Notes on "Help!" (H.1)
KEY A Major
METER 4/4
------ 3X ------
FORM Intro -> Verse -> Refrain -> Outro
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
Style and Form
- Even while you're totally riveted by "Help's" hard driving beat
and desparately anxious lyrics, its flat ballad form and prominent
part for acoustic rhythm guitar are at work, adding a folksy stylistic
cross current.
- The folk ballad form, with its repetitious alternation of verse with
refrain, is no stranger in the Beatles song book, but it appears much
less frequently than the more familiar one or two-bridge pop song forms.
- In absence of the continuing story line upon which the typical folksong
relies in order to sustain interest, "Help!" makes a couple of formal
adjustments to avoid rote monotony:
- The lyrics of the three verses create an A-B-A pattern.
- The texture of the instrumental arrangement is dramaticlly lightened
up for the first half of the last verse by thinning out the drum part
and eliminating the backing vocal part.
- But I'd argue that this relatively small amount of relief is frankly not
enough to dispell an overall closed, static feeling in the song created
by the following factors, independent of, or in addition to, the flat
form:
- The harmonic rhythm is fairly slow and unvarying throughout. In the
verse, except for the phrase "help in any way" where the chords change
twice within a measure, the rest of the chords last two whole measures
each. In the refrain, the chords last four measures each!
- The 16 measure verse is built out of a musically identical repetition
of the same 8 measures.
- The harmony from an architectural viewpoint is unrelievedly in one
key (A) throughout. In spite of the nice effect with the G chord, the
refrain provides no relief in terms of excursion to, or flirtation with
a different key. (By contrast, think about the space opened up by
the middle eight of a song like "From Me To You.")
- All this is not to say that "Help!" is ineffective or unsuccessful; common
sense and experience tells us you don't need to be versed in music theory
to recognize a great song when you hear it; right!?
- If anything, I find myself pondering that perhaps, this unusual unrelieved
closedness is intentional and actually part of what makes the impact of the
song so strong. The music underscores the urgent single-mindedness of the
message contained within the lyrics; shades of
"got no time for trivialities"
from a slightly earlier song of the same composer.
Melody and Harmony
- With the exception of the extraordinary upward leap of a sixth to a
high C# sung in screaming falsetto (on the word "please" the climax of
each refrain) the tune is centered within a small range of just a fifth,
from A up to E. The narrowness of the range is further emphasized by
the predominance in the tune of motifs that are either triadic or in
short downward scale fragments or 3 or 4 notes; the latter all serving
to greatly accent the exceptional impact of the big leap.
- An unusually large number of chords are used: 6 out of the 7 diatonically
available to the home key, plus the modal flat-VII (G Major).
- The flat-VII chord was obviously not "invented" by the Beatles, but
they were to use it quite a bit starting from around the time of the
_Hard Day's Night_ album, and I dare say that they are at least partly
responsible for the chord's becoming somewhat of a cliche in late 60s/
early 70s pop music.
- Flat-VII appears repeatedly in this song, alternately serving
two very different purposes; sort of like a character actor filling two
different roles in the same play. In the verse it is used to make what
Wilifred Meller's was talking about when he used the much ridiculed but
very apt label, "Aeolian cadence." The Aeolian mode is the white note
scale on A, and is one of the modes in which the flat-VII chord naturally
occurs, and is used in place of V to make a complete cadence with I.
By contrast, in the intro and refrains, the flat-VII chord appears in
the midst of an unusual chromatic chord progression.
Arrangement
- Lewisohn points out how it was in the sessions for the _Help!_ album
that the Beatles first really locked on in a big way to the procedure of
recording backing tracks before laying down vocals and other finishing
touches as successive overdubs. This is amply borne out by the rough
early takes of "Help!" fortunately available in unofficial release.
- The basic track includes acoustic rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, and
drums. Initial attempts to capture the signature rapid arpeggios in the
lead guitar at this point are abandoned after George complains it's too
hard to perform the rapid eighth notes evenly in tempo. In addition to
all vocals, also missing at this point is the tambourine and the heavily
doubly downward bassline of the refrain.
