Photo shoot of the “Help!” cover

In April 1965, during the filming of “Help!” at Twickenham Film Studios, photographer Robert Freeman took a portrait of The Beatles that would be used for the cover of the forthcoming “Help!” album. The group wore the same ski outfits seen in the Austrian sequences filmed in Obertauern and posed against a white background with their arms arranged in semaphore-inspired positions.

Freeman’s original intention was for Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to spell the word H-E-L-P in semaphore. However, he abandoned the idea because the correct positions looked awkward in the composition. Instead, he rearranged their arms into a more visually balanced arrangement, resulting in the letters “N-U-J-V”. For the American release, Capitol Records repositioned Ringo to second from the left, changing the sequence to “N-V-U-J”.

The Beatles were filming a sequence in Austria where they stood on a skyline in the snow waving their arms to a music playback. From this, I had the idea of semaphore spelling out the letters ‘HELP’. But when we came to do the shot, the arrangement of the arms with those letters didn’t look good. So we decided to improvise and ended up with the best graphic positioning of the arms.

The shot was set up at the film studio near London where the Beatles were finishing the last scenes. They stood on a specially constructed platform with a white painted background wearing the black hats, coats and capes from the film wardrobe. I used a larger format camera to get detail on their faces because of the distance at which the shot was taken.

It was a simple, graphic set-up but I think the cover would have had more impact with just the Beatles in the white space and no lettering at all. After all, they were at the height of their fame and easily recognisable. What they didn’t need was HELP!

Robert Freeman – From “The Beatles: A Private View” by Robert Freeman, 2003

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

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