1+ - part two

Richard Lester, director of both A Hard Day's Night and Help!, has been retroactively credited as being the father of MTV, based on his creative staging for the songs written by the Beatles for those films.  Band manager Brian Epstein certainly recognized the power of those images, with the running, jumping and standing still version of Can't Buy Me Love serving as the prime example.  He also realized that the punishing schedule which the boys had somehow managed to survive for almost three full years could not be maintained.  Yet each new single still had to be promoted worldwide to achieve maximum success.  A new way of doing business needed to be devised.

To that end, a day was set aside on November 25th, 1965, for an ingenious project.  Promotional videos would be shot on various sets at Twickenham Film Studios for distribution to television outlets around the world.  The latest release, the double A-sided single Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out, was the most important, of course, but the previous three singles would get their own videos, as well.   All in all, ten videos were shot on this date, with eight of them appearing on this collection.  I have already covered one version of I Feel Fine in my last entry.

Ticket to Ride - Lester's sequence for this song in Help!, featuring the Beatles skiing in Austria, rivals that for Can't Buy Me Love in the first movie for sheer inventiveness.  Rather than getting permission from United Artists to use that clip, this simple video version was shot instead, showing the boys wearing winter coats before a backdrop of huge tickets as pictured above.  Ringo goofs around playing the lopsided drum pattern from the record.  And John has forgotten where his extraneous "yeahs," "ohs" and "ahs" were, shooting a look at Paul and laughing every time he gets them wrong.

Help! - For this video, the boys sit astride a plank between two sawhorses, with John in front.  The others poke their heads from side to side to be seen, bouncing up and down during each refrain.  Ringo sits at the back holding an umbrella, which he puts to good use when a heavy fake snow begins to fall near the end of the song, definitely to the surprise of George.

Yesterday - We take a break from the promotional videos for this clip from the Ed Sullivan Show.  George introduces this song, not yet known to American audiences, as the others step aside and Paul takes up an acoustic guitar.  The lights come down low to isolate him as he sings along to three live violinists and a backing track.  The screaming fans soon realize they need to quiet down and just listen to this brilliant number.

Day Tripper - Back to Twickenham for the first of three versions of this great rocker.  John and Paul share one of three risers in front of the type of simple backdrop used on many TV shows of the era.  Except for Ringo swinging his elbows whenever he is not playing, they play this one straight for a change.  A tinsel curtain closes near the camera at the end of the number.

We Can Work It Out - Three videos were also shot for this song, with this first one using the same set as Day Tripper.  John sits at a harmonium on one of the risers, and he cannot resist mugging for the camera early on, as Paul sings the verse aware that John is up to something.  George becomes bored and sits on the front of Ringo's drum riser during the second bridge.  The notes that John plays on the keyboard at the end of the number are surely not those heard on the record.

Paperback Writer - Michael Lindsey-Hogg directed the color promotional film for this spring 1966 single.  He shoots the band in the lush garden of Chiswick House, with each member sporting tinted sunglasses at times.  While the others have guitars to occasionally mime playing the song, Ringo sits by without even a pair of drumsticks in his hands.  

Yellow Submarine - Neither film nor video was shot at the time for the double A-sided single that featured songs from the August 1966 album Revolver.  For this collection, footage from the 1968 animated film was assembled, most of it featuring scenes from the submarine's journey to Pepperland.  There is one shot of the Sgt. Pepper drumhead and a Blue Meanie at the moment that the brass band is heard in the song.

Eleanor Rigby - Like Can't Buy Me Love and Ticket to Ride in the earlier films, Eleanor Rigby is the brilliant standalone sequence in the Yellow Submarine film, and there was simply no better way to represent this song visually for this collection than to include that original sequence.  The animators combined black and white photographs of people and places (mostly brick) with splashes of color to create a bleak and lonely urban landscape mirroring the lives of the characters in McCartney's lyrics.  Even the submarine does not really brighten up this world as it wanders through it.  A stunning piece, then and now.