The Beatles: Rubber Soul

The Beatles: Rubber Soul

1965

Parlophone Records

Format I Own it on:  Vinyl (U.S. Version) & Compact Disc (UK Version)

Track Listing: 1.  Drive My Car  2..Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)  3. You Won't See Me   4. Nowhere Man   5. Think for Yourself  6. The Word    7. Michelle    8. What Goes On  9.  Girl  10. I'm Looking Through You   11.  In My Life  12.  Wait  13.  If I Needed Someone  14. Run for Your Life  

Alright...It's the end of an era...The final installment of the cassette tape we found that contains a couple of random episodes of "The Beatle Years" radio show from 1998...

Okay on to Rubber Soul...

Check it out! The Beatles' first truly great album...Truly great in the sense that your record collection isn't complete without it...Truly great in the sense that when you're compiling your list of the 10 greatest albums of all time, it's totally justified if you put it there, and no one's going to argue...To illustrate my point, here is my list of the 10 greatest albums ever...


 .

1. Bruce Willis: The Return of Bruno

 2. The Big F: Is



3. Sublime With Rome: Yours Truly



4. The Beatles: Rubber Soul

5. Bluegrass Tribute to Hootie & the Blowfish 



6. Vanilla Ice: Extremely Live

7. Tina Yothers: Over & Over



 8. Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles

9. Macho Man Randy Savage: Be a Man

 

10. Riot: Fire Down Under

See? Fits right in...

 The Beatles present us with a folksy pop masterpiece. Their recent Dylan influence has really paid off.! The lyrics are no longer trivial; they're more abstract and evocative...A year earlier it would be inconceivable to look at the back cover of a Beatles album and see a song title like "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown.)" I mean, what does that mean exactly? Who cares....It sounds awesome...and that's the point...It's no longer just about songs...They also put a great deal of thought into the sound and feel of the record, which leads to a greater sense of experimentation...


The aforementioned tone-folk"Norwegian Wood" gives us pop's first sitar performance...Is it a masterful Ravi Shankar-level performance? No, but again, it doesn't matter...It gives the song just the right enigmatic quality.

Along with the eastern experimentalism, we also get the french pop of "Michelle." It stands out because it's not even necessarily a rock song...It feels like they're pushing themselves to see just how far their sound can stretch, and surprisingly, it always ends up still sounding like the Beatles...The music world becomes wide open at this point....

Toss in moves like the sped-up baroque piano solo that magically becomes a harpsichord (something that was completely impossible to perform live)  and the  horizons become even wider...Pop officially becomes art... To complete this transformation, they would have to re-write the rules on what a rock band was and completely forgo live performances entirely, but they hadn't quite reached that point yet....but they're getting close! And best of all  is the cover songs are completely gone and would never return again!  (Actually, now that I think of it, that's not quite true..."Maggie Mae" from "Let it Be" is a cover, I guess...)

 This is the album cover of the US version...Hey! Wait! It's the same! I mean..the logo is a little yellower but are the Americans finally wising up and not altering near-perfect art?

Nope...  I also have the Vinyl U.S. version, which cuts off four tracks ("What Goes On," "Drive My Car," "If I Needed Someone" and  "Nowhere Man") and replaces these with two "Help!" tracks that actually fit in quite well, surprisingly. If anything they heighten the acoustic feel of the album and give us a fairly interesting alternate album...Some of the tracks are a little different too..."I've Just Seen a Face" has a couple of flubs before it starts, which gives it an off-the-cuff feel, and  "The Word" has different vocals...So I do actually play the US version from time to time, just for a change of pace..

All in all, we get to hear the Beatles finally becoming the world's undisputed greatest band, and it starts a legendary run of great albums that no one has topped to this day...So let's check out "I'm Looking Through You" by the Beatles...Enjoy...