By the time The Beatles got to making their later albums, it was about more than just recording a good song. That was part of their early days being a glorified garage band, and the next half of their career was about creating tracks from the ground up and making audio marvels that no one else was thinking of. There tends to be a specific middle period where fans can see them transitioning, but during the making of Help!, Paul McCartney believed one of the best recordings from that era came on ‘The Night Before’.

Compared to their other feature film, A Hard Day’s Night, though, the directors should have been glad that they managed to get something usable out of Help! The loveable Liverpool lads were far from happy with the constant barrage of attention, and despite having a decent spoof of James Bond as the plotline, the group would have easily rather been anywhere but on set forcing smiles for the camera.

But on the album, they were already starting to take risks. Whereas Beatles for Sale was practically The Beatles by numbers, songs like ‘Help!’ and ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ took a lot more risks than before, with the latter especially foreshadowing John Lennon’s move towards folksy material on Rubber Soul one album later.

While McCartney’s most known from this record will always be ‘Yesterday’, ‘The Night Before’ has much more going for it sonically. Even though they had a reputation as a pop group, there’s a certain bluesy flair to this tune that feels leftover from the sessions for their single ‘She’s A Woman’, even inheriting McCartney’s bluesy delivery when working out the melody for the verse.

If anything, adding the harmonies makes it sound closer to a gritty soul song. There was no way that The Beatles could have pulled off that kind of sound as well, but if put in the hands of someone like Otis Redding, ‘The Night Before’ has the potential to become a real slap in the face from this man who was taken for a fool.