I’ve really come to appreciate the Help! album over the past several months as I’ve played it on a daily basis for my daughters on our way to school each morning.
I’ve always considered it a good second-tier Beatles album, and I suppose I still do considering how amazing that first tier is… but I now believe it’s closer in quality to Rubber Soul and Revolver than I’d ever given it credit for before.
I don’t remember when I first became aware of ‘Hey Jude.’ It’s one of those songs that I’ve just sort of always known. I have only one specific memory of the song and it’s a rather lame one.
It came on once when I was bringing my high school girlfriend back to her house and we sat in the car listening to the whole thing. Those “na na nas” seemed to last forever. I’d love to spin that memory into something salacious but we were in fact just sitting and listening to the song. I told you it was lame.
I’ve mostly stuck to themes on these Beatles weekends, picking two songs from the same album, two songs by George Harrison, two sides of the same single, etc. This week I’m eschewing a thematic connection and just highlighting two great songs.
‘Blackbird’ has always been one of my favorite Beatles songs. I remember first becoming aware of it during the summer after my junior year in high school.
Usually, as with yesterday’s featured song, The Beatles gave Ringo a song to sing just to throw him a bone. You keep the beat for the rest of us, bloke, so here’s a few minutes in the spotlight.
But a couple of Beatles songs just wouldn’t be the same without Ringo on lead vocals. One is ‘Yellow Submarine,’ a corny trifle that’s perfect for Ringo because he sounds like he really means it… that’s a song aimed at 8-year-olds and it needed to be sung at their level. And I don’t mean that as an insult to Ringo. On the contrary, it’s kind of a gift.
It’s interesting that The Beatles have always been considered a true band, with every member as theoretically important as the others. This despite the fact that John and Paul wrote and performed 90% of their songs. Contrast them to The Rolling Stones, where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards share the spotlight and most people probably couldn’t name all the other members of the band. But everybody knows John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Ringo is certainly the main beneficiary of this. He wrote only a couple of the band’s songs and, while he’s certainly a fine and under-appreciated drummer, he’s not really the architect of The Beatles’ sound in any real way. His main contribution was his personality and considering the importance of the band’s image and performance outside the studio, that was no small matter.
