Ask most people to name their all time favourite Beatles album, and they would doubtless come up with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, citing it for its innovation, inventiveness and experimentation and its startling attempt to push against what were then termed the boundaries of what was possible.
Push a bit more and you may get either 1968's double White Album, chronicling the disintegration of the Lennon-McCartney writing partnership as they went their separate ways, or alternatively 1965's Rubber Soul, often cited as the ultimate statement of the Fab Four's early years, before they discovered drugs and the Maharishi.
However, for my money they've all got it wrong, with Sgt Pepper a happy go lucky and whimsical pop album with one masterpiece in A Day In The Life and many twee fillers, while the White Album is a bloated, wandering, unfocused mish mash of styles. Rubber Soul was certainly the sound of a band at the peak of its creativity, performing finely honed and powerful rock classics, but there is an album which eclipses even that achievement and it's the subject of tonight's pourings from the pen of dave27...
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Gloriously monochromatic and self parodyingly arty in style, the black and white front cover (a Grammy Award winner, by Klaus Voormann, later a bass player on Lennon's solo work) is like a scrapbook of Beatles moments, while the back with John, Ringo, George and Paul all sporting shades, again in black and white - classically simple presentation of the biggest band in the world - this is the world of the Beatles and their 1966 epic album, Revolver.
It's shockingly simplistic and quite stylistically perfect for such immense pop talents and coupled with the ancient Parlophone label, clearly roots this work in a very different age, a time when eight track recordings were very, very new and experimental, when it was much more usual for a band to cut a track in one, two or at most three takes, live, right then and there in the studio.
But the Beatles and their regular director, producer George Martin, stepped way beyond all those barriers and boundaries and created a work of genuine achievement, a veritable pop meisterwork.
There's
little point me trying to make you step enthusiastically into my camp here because unless you've already heard this album you won't appreciate the class on show. However, I'd just point out that Eleanor Rigby, Here There And Everywhere, Good Day Sunshine and Got To Get You Into My Life are well known tracks which are mere examples of some of the fine songs on parade here. You may also get the bizarrely awful and childlike anthem Yellow Submarine, sung amateurishly as always by good old Ringo, but that's a rare aberration on an otherwise uniformly excellent collection.
She Said She Said, I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing, For No One and Tomorrow Never Knows are excellent and Taxman was ripped off by Paul Weller more than a decade later for a single by The Jam. It's a wonderful song, rooted deep in the Sixties with its references to the leaders of the main political parties of the time, and is typical of the fare on offer here, all stark four piece efforts which somehow rise above that base to become something somehow much more, truly magnificent.
George Harrison gets a couple of early credits with Love You To and I Want To Tell You as well as the standout Taxman, and Ringo's prattling on about the band being all aboard, but for the vast majority of the time this is the Lennon and McCartney act, showcasing all their artistry for the entire world to see and admire.
It's a relatively slow paced set, with the string soaked Eleanor Rigby possibly the pick of the bunch, with its soulful dissection of the lives of all the lonely people, where do they all come from, all the lonely people, where do they all belong. This kind of social commentary could have been straight out of Dickens, with its detached observation and cool commentary - to have got more deeply involved in the subject matter would have rendered things a bit mushy.
To be fair to the rest of the band's output, they'd been building to this for quite some time. Help in 1965 contained masterpieces in the title track, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and the superb Yesterday, while Rubber Soul could boast Nowhere Man, Norwegian Wood, Drive My Car and Michelle, while singles like Day Tripper and Paperback Writer were strong evidence of a new direction for a group which had previously claimed I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
The album was released on 5 August 1966, at a time when the Beatles were going through quite difficult times. Their personal lives were beginning to take increasingly divergent paths as the time they had to themselves between group commitments began to stretch out.
During that summer they had toured Germany and the Far East before a three week, 14 city tour of the US, by the end of which they were confirmed as the most popular, most creative group ever - and finished as a live act. The American tour had been overshadowed by the threat of violence when religious fanatics had begun burning Beatles records after John Lennon had told London journalist Maureen Cleave in an Evening Standard interview that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ.
Their move away from live work allowed them to concentrate on perfecting their studio art and Sgt Pepper was the first example of that approach. Revolver was in many ways then the end of the first successful part of the band's career, a veritable watershed and historically vital even if it wasn't as good artistically as it actually is.
I'd strongly, strongly advise you to check out this wonderful piece of rock art - you'll love it...
