I don't know if anyone else has obsessed over a single song nearly as much as I have over the Beatles song Help! the past six or seven years. Normally, I don't listen to anyone else's music except my own. I have my own songs in my head all the time. Help! is different and I can't explain why. The Beatles, like them or hate them, were undoubtedly one of the most popular rock bands of all time, and this song shows them in top form. John Lennon considered this one of the only two songs he was proud of from his time with the Beatles (the other was Strawberry Fields).
It was released and on the radio a lot about the time I turned five years old. My sisters bought the album along with every other Beatles album. A local television station played the movie once a year, the same time every year in the late sixties / early seventies, and I watched it once a year for some years. It's a funny movie full of sight gags. The Beatles were allegedly stoned out of their minds during the filming of this movie. It apparently inspired The Monkees American TV show that is much like the Beatles movie Help! in its silliness.
But it wasn't until about six or seven years ago that for some reason it really appealed to me. In 2003 I finally left a relationship I had been in since 1995, although I should have left years earlier and then there might not have been such hard feelings towards me by my ex-. I heard the lyrics to Help! in a new way, not as a fast pop song but as a prayer towards one's higher power. I started playing along to it on guitar, sometimes for hours at a time, day after day, week after week, for years.
I found that when Windows Media Player was set to repeat, the song would play about three times in seven minutes, or about twenty-five times an hour, or one hundred times in four hours. There have been many times I played along to it on guitar more than one hundred times in a row. The longest I ever played it nonstop was six hours straight. Needless to say, my daughter and my housemate both hate this song with a passion. I can't help it if they are burned out on it. It is always fresh to me, even if I am listening to it for the ten thousandth time.
I fiddled with the play speed settings. It's not bad listening to it at 0.8, although that does drag a bit. 0.967 is better. Supposedly John Lennon wanted it to be slower to fit the mood of the lyrics, but because it was the title track of an album, a movie and a hit single it was played pretty fast. Paul McCartney apparently plays it slower when he performs live, and other groups such as Deep Purple and Oasis also have slower versions. Sometimes I would listen to it all night while sleeping. Other times I'd be playing a video game such as World of Warcraft and have it repeating while I play. I've also listened to some punk and metal covers of it, but I like the original the best. it's funny in a couple of live recordings by the Beatles that John messes up the lyrics to the second verse.
Once in a while it's like my ears hear the song more clearly, and I am better able to play it on guitar. I recorded a version in December 2009 and posted it on YouTube, but I play and sing it much, much better now than in that recording. The past few weeks I've been listening to it again several hours a day and playing guitar to the recording and sometimes just playing it on guitar. I have my own variations on it too, including arpeggios, different strumming and picking patterns, and some lead riffs of my own besides the classic one by George Harrison that is so awesome. I hope to be recorded sometime this summer before my talents fade, and when that happens I will post the new recording on my web site and make a video for YouTube.
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"When you ride over sharps, you get flats!"--The Bicycling Guitarist, May 13, 2008
Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 25 Apr 2011, 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
17 Apr 2011, 3:41 am
