Paul – lead
vocals, bass, lead guitar
John – backing vocals, electric piano
George – backing vocals, lead guitar
Ringo – drums, percussion
Apart from the title track, the six songs for the film Help! were recorded within five days in February. This would not normally mean that they would lack diversity – after all, ‘Mr Moonlight’, ‘I Feel Fine’ and ‘I’ll Follow The Sun’ were recorded consecutively on the same day, and, most remarkably, ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’, ‘I’m Down’ and ‘Yesterday’ would also be recorded in one day the following June. But the songs from the film have a homogeneity, more so than on any previous album.
Unfortunately this homogeneity is less the stylistic kind evident in With The Beatles and which made that album so fresh and appealing, but seemingly more a result of artistic fatigue, the result of the relentless need to turn out songs to deadlines in between tours, films and TV and radio appearances. With the exception of ‘Ticket To Ride’ and ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’, the songs (including the unreleased ‘If You’ve Got Trouble’ and ‘That Means A Lot’) taped during this busy week in February made no great strides forward in the Beatles’ art. Fortunately, the pressures on the group’s time – particularly on John and Paul as songwriters – would soon ease, with concert tours being deliberately shortened, and radio and TV appearances also reduced. But for now, careful sequencing of tracks would be required to mask a relative slowdown in compositional development.
In spite of this, the songs recorded for the film Help! are in themselves all worthy. As a coupling, ‘Another Girl’ and ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’ is impressive, and, were it not for the excellence of ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘The Night Before’ is commercial enough to have made an admirable single. As with ‘Ticket To Ride’, it deals with the break-up of a relationship, the casting of a wistful backward glance to happier times. The consciously clever lyric with its unusual rhymes is somewhat distancing after the directness of the previous track, but there are elegant touches in its brisk two-and-a-half minutes.
As a variation on standard Beatle fare, John plays his rhythm track on an instrument new to the group – the German-made Hohner electric Pianet, which provides a constant drawing presence that plays against Paul’s bass. Notwithstanding the ghostly presence of John’s mixed-out piano on ‘Things We Said Today’, this is John’s first bona fide keyboard contribution to a Beatles track, notwithstanding his contribution to ‘Rock And Roll Music’. Paul also elects for a somewhat different bass pattern, dropping every fourth note until the outright “makes me want to cry”, giving a rather Latin feel to the rhythm section. The effect remains subtle as the bass is, as ever, very low in the mix.
Ringo makes his presence felt during the bridge when he switches to a much more open style in line with the fond memories articulated by the lyric. He plays the centre of the cymbals and adds a shaker, donating a nicely judged roll on the snare to come back to the straightforward four-in-the-bar verse. The minimal guitar break is doubled on the octave, played by Paul and George, giving the bare essential before Paul’s protesting return. The sound also returns briefly for the coda. The matched Casino electric guitars work well, and, as Paul told Melody Maker immediately after the session, the sound was one of the best that they had got on record, instrumentally.
The harmonic structure of the song is not particularly noteworthy, although the introduction establishes an interesting scenario with its D–F–G7–A7 (I–bIII–IV7–V7), a variant of that guitar fill after the first line of the verse in ‘Please Please Me’. This prepares us for the verse, which uses a repeating D–C–G–A (I–bVII–IV–V) structure, a variation on a four-chord progression that was not uncommon for the period. The slightly unusual bVII chord that Paul slots into the sequence is also used in ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’, in ‘Another Girl’ and, briefly, in ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’. The bridge shuns the bluesy mould of the verse, with Am–D7–G (v–I7–IV – although here we move briefly into the key of G: ii–V7–I, a similar move to that in the bridge of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’), which is repeated a tone higher before returning to the verse. The arching melody of the verse is also replaced by snaking chromatics, becoming wider and diatonic, until they peak on “makes me want to cry”.
‘The Night Before’ got its “first airing”, as host Denny Piercy put it, on the group’s last BBC show featuring specially recorded tracks, The Beatles Invite You To Take A Ticket To Ride, and so is the latest of their songs, chronologically, that they played for the BBC.
However, it may be significant that this is the one track in the film that is not played through in its entirety. In fact it is the only song in either A Hard Day’s Night or Help! that is incomplete. The group play the song on a windswept Salisbury Plain under the watchful eye of the army (actually 3 Division), who are protecting them from the clutches of evil Leo McKern. Eleanor Bron is providing a diversion with a tape recorder playing ‘She’s A Woman’, with which the song is intercut. The song concludes with the recording, rather than the group, being blown up.