This is the best Beatles album – but it’s close.
Again, it’s a ‘turning point’ album, and for me, those are always the best. The wide angle ‘fish-eye’ lens shot of them presages the oncoming psychedelia that they led, but that is only the very start.
It’s illuminating that George Harrison, the lead guitarist, said that Rubber Soul and Revolver were a 1965/66 blur. This was around the time that The Beatles were forced to stop touring due to unstoppable hysteria and fan mayhem. I hesitate to say this, but I will. An actual issue for venue staff was clearing the urine off the seats; such was the frenetic and uncontrolled release of emotion, predominantly female of course. Was this a pent up release following the ‘50s straight-laced stifling convention? It was the projection of unrestrained optimism and possibility onto four talented lads from Liverpool. Here were four funny, charismatic and musically gifted scousers. The USA had never seen it’s like before – and they were spellbound. In those days, just visiting America was a badge of adventurous honour for Brits. I remember travelling down the Florida coast in ‘79 and being in thrall to McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy’s drive-throughs along the freeway. Never mind seeing an ‘X’ rated Jaws in a drive-in – a long way from the Edgware Odeon or the Harrow Weald Granada let me tell you!
So there was a reciprocal sharing of British and American culture, so so different during the ‘60s and on into the ‘70s than the differences appear now.
Rubber Soul was a 1965 album, a follow-up to the Help soundtrack. Many critics posit that the Help album was The Beatles’ weakest album. I completely agree. And nobody was prepared for the inventiveness and musicality of Rubber Soul.
Much of this competitiveness and one-upmanship comes from McCartney, the most driven and most talented musician of all. But he was not the leader. The soul of The Beatles was John Lennon, his perfect foil – and this is as much a Lennon album as a McCartney album; probably the last in which Lennon’s musicality and melodic inventiveness truly shine. He was soon back to his rock n roll roots and resenting McCartney’s stylistic experimentation.
Rubber Soul is the album that introduces more traditional musical genres into rock music than any other album in history. No other album before or since comes close. People point out that The Beatles were aping the jangly guitar sound that The Byrds tagged on to Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man. That’s true, but as usual, the Beatles didn’t just surpass the competition, they obliterated it – and then set the bar so high that they looked over other bands from a creative Mount Olympus. Anyone who says they don’t like The Beatles is basically saying that they don’t like rock music. Either that, or they’re stuck in 1963 ‘She Loves You’ moptop mode and haven’t a clue about 1964, 1966, 1968, 1970. This is a controversial statement but I strongly believe it true.
The opener is ‘Drive My Car’. The guitar solo is fluid and easy. George Harrison was a tasteful guitarist who never played too much. He struggled to get a songwriting look-in, was given a track an album to write, yet would have been a superstar solo creative force in his own right, except he had the misfortune to be the understudy of the greatest songwriting partnership of all time. On Rubber Soul he wrote ‘Think For Yourself’, a stepping stone track which shows his developing harmonic awareness. Harrison later proves his songwriting prowess to stunning effect with ‘Something’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ and the biggest selling solo album following The Beatles dissolution, ‘All Things Must Pass’. He wrote ‘Taxman’ with its extraordinary guitar solo, which opened their next album Revolver.
‘Drive My Car’ is a hard-edged bluesy number with a stunning solo using revolutionary backwards guitar motifs. The likes of Oasis, Blur and countless other Britpop acts copied the Taxman and Drive My Car template. The Jam did it shamelessly on their late ‘70s single ‘Start’. Noel Gallagher was even more brazen in his ripping off of Beatles motifs, riffs and general attitude. The Stone Roses were one of the more musically successful and convincing bands of the late eighties who were strongly influenced by The Beatles. They took these ideas and make them their own on their self-titled debut.
Only avant-garde composers like Stockhausen, Cage and Boulez had used backward tape loops and ‘musique concrète’ techniques before, but George Martin and The Beatles introduced them into pop music. George’s solo on Revolver’s ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ takes this onto a fresher yet more experimental plateau.
Then there follows ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Nowhere Man’. Any decent vocalist knows how difficult it is to sustain three-part-harmony with two others over a minute, let alone three. But ‘Nowhere Man’ sounds effortless – and The Beatles could pull it off live too. They proved it in their final 1966 gigs, even though they could barely hear themselves play. Remember that the Stones had one lead singer – and the blues dominated their sound. The Beatles could do the blues easily – and they had not one but three lead singers.
Following all of this is ‘Norwegian Wood’. It’s so lyrically inventive and unexpected. The Beatles were now translating their personal flings and relationships into early art-rock experimentation. So typically Lennon. His lyrics sometimes make even Spike Milligan’s monologues and short stories seem pedestrian.
Next is ‘Michelle’, a 1965 pop song in the tradition of French chanson. Absolutely unheard of, but a testament to McCartney’s effortless flitting from genre to genre as well as his melodic and harmonic invention.
On a personal level, I remember playing this song in French bars, restaurants and later clubs in the Côte d’Azur, both as a kid and later into my twenties. The French adore this kind of stuff; a complement to include French lyrics onto ‘Le rock anglaise’. It appeals to that ‘amour’ romantic wistfulness that they hold so dear to their hearts. Of course the Beatles were singing their hits in different languages before this anyway. ‘Sie Liebt Dich’ (She Loves You), was sung in German two years earlier
All of this is what happens when four exceptionally talented and charismatic musicians come together at the right place, at the right time.
‘Girl’ is another example of slowly delivered three part harmonies. It’s a beautiful melody, and this album represents the closing periods when Lennon and McCartney would write together. In fact about half the songs were written by one or the other by their own accounts. However the cumulative creative fusion still shines through.
‘In My Life’ is possibly one of the most affecting and moving Beatles songs of all. It’s a Lennon song and you can hear him openly sharing his feelings about his tragic past. His mother Julia being run over in front of his eyes, his kindred art school soulmate Stuart Sutcliffe dying in his early twenties in Hamburg where The Beatles honed their craft in seedy Reeperbahn strip joints.
Paul McCartney, as he has openly admitted, was in many ways very lucky. He had a stable upbringing. A musician father and a loving doting mother Mary who died when Paul was 14 (thanks for that Fred Fact from Alastair Romanes!) She was the ‘Mother Mary’ in the song ‘Let It Be’.
John Lennon had anything but an easy adolescence. I believe that it is through their radically different upbringings and circumstances that they bonded.
Musically, ‘In My Life’ contains a harpsichord solo, a baroque ground-bass accompaniment that is pulled off elegantly. Much of this orchestration is thanks to producer George Martin’s classical sensibility. He brings it to the fore in Revolver’s ‘Eleanor Rigby’ string quartet accompaniment.
The remaining four tracks remind me of the later Revolver’s overarching vibe; penetrating melodic rock music that was to presage the most groundbreaking album of them all, Seargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The public couldn’t understand what had happened to The Beatles. Why the delay in releasing a new record? Why over seven months between Revolver and Pepper? Nowadays, the likes of Coldplay are considered prolific when they release an album every two years. The Beatles broke ground consistently every six months.
This is my favourite Beatles album because never did a band compose such timeless music so convincingly. There will never be another band to touch them. Not in the past nor the present nor the future. Enthralled listeners a hundred years on will attest to this – of that I’ve no doubt