The original version of The Beach Boys hit ‘Help Me, Rhonda’
Through their innovative approaches to composition and harmonies, The Beach Boys have gifted music with some of its most well-loved hits. From the dreamy ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ to, arguably, the greatest song of all time ‘God Only Knows’, their music contains an unparalleled warmth and layering that permeates even their demos.
One of their most beloved hits came in 1965 with ‘Help Me, Rhonda’, a chirpy track with contrastingly desperate lyrics of longing. Infrequent vocalist Al Jardine sets the scene in the opening with the words, “Well since she put me down I’ve been out doing in my head, I come in late at night and in the morning I just lay in bed,” before the song devolves into the harmonised refrain and relentless pleading of, “Help me Rhonda.”
Between guitars, harmonicas, and playful fades, the track is just as layered and innovative as any other Beach Boys hit, but the band recorded two versions of the track, which differed in several ways. As Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson recalled to Goldmine, the band altered the instrumentation for the album version and the single version.
“We did one with the ukulele and we did one with guitars,” he explained, “We chose to use the guitar version. I heard myself singing lead on it originally and then I turned it over to Al. I produced The Beach Boys so I decided who would sing lead. I just had a sixth sense about who should sing what songs. Some of the songs I wrote specifically for Mike, Al and Carl to sing.”
The song was only Al Jardine’s second outing as vocalist for the Beach Boys, which he deemed a “task” during a conversation with Forbes. “We had two goes at it,” he explained, “We did an album version – or a demo version I would call it. Sometimes you just have to work it out. And if it doesn’t work completely out, then you take another angle – another shot at it.”
For the reworked version, according to Jardine, Wilson also changed the bassline and introduced the unpredictable fades in the song. “And I’d say the second one turned out pretty good,” Jardine concluded, “because it went to number one for quite a while.” It certainly was pretty good. The track earned the band their second number one and remains one of their most well-known and well-loved releases.
The original version was featured on The Beach Boys Today!, while the more successful single version preempted Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). Though the more polished second version would earn the song huge success, there’s an endearing nature to the warmth and ease of the original, too, which sounds far more developed than a demo.
Listen to ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ below.
