Album of the Day — August 7
The Beatles — Revolver
The Beatles — Revolver
07.August.2020
The Beatles
Revolver
1966
What can anyone honestly say at this point that may shed new light on anything The Beatles recorded?
They are genuinely ground zero for all modern pop and rock music …and I’m not even that much of a Beatles fan. The Beatles are, without a doubt, the single most important and influential band in music history.
During just seven years, they recorded 13 albums of original music. And with each new album came a tectonic shift in artistic growth. Some artists go their entire career and don’t record 13 albums … and most only dream about the artistry these four men were able to harness.
Revolver, their seventh studio album, marks just about the midway point in their career. What makes Revolver so interesting is that it is the record just before Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — the album many consider to be the gold standard in rock music.
It’s here on Revolver that you can begin to hear how their experimentation with drugs, specifically LSD, was starting to weave its way into their music. It’s on Sgt. Pepper that particular influence would peak.
Also noteworthy is that Revolver is the band’s final recording after they retired from live performances. By 1966, as The Beatles toured in support of Rubber Soul, they grew tired of the screaming adoration of their fans drowning out their live performances.
So, after exploring the studio and its technology on Rubber Soul and their self-imposed retirement from live performing, it freed the band up to begin to use the studio more as a creative tool.
In a way, it’s the studio that is the fabled fifth Beatle.
The import of the studio is verified by the engineer of Revolver — then just 19! — Geoff Emerick. In his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles, Emerick said that “no preproduction or rehearsal process took place for Revolver; instead, the band used the studio to create each song from what was often just an outline of a composition.”
While Sgt. Pepper gets all the glory, the dirty secret is that Revolver is the better album.
In both the 1998 and 2000 editions of the All-Time Top 1000 Albums, Revolver ranked #1. And in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it ranked #3.
The Songs:
Taxman — the first instance of The Beatles addressing topical concerns. Given the attitude of the song, it could be the precursor to punk.
Eleanor Rigby — a sorrowful and lonely song. More interesting is that NO Beatle played on the song. Producer George Martin arranged it for a string octet.
I’m Only Sleeping — George Harrison’s backward, Indian-style guitar solo played in reverse order during the recording, which George Martin then reversed the tape and dubbed it into the track.
Love You Too — some consider this song as “the first conscious attempt in pop to emulate a non-Western form of music in structure and instrumentation.”
Here, There and Everywhere — a song that continues the artistic back and forth between the band and Beach Boy architect Brian Wilson. The Beach Boy hit “God Only Knows,” off Pet Sounds, was inspired after Wilson listened to Rubber Soul, and “Here, There and Everywhere” is in response to “God Only Knows.”
Yellow Submarine — LSD and Ringo, that’s about all you need to know.
She Said, She Said — drawing inspiration from an LSD trip with Peter Fonda in 1965 in which he said “I know what it’s like to be dead” because he had flat-lined as a child during an operation.
Good Day Sunshine — a bit of Vaudville, a bit of ragtime and a bit of the Loving Spoonful.
And Your Bird Can Sing — according to author Jonathan Gould, this song is “directed at Frank Sinatra after Lennon had read a hagiographic article on the singer, in Esquire magazine, in which Sinatra was lauded as ‘the fully emancipated male … the man who can have anything he wants’”.
For No One — this song was inspired by McCartney’s relationship with actress Jane Asher, who was by all accounts a someone. This song is an example of how he tended to eschew the group dynamic when recording his songs, a trend that would prove unpopular with his bandmates in later years.
Doctor Robert — the song celebrates a New York physician known for dispensing amphetamine injections to his patients …Dr. Spaceman perhaps?
I Want To Tell You — Harrison said he wrote the song about thoughts that he found hard to express in words. Harrison’s stammering guitar riff, combined with the dissonance employed in the song’s melody, helps convey the difficulties of achieving meaningful communication.
Got To Get You Into My Life — a derivative of the famous Motown sound. Even though thought to be a love song, McCartney described the lyric as an homage to weed. “like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret.”
Tomorrow Never Knows — more LSD influenced music.
“I’m Only Sleeping,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Doctor Robert” were tracks omitted from Capitol’s version of Revolver. This album would prove to be the last time that Capitol issued different versions of Beatle records for the UK and North American markets.
Because of the religious references in “Eleanor Rigby” Capitol pushed “Yellow Submarine” as the single in the US.
Even with that misstep, Revolver still sold well over a million copies upon its release and was #1 on the Billboard album chart for six weeks.
CRITICS:
At the time, writer Jules Siegel, likened Revolver to works by John Donne, Milton, and Shakespeare, saying that the band’s lyrics would provide the basis for scholarly analysis well into the future.
In February 1967, Hit Parader magazine declared: “Revolver represents the pinnacle of pop music. No group has been as consistently creative as the Beatles, though the Lovin’ Spoonful and Beach Boys are coming closer all the time … Rather than analyze the music, we just suggest that you listen to Revolver three or four times a day.”
Even Robert Christgau liked it: Revolver was “twice as good and four times as startling as Rubber Soul, with sound effects, Oriental drones, jazz bands, transcendentalist lyrics, all kinds of rhythmic and harmonic surprises, and a filter that made John Lennon sound like God singing through a foghorn.”
Rob Sheffield wrote: “Revolver found the Beatles “at the peak of their powers, competing with one another because nobody else could touch them”; he described it as “the best album the Beatles ever made, which means the best album by anybody.”
I can’t add too much more to the conversation about this album. For my money, I agree with Rob Sheffield; this is the world’s best band “at the peak of their powers” …and again, and I’m not even that big of a fan of The Beatles.
If you haven’t heard Revolver, just fuckin listen to it already.