60 Years Ago: The Beatles Move Into the Next Phase With ‘Help!’

Rubber Soul is often marked as the turning point in the Beatles‘ career, the moment where they transcended the pop confines of Beatlemania and became serious artists. The first steps toward that independence came a few months earlier on Rubber Soul‘s predecessor Help!, a soundtrack of sorts to the Beatles’ second movie and their first real exploration outside of pop’s stifling limitations.

The group’s restlessness was starting to become clear on its previous album, Beatles for Sale, which was the quartet’s third LP in a little over a year. The strains of Beatlemania were showing by this point. Almost half of the songs on the album were covers, and most of the originals by John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren’t up to their usual standards.

They were in a rut, and they knew it. They needed a change. They seized the opportunity to create their second movie, a fun, albeit disposable, piece of 007-era filmmaking, and experimented with new elements in their music.

READ MORE: Every Beatles Song Ranked

Sessions for the album, their fifth, began in mid-February 1965 – a little more than two months after the release of Beatles for Sale – and wrapped four months later. They recorded 20 songs, 14 of which were released on the LP. And like A Hard Day’s Night, also a soundtrack of sorts, Help!‘s first side includes songs heard and performed in the movie; the second half features two covers (one sung by Ringo Starr), a George Harrison song (he’s given two for the first time) and a handful of tunes that foreshadow Rubber Soul.

Watch the Beatles Perform ‘Help!’

Help! also marks a significant step in Lennon and McCartney’s independence from each other. They had started writing separately a bit earlier, but on Help!, their music began to reflect their personalities. The title track is an impassioned plea from John Lennon as he sank under the weight of Beatlemania (and a sign of the more personal direction his songwriting would take later in the Beatles and into his solo career); “Yesterday” is a loving, nostalgic nod to the past from Paul McCartney (who would dip into this sort of misty sentimentality throughout his career).

Why Is ‘Help!’ Such an Important Album in the Beatles’ Career?

Either way, Help! serves as the bridge between the first and second parts of the Beatles’ career. Songs like “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” and “Ticket to Ride” reflect both nostalgia and a sense of future possibilities. Influences from artists like Bob Dylan, as heard in “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” alongside elements of country music, such as in “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and Ringo Starr’s direct cover of Buck Owens’ hit “Act Naturally,” also blend into the sound.

The album was released on Aug. 6, 1965, in the U.K. (The U.S. version of the LP, which cut several songs and added an orchestral score from the movie, was issued a week later; the leftover cuts found their way onto other Beatles releases over time.) It reached No. 1, surprising no one, as did the singles “Help!,” “Ticket to Ride” and “Yesterday,” which was released only in the U.S. and went on to become the most covered song of all time.

More importantly, the record begins to distance the group’s ties to its past – maybe not definitively, but enough so that Rubber Soul didn’t sound like a total shift in style when it arrived four months later. It was a giant leap for the Beatles. They got their footing for it here.