- There is much to admire in the detailed arrangement:
- Ringo uses a short, one-beat roll to pickup the first verse and
round off each refrain, but to lead into the refrains he opts for
the insistent pattern of 7 even eighth notes starting on the half
beat after 1. In the first half of the final verse he plays only
on the downbeats where the chords change.
- Paul uses the dotted rhythmic pattern we noted back in SLY for just
the verses.
- The lead guitar has no part in the verses. In the refrain, it
plays percussive chords on the offbeats (where it is doubled by
the tambourine), and it doubles the descending bassline during the big
build up. At the section's climax it overdubs that funky series
of chromatically descending arpeggios.
- John, of course, provides the double-tracked lead vocal with a complex
backing part for Paul and George.
- The backers fascinatingly alternate between adding points of bold fontlike
emphasis to the lead part with chordal doubling, and providing a
form of melodic counterpoint in which both the words and notes they
sing subtly interwine and overlap with the lead. If you listen
carefully, the two sets of words are almost but not quite exactly
matching, nor does either of the parts consistently lead or follow.
Is this a Greek chorus of friendly observers commenting on the
protagonist, or is it more likely the protagonist's inner dialog?
- The most precious vocal detail is found at the end of the first
line of the verse:
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
lead |- C# C# C#|C# C# C# C#|C# C# C#E C#|- - B A- |
* * * *
backers |A - - - |- - B A |G# - - - |- C# E C#B|A
* * * * *
- Note how near the end of the line the backers sing the identical
pattern of five notes as the lead, but they trail by a few beats,
by which time they not only have to "jump over" the lead (in terms
of range), but best of all, they sing the figure with very different
points of rhythmic emphasis; John puts the main emphasis on the
syncopated second C# (on the second syllable of "today") of the figure,
but the backers put the accent on the E at its apex (on the first syllable
of "never"), which in their part falls smack on the 3rd beat of the measure.
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
Intro
- The intro is an eight-measure long compressed version of what will
turn out to be the refrain section:
|b |- |G |- |E |- |A |- |
A: ii flat-VII V I
- The chord progression of the intro is a classic harmonic example of starting
a piece out in left field; "classic" in the sense that early Romantic
song writers like Schubert and Schumann loved this gambit. At what point
in "Help!" do you know for sure what key we're in ? Below are some of the
ways in which I believe the opening chords can be heard; I think that
several of the possibilities below are quickly rejected in retrospect
by the ear but I list them all to underscore the ambiguity.
b ->G ->E ->A
is it b: i VI V-of-flat-VII, huh ???
*or*
g: iii I V-of-ii, huh ???
*or*
D: vi VI V-of-V V, maybe ???
*Actually* it's
A: ii flat-VII V I
- This is more than just mental gymnastics on paper. Try and put yourself
in a frame of mind as though you're hearing this for the first time (try!),
and play it out "Name That Tune" style, dealing out one chord at a time. Ask
yourself at each step, "what key am I in", "where am I heading ?" I think
you'll get the picture.
- I think one isn't certain of the key being A until the verse actually
begins; the possibility of the A at the end of the intro actually being
a V which will go the the D as the I chord is very real to the ear.
- Once you get used to this progression I believe you hear the overall motion
as being from the ii->V->I; a nice subdominant->dominant->tonic cadence.
But what of the G chord ? I put a flat-VII under it but I don't hear it
that way at all in this context; flat-VII is a surrogate dominant (V-like)
function. What I hear in this context is more of a hard to pigeon-hole
"filler" chord between the ii and the V. In the final analysis (ugh!)
I'm not even sure what Roman numeral to give it, or whether to give it
one at all. What makes it work is the contrapuntal movement in the outer
voices:
Top: F# ->G ->G#
Bottom: B ->A ->G ->F# ->E
A: ii ?? V
- Scale-wise motion, particularly in a bassline or particularly when any
line moves chromatically as the top line does here, can make the ear
follow and "accept" some of the craziest chord progressions. In music
of the late nineteenth century (for examples see Chopin or Wagner) this
technique could be extended through very long passages creating a
rather floating tonal experience. Our example from "Help!" is a very
tiny example of this technique -- it extends over only three chords,
the outer two of which are clear tonal anchors like the towers of
a suspension bridge. If you'll allow me to quickly change metaphors yet
again, I like to think of that G chord here making a harmonic "pleat"
between it's two neighboring chords.
