FEATURE: The Word Is Love: The Beatles’ Rubber Soul at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Word Is Love 

The Beatles’ Rubber Soul at Fifty-Five

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I guess the biggest anniversary relating to The Beatles…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken Regan

this year was the fiftieth of Let It Be. There was a planned film/documentary that has been delayed to next year in addition to a book (tied to that project). I sort of wondered whether it was an error delaying the film, The Beatles: Get Back, as we have not had any remastered editions of Let It Be – it is the only album since Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band not received a fiftieth anniversary treatment. I think Rubber Soul is an album that requires a new edition/release. Released on 3rd December, 1965, Rubber Soul, to me, is the album where The Beatles hit a peak. They showed plenty of genius on Help! earlier in 1965, but they found a high that they sustained through the rest of their career - in more than one sense. The recording sessions took place in London over a four-week period beginning in October 1965. For the first time in their career, the band were able to record an album free of concert, radio or film commitments. Ahead of its fifty-fifth birthday, I wanted to highlight my favourite Beatles album. As a useful addition, check out Matt Everitt and Rob Manuel talking about the album and giving their feedback. By late-1965, The Beatles were thinking more about being a studio band, as I guess peak Beatlemania was starting to fade; the band at least were enjoying performing less and really needed a break.

The sort of maturity that The Beatles found on Help! was emphasised on Rubber Soul. It might have been confusing for some fans hearing songs that were a bit more grown-up and less reliant on the sort of themes that they explored earlier in their career. They were thinking less about putting out easy singles that were catchy and could be played live, and more about complete and richer songs that were drawing in new influences. From the sitar on Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) – which would play a big part later on -, to the Greek instrumentation of Girl, this was the band starting to experiment more with sound and genre. Every band and undergoes evolution, but for a group as successful and synonymous with these tight and electric singles, the fact that they went deeper and progressed their sound was brave and quite a departure! I think of Rubber Soul as a bridge from their earlier sound of 1962-1964 and the very studio-focused and experimental albums like Revolver (1966) onwards. Percussion comes much more to the fore on Rubber Soul. I love the fact that, on paper, the album was rushed, and the boys did not have as much time to germinate and create as they may have liked. The sheer quality of the album shows that, even when they were polishing up older songs, The Beatles were in a different league! I think 1965 was a very interesting year for The Beatles.

Maybe the stress and exhaustion of touring was starting to influence them more, and you can audibly hear them moving to a different phase. Despite the fact Rubber Soul is a maturation, the first notes of the first track, Drive My Car, is exuberant and thrilling. One of the band’s catchiest songs, you can sort of trace the track to Chicago House – Matt Everitt noted that, maybe, the movement started from this Beatles track. Aside from a weak ending on Run for Your Life, there are no weak spots on Rubber Soul. The Beatles released the single Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out on the same day as the album – 3rd December, 1965 - and it makes me wonder whether one of those tracks could have been included to end the album. I think Day Tripper would have made for a marvellous finale! The Beatles had an air of introspection and cynicism in earlier songs…but listen to McCartney tracks like You Won’t See Me, and I’m Looking Through You. Expressing the strains in his relationship with Jane Asher, it was a move away from the more fan-directed and positive songs. Lennon created a soulful and deeply emotional song in In My Life, whereas George Harrison’s protest and finger pointing can be heard on the Bob Dylan-influenced Think for Yourself. There is a lot of Dylan’s Folk influence through Rubber Soul, and you can hear a bit of other artists through the album.

The Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson named Rubber Soul is his favourite album and it led to this sort of competition where he tried to top Rubber Soul in 1966’s Pet Sounds. I think the biggest shift in terms of lyrics is writing about relationships in a less idealistic and more honest way. There is lust and passion on Girl, Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), and If I Needed Someone, but there is also tease, rejection and some accusation. Rubber Soul helped transform Pop in the 1965s and it was hugely transformative. The sophistication and serious artistic statements The Beatles were making through their songs was a revolution; so many other artists changed their sound and were directed by Rubber Soul! You only need to look at the album cover of Rubber Soul – and the fact The Beatles’ name is not on it – to see how serious they were and that they meant business! Although many name Revolver, and Abbey Road as the best Beatles albums, I think Rubber Soul is one of the most important and underrated. Rubber Soul is my favourite Beatles album and I think it was a real transformation and huge statement. The sort of lyrical diversity and experimentation they started on Rubber Soul pushed them forward and outwards - and the sheer consistency and quality of Rubber Soul is amazing considering how much they crammed into 1965! Not only is Ringo Starr’s percussion immense through the album but the vocal performances and harmonies are stunning.

McCartney started recording his bass solo on this album; one must give props to Starr and his drumming quality considering he was not drumming along to McCartney’s bass live! George Martin’s production and guidance is, as always, fabulous, and I can’t imagine the world was quite ready for an album like Rubber Soul on 3rd December, 1965! I will finish off shortly, but I want to bring in a couple of retrospective review for Rubber Soul. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:

While the Beatles still largely stuck to love songs on Rubber Soul, the lyrics represented a quantum leap in terms of thoughtfulness, maturity, and complex ambiguities. Musically, too, it was a substantial leap forward, with intricate folk-rock arrangements that reflected the increasing influence of Dylan and the Byrds. The group and George Martin were also beginning to expand the conventional instrumental parameters of the rock group, using a sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," Greek-like guitar lines on "Michelle" and "Girl," fuzz bass on "Think for Yourself," and a piano made to sound like a harpsichord on the instrumental break of "In My Life." While John and Paul were beginning to carve separate songwriting identities at this point, the album is full of great tunes, from "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" and "Michelle" to "Girl," "I'm Looking Through You," "You Won't See Me," "Drive My Car," and "Nowhere Man" (the last of which was the first Beatle song to move beyond romantic themes entirely). George Harrison was also developing into a fine songwriter with his two contributions, "Think for Yourself" and the Byrds-ish "If I Needed Someone”.

I want to finish with a feature Rolling Stone put out five years ago that, among other thing, assesses how The Beatles portrayed women on Rubber Soul and what the sessions were like. Before then, I want to source from Pitchfork’s review:

Marijuana's effect on the group is most heavily audible on Rubber Soul. (By the time of their next album, Revolver, three-fourths of the group had been turned on to LSD, and their music was headed somewhere else entirely.) With its patient pace and languid tones, Rubber Soul is an altogether much more mellow record than anything the Beatles had done before, or would do again. It's a fitting product from a quartet just beginning to explore their inner selves on record.

Lennon, in particular, continued his more introspective and often critical songwriting, penning songs of romance gone wrong or personal doubt and taking a major step forward as a lyricist. Besting his self-critical "I'm a Loser" with "Nowhere Man" was an accomplishment, and the faraway, dreamy "Girl" was arguably his most musically mature song to date. Lennon's strides were most evident, however, on "Norwegian Wood", an economical and ambiguous story-song highlighted by Harrison's first dabbling with the Indian sitar, and the mature, almost fatalistic heart-tug of "In My Life", which displayed a remarkably calm and peaceful attitude toward not only one's past and present, but their future and the inevitability of death.

Considering Harrison's contributions and Lennon's sharp growth, McCartney-- fresh from the success of "Yesterday"-- oddly comes off third-string on Rubber Soul. His most lasting contributions-- the Gallic "Michelle" (which began life as a piss-take, and went on to inspire the Teutonic swing and sway of Lennon's "Girl"), the gentle rocker "I'm Looking Through You", and the grinning "Drive My Car" are relatively minor compared to Lennon's masterstrokes. McCartney did join his bandmate in embracing relationship songs about miscommunication, not seeing eye-to-eye, and heartbreak, but it wouldn't be until 1966 that he took his next great artistic leap, doing so as both a storyteller and, even more so, a composer”.

