On This Day in 1965, The Beatles Were at No. 1 With What John Lennon Called One of the Few “True” Songs He Ever Wrote

On this day (August 5) in 1965, The Beatles topped the Official UK Singles Chart with “Help!”. It stayed at the top of the chart for three weeks and was their eighth consecutive No. 1 in the UK. More than that, John Lennon would later reveal that it was one of his favorite songs he wrote for the band because it was true and personal for him.

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Lennon wrote “Help!” with some help from Paul McCartney, and it became the title song of their 1965 movie and its soundtrack album. The Beatles released it as a single on July 23, and it quickly became an international hit.

[RELATED: On This Day 1966, The Beatles Started a Five-Week Run at No. 1 with a Controversial Album Not Released in Their Home Country]

“Help!” was their eighth consecutive No. 1 in their home country, topping the chart there for three weeks. It also spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 in the United States and was the fourth of six consecutive chart-topping singles in the United States. It saw similar success in Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Hong Kong.

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Many listeners miss the meaning of “Help!” because it’s an uptempo song. However, John Lennon later admitted that it was a cry for help.

“The few true songs I ever wrote were like ‘Help!’ and ‘Strawberry Fields.’ I can’t think of them all offhand. They were the ones I always considered my best songs,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971. “They were the ones I really wrote from experience and not projecting myself into a situation and writing a nice story about it. I always found that phony, but I’d find occasion to do it because I’d be so hung up, I couldn’t even think about myself,” he explained.

Lennon talked about the song again in a 1980 interview with Playboy. “When ‘Help!’ came out in ’65, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it’s just a fast rock and roll song. I didn’t realize it at the time. I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie,” he recalled. “But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. It was my fat Elvis period,” he added. “The Beatles thing had just gone beyond comprehension.”

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