- It's a very pleasing effect; given that the harmonic rhythm is rather
slow throughout, this unusual chord progression which is repeated four times
in the course of the song is a conspicuous touch which adds a much needed
feeling of forward and outward movement.
- On a visceral level you might say that what otherwise is a cock-sured
sense of kinetic motion in this progression is subtly belied by an
uncertainty over its exact direction; kind of like the late-adolescent
tale told by the lyrics.
- The four-fold repeat of the title in this outro appears to violate some
rhetorical rule of three, but more than makes up for it in the way the
final one is literally screamed out; "Ouch!" indeed.
Verse
- The verse is sixteen measures long; built out of a repetition of the
following eight-measure phrase which, itself, breaks down into a 4+4
AA' pattern:
|A |- |c# |- |
I iii
|f# |- |D G |A |
vi IV flat-VII I
Refrain
- The refrain based on the same musical design as the outro, but here is
stretched out to double the length (16 measures) by multiplying the
harmonic rhythm by a factor of two. This latter change reveals a hidden
element of "slow build up" not at all apparent in the faster/shorter
intro version:
|b |- |- |- |E |- |- |- |
A: ii flat-VII
|E |- |- |- |A |- |- |- |
V I
Outro
- I always hear the final phrase of the refrain as follows with a V chord
on the word "help" which, though not on the rhythm track, is strongly
implied by the voices:
Please please help me
|A |- (E) |A |- |
I (V) I
- This pattern is changed in the final refrain and made into a beautiful
example of a deceptive cadence, in pure Bach style; i.e., the word "me"
in the final refrain is given an f# (vi) chord. As in all such cadences,
thing are quickly put "right" in the following and final phrase.
- The final chord of this song is another added sixth chord. In contrast to
the splat-like attack on this chord at the end of
"She Loves You", the
boys use it in "Help!" with great subtlety; the plain A chord is given
on the down beat, and the sixth is added as a melodic neighboring tone,
off the beat, in falsetto voice on the phoneme "Ooh"; but you already
knew that :-).
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- The public relations hype said that we were all affected especially hard
by John's more confessional songs because they revealed a surprising
vulnerability we'd never have expected was lurking beneath his tough,
cool, and zany public personna. The fact that such songs can be found
from one end of the songbook (e.g. "Misery") to the other (e.g. "I Want
You/She's So Heavy") should have mitigated anything in the way of
"surprise" but that's PR for you.
- Even in this context, though, the song "Help!" would appear to have pushed
the envelope, given its chronological place within the cannon, just shy
of mid-career, and its rather "psychiatric" choice of words. Check your
lyrical concordance; it's the only Beatles song where you'll find the
words "independence," "self-assured," or "insecure."
- But don't be fooled into thinking that we're dealing with a kind of
perverse impulse to recklessly cast John "against type," running the risk,
big time, of blowing such a carefully cultivated image.
- Rather it's precisely *because* of the cross casting here that the overall
production it work as well as it does! Consider the alternatives.
Tough guy singing tough songs is okay but predictable. Nebbish singing
nebbishy songs is, yech, pathetic. Nebbish singing tough songs not
fully believable. But take the one who always jokes and
laughs like a clown and have him admit to his private indulgence in
copious tears that fall like rain from the sky --- and now you've really
got something. Maybe those PR folks really knew what they were doing :-)
- A final footnote on lyrical concordances: the only other Beatles song
in which I could find the phrase " you like I've never done before"
other than in this song is in the Quarrymen's parodistic
"You'll Be Mine;"
just change the opening verb from "need" to "love." Is this merely a
coinicidence or does it suggest the phrase having been on John's tongue
"for years" just waiting for the right moment to be free?
Regards,
Alan ([email protected])
---
"...I know for a fact within four weeks he'll be suffering from a
violent inferiority complex and loss of status..." 033000#6.1
---
Revision History
070989 6.0 Original release
033000 6.1 Revise, expand and adapt to series template
Copyright (c) 2000 by Alan W. Pollack
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