920s by Romanian George Sebastian. According to music journalist Steve Turner, the villa – known as "Sebastian's Villa" or "Villa Sebastian" – had previously been visited by such writers as Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The property contained a small amphitheatre that had been built the previous year, and McCartney was inspired by its acoustics to begin writing a new song. He finished "Another Girl" in a bathroom in the villa, which biographer Barry Miles described as having "ideal" acoustics for songwriting.

The Beatles began recording the song on 15 February, the day after McCartney returned from Tunisia. It was the first day of recording for the soundtrack of the band's second feature film, Help! "Another Girl" was the second of three songs worked on that day, after "Ticket to Ride" and before "I Need You". Held in EMI's Studio Two, the session was produced by George Martin and engineered by Norman Smith, Ken Scott, and Jerry Boys. The band achieved a satisfactory basic track in one take,ic rhythm guitars.

The band then added overdubs. McCartney double-tracked his vocal and Lennon added more backing vocals. Harrison took 10 attempts at a guitar flourish to be edited onto the end of track, with the seventh being deemed best; however, this was left out of the final mix. Harrison struggled with the lead guitar for the rest of the song, so McCartney recorded his own the next day using his Epiphone Casino. The song was mixed for mono on 18 February by Martin, Smith, and Scott, and in stereo on 23 February by Smith and Malcolm Davies.

Composition
"Another Girl" has been described as a pop rock or rockabilly song that draws from country music. It is in 4/4 time and is mainly in the key of A major, although the blue notes in the verse melody imply the relative minor. The bridge then makes a "surprising" modulation to C major.

The bridge makes a "startling" modulation to C major, a chromatic mediant of A, before modulating back with another chromatic mediant, E. Music scholar Terence J. O'Grady writes that

with a brief modulation to C major in the bridge, and is in 4/4 time.