You like me too much (The Beatles) (LP 209 - 212)

The Beatles Help! (Vinyl + CDs - parlophone, 1965) *****
The Beatles Help! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Vinyl - Apple, 1965) ***
The Beatles The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl (Vinyl - EMI, 1977) ****
The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl (CD - Apple, 2018) ****

Genre: Beatles pop  

Places I remember: Variety of places, tracking backwards from 2018: JB HiFi (Mt Albert); Marbecks Records; Capitol Help! from Noel Forth; the various UK versions of Help! have come from Kings Recording (Abu Dhabi), The Warehouse (Hastings), and DJ Records (Otahuhu)   

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: I've Just Seen A Face (Macca did this during his Auckland gig recently and my smile broke world records!)




Gear costume:  Highlights aplenty: Yesterday, Act Naturally, Help!, Ticket To Ride, I Need You, I could go on!

Active compensatory factors: What a year 1965 was: the fabs toured the UK, as well as the USA for a second time, and Europe; recorded two albums - Help! and Rubber Soul; Ringo found space to marry Maureen Cox; they shot the Help! movie in a variety of locations, released some non album singles, did a number of TV appearances, got their MBEs, John published another book, and generally they continued to conquer the known universe. Lazy layabouts! 

I've wrapped these four albums together because together they present the studio/live distinctions, and the Help! to Rubber Soul progression.

The live albums are great! Amazingly, even though they probably couldn't hear too much over the screams, the Fabs rip through their programme with gusto boys, with gusto. Turns out, when you could hear them, they were a great live band as well as everything else; take a listen to the way Ringo attacks Boys and Paul gives it plenty of welly in Long Tall Sally frinstance. 

The 2018 version includes four extra tracks that the album didn't have room for and Giles Martin's take on things benefits sonically from 2018 technology that his dad didn't have in 1977, but not by much.  Bravo George! 

However great they were live, it's to the studio they would repair to after that tour and Help! shows them transitioning from Mop Tops to studio wizards - a process that would continue later in 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions.

Help!, in its UK iteration, is a classic in any one's definition, and the US version is the best of the alternative Capitol albums (perversely and strangely, my version is on Apple) as it doesn't cherry pick other Beatle product. Instead it includes non-Beatle instrumental material from the film amongst the seven Help! tracks.

Where do they all belong? Rubber Soul man, Rubber Soul.