The Summer of Love occurred in 1967 but, even in 1965, there was an air of togetherness and love that was reflected in so much Pop at the time. It must have been surprising for Beatles fans to hear some more negative aspects on songs like Run for Your Life and Think for Yourself. That said, the women illustrated on Rubber Soul are fascinating. Rolling Stone talked about that aspect when they looked back at the album in 2015. They also mentioned the studio dynamics and mood at the time:

If there’s a theme, it’s curiosity, the most Beatlesque of emotions, and specifically it’s curiosity about women, the most Beatlesque of mysteries to be curious about. Rubber Soul has the coolest girls of any Beatles record. “Girl,” “I’m Looking Through You,” “If I Needed Someone” — these are complex and baffling females, much like the ones the Beatles ended up with in real life. No happy romantic endings here, with the notable exception of “In My Life” — but even when the girls are way ahead of them, the boys spend the album straining to keep up. Baby, you’ve changed.

Did anyone before Rubber Soul sing about female characters like this? No, they didn’t. For one thing, these women have jobs, and this is 1965. The L.A. scenester who hires Paul as her driver, the independent woman too busy with her career to return his phone calls, the Chelsea girl who gets up early for work in the morning, even though she’s got John sleeping in her bathtub. (You’d think she could call in sick for that.) In late 1965, my mom, an eighth-grade public-school teacher in Massachusetts, got fired for getting pregnant (with me), because that’s how things worked back then. The very idea of women having careers was a social controversy. But for the world’s biggest pop stars, it was nothing to get hung about.

The Rubber Soul woman stays up late drinking wine on her rug after midnight, until it’s time for bed. She speaks languages he can’t translate. (“I love you” in French is just “je t’aime.” It’s not that hard.) She’s not impressed by the Beatle charm — when you say she’s looking good, she acts as if it’s understood. She’s cool. She makes the Rubber Soul man feel like a real nowhere boy. Yet even the sad songs here are funny. (Including the self-parodic machismo of “Run for Your Life,” a song Nancy Sinatra turned into a gangsta classic.) I love the moment in “Wait” when Paul’s girl asks point blank if he’s been faithful on the road. “I’ve been good/As good as I can be” — riiiiiight. “Wait” is the song that totally explains why Paul was Bill Clinton’s favorite Beatle.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in Paris in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: Jean-Marie Périer 

Given the album’s impact over the past 50 years, it’s startling to note how fast and frantic the sessions were. The Beatles didn’t go into the studio with a mystic crystal vision to express — they went in with a deadline. They had to supply product for the 1965 Christmas season, which meant crunching it out in four frenzied weeks, from October 12th to November 12th. So they holed up in Abbey Road around the clock, pouring out music as fast as they could, holding nothing back. They were willing to try any idea, whether it turned out brilliantly (the sitar, the harmonium) or not (the six-minute R&B instrumental jam, which they wisely axed). They wrote seven of the songs in one week.

You can hear the team spirit behind the album in the studio banter from the late-night “Think For Yourself” sessions of November 8th. John, Paul and George stand around the microphone, rehearsing three-part harmonies, but laughing too hard to get it right. John, holding a guitar, stumbles on the words. “OK, I think I might have it now,” he announces. “I get something in me head, you know, and all the walls of Rome couldn’t stop me!” All three keep up a nonstop stream of chatter. John slips into a mock-preacher voice. “It’s Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who gave his only begotten bread to live and die on!” Paul and George get in his face, yelling “Why such fury? What is this wrath that beholds you?” They gasp with laughter until John mutters, “I can’t go on, I really can’t. Come on, let’s do this bleedin’ record.” They try another take. They don’t get this one right either”.

On Thursday (3rd December), one of The Beatles’ finest and most influential albums turns fifty-five. Maybe we will get an anniversary release on its sixtieth - but do go and get the original album if you do not own it already! Rubber Soul was a pivotal and mature album that not only progressed The Beatles but it reverberated through music and popular culture. It sounds engrossing and captivating after all of these years. From the beautiful harmonies on The Word, through to McCartney’s schoolboy lust on Michelle, and Lennon’s opus, In My Life, there is so much variation and quality right through the album. Rubber Soul, undoubtedly, remains this hugely important masterpiece whose power…

WILL never diminish.