2 August 1965
The semaphore on the album cover and movie poster actually spells N-U-J-V, not H-E-L-P. On US releases the lads were rearranged to spell N-J-U-V. For this reason it’s bad luck to listen to ‘Help!’ on board a ship. (It’s also bad luck to watch the movie, anywhere.)
‘Help!’ reminds me of a Joe Duffy radio interview with Phil Lynott’s mother, where he quoted lines from Philo’s solo ‘Old Town’ in the manner of a pioneering psychoanalyst. I paraphrase only slightly: ““This boy is cracking up / This boy has broken down” – do you think he was trying to tell us something?” Granted, from today’s viewpoint the subject matter of ‘Help!’ is quotidian, when we’ve seen and heard non-romantic personal sadness and confusion in plenty of songs for decades now, even from men. Yes, I respect the fact that Lennon himself in later years said ‘Help!’ was the manifestation of his unhappiness at the time. It’s just that a lot of tortured-genius hay seems to get threshed in the Lennon hagiography mill from what is essentially a jaunty, rollicking moptop throwback pressed into service as marketing collateral for a bad movie. Even in 1965, cheek by jowl with the Stones and Dylan but also compared to the arch dryness of ‘Norwegian Wood’ and the emotional resonance of ‘In My Life’, this must have sounded as superficial and twee as it does today. Nujv.
Irish Number Ones 