Director: Richard Lester
Original Release: July 29, 1965
My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5
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| via Wikipedia |
Ringo has come into possession of a mysterious ring. The original owners, members of an Indian-ish cult, are prepared to chase him and the rest of The Beatles all over the world - London, Austria, Bahamas - in order to get it back. Along the way, the boys sing a lot of really good songs.
Way back in my early teens, I watched Help! before A Hard Day's Night. It appealed to me primarily because I was more familiar with the music. The soundtrack was one of the three Beatles albums in my parents' record cabinet (see story here). I suppose it was also a naïve bias for color over black-and-white. I remember being particularly charmed by John's pit bed in the London apartment. I wanted one just like it. Someone - probably my sister - pointed out that it would only be more difficult to get out of bed in the morning.
Now, it's easy to see A Hard Day's Night as the stronger of the two. Help!'s story is better and I still prefer the music. But The Beatles' effortless charm in the first feels more forced and scripted in the second. The band members have since admitted they were often stoned out of their minds during the filming of Help! which was surely part of the problem.
Make no mistake though, the music is amazing. The title track is an under-appreciated masterpiece (see here) and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is the first hint of a more Dylan-esque aesthetic creeping into the band's music. The album - especially the UK version which includes several songs not in the film, including "Yesterday" - is The Beatles' cusp offering. The last strains of '50s-style rock 'n' roll were giving way to something less frenetic and more introspective.
The movie experience brought one particularly important long-term development to The Beatles. The filming of Help! provided George Harrison's first exposure to Indian music. The story itself is undeniably racist and that is a well-deserved knock against it. But George genuinely fell in love with the sitar. He wasted little time tracking down master Ravi Shankar to teach him. Just a few months later, Harrison played the instrument on Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood." Raga rock was born.
Come to think of it, the movies worked out pretty well for George especially. He met his first wife in the first one: Pattie Boyd, rock music's greatest muse. In the second, he discovered a fascination with India that would shape his life for years afterward.
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Last week's movie post inspired one of the longest and most gratifying comment threads this blog has seen in quite a long while. Let's keep it going, folks!
NyQuilDriver proposed They Might Be Giants as a challenger to Beatle supremacy. I welcome the choice. I loooove TMBG (see here). No band is more emblematic of my own college years in the early '90s.
I can't deny they hold up surprisingly well with the parameters as I have set them. TMBG are incredibly prolific: 740ish songs. While that is spread out over four decades, they have maintained a consistent level of quality over the years. NQD introduced me to some of their more recent material which is still really good. Dare I say, some of it is stronger than some of their better-known early work.
My conclusion: They Might Be Giants is not in The Beatles' league. And yet, they clearly deserve a lot more love than they get. Indeed, the entire genre of geek rock is worthy of greater respect - Weird Al, especially. Let's start the Hall of Fame campaign now, folks!
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