PS In September 2000, Revolver was listed the best album of all time in the book, 'Virgin All Time Top 1,000 Albums,' which compiled more than 200,000 votes cast by record buyers, music enthusiasts and journalists.
1. Taxman {Harrison/Lennon} (2:39) Recorded: April 20, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England but remade April 21, 1966 with overdubbing on April 22, 1966 and May 16, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - tambourine, background vocal Paul McCartney - bass guitar, lead guitar, background vocal George Harrison - double-tracked lead vocal, staccato guitar Ringo Starr - drums 2. Eleanor Rigby {McCartney/Lennon} (2:08) Recorded: April 28, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with vocals overdubbed April 29, 1966 and another McCartney vocal added June 6, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - harmony vocal Paul McCartney - double-tracked lead vocal George Harrison - harmony vocal session musicians - four violins, two violas, two cellos 3. Love You To {Harrison} (3:01) Recorded: April 11, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added April 13, 1966 Instrumentation: George Harrison - double-tracked lead vocal, sitar, tambourine Anil Bhagwat - tabla session musicians - other Indian instruments 4. Here, There And Everywhere {McCartney} (2:26) Recorded: June 14, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added June 16-17, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - background vocal Paul McCartney - double-tracked lead vocal, bass guitar, background vocal George Harrison - lead guitar, background vocal Ringo Starr - drums 5. Yellow Submarine {McCartney/Lennon} (2:41) Recorded: May 26, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with special effects overdubbed June 1, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - acoustic guitar, background vocal, blowing bubbles through a straw Paul McCartney - bass guitar, background vocal George Harrison - tambourine, background vocal, swirling water in a bucket Ringo Starr - lead vocal, drums Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, George Martin, Alf, Geoff Emerick, Patti Harrison and studio staff - chorus on fadeout session musicians - brass band 6. She Said She Said {Lennon} (2:37) Recorded: June 21, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England Instrumentation: John Lennon - lead vocal, rhythm guitar, Hammond organ, harmony vocal Paul McCartney - bass guitar George Harrison - lead guitar Ringo Starr - drums 7. Good Day Sunshine {McCartney} (2:10) Recorded: June 8, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added June 9, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - harmony vocal Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar George Harrison - harmony vocal Ringo Starr - drums George Martin - piano 8. For No One {McCartney} (2:02) Recorded: May 9, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with the vocal overdubbed May 16, 1966 and the French horn solo overdubbed May 19, 1966 Instrumentation: Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar, piano Ringo Starr - drums, tambourine Alan Civil - French horn 9. I Want To Tell You {Harrison} (2:30) Recorded: June 2, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with bass guitar overdubbed June 3, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - tambourine, harmony vocal, hand-claps Paul McCartney - bass guitar, piano, harmony vocal, hand-claps George Harrison - double-tracked lead vocal, lead guitar, hand-claps Ringo Starr - drums, maracas 10. Got To Get You Into My Life {McCartney} (2:31) Recorded: April 7-8, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added April 11, May 18, and June 17, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - tambourine Paul McCartney - double-tracked lead vocal, bass guitar George Harrison - lead guitar Ringo Starr - drums George Martin - organ Eddy Thornton - trumpet Ian Hamer - trumpet Les Conlon - trumpet Alan Branscombe - tenor saxophone Peter Coe - tenor saxophone 11. Tomorrow Never Knows {Lennon} (2:57) Recorded: April 6, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added April 7, 1966 and April 22, 1966 Instrumentation: John Lennon - lead vocal, Hammond organ, tambourine, tape loops Paul McCartney - bass guitar, tape loop (bird sounds) George Harrison - lead guitar, sitar Ringo Starr - drums George Martin - piano Total playing time 27:42
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Super Review, very informative, loads of info. I have been a Beatles fan for Years and never knew the names of the other musicians outside the fab four who played on Revolver.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.
Best wishes for 2004................David
Wayne10ch 14.02.2002 01:11
There isn't anyone that hasn't been affected by the Beatles. Look how the two deceased can still have #1 hits after their deaths. If you had asked me to name an album though I wouldn't have been able to. That is sad! I will have to improve my musical awareness! Thanks for a good op!
BNibbles 13.02.2002 20:53
Excellent evocative stuff Dave - I went straight for my Beatles mp3 disc with ALL their albums on it, and started playing Revolver - you're right, it does stand out. Chris
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