{"id":7123,"date":"2022-11-18T13:18:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T13:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=7123"},"modified":"2022-12-18T11:25:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T11:25:18","slug":"music-rubber-soul-the-beatles-1965","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=7123","title":{"rendered":"MUSiC: Rubber Soul, The Beatles, 1965"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Probably my favourite Beatles album. And a pretty groovy cover to boot. Love that period \u2018rubber\u2019 font!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst this is the sixth Beatles album, it\u2019s only the second to not feature any covers. And the strength of the all original set is superb. Arguably not just their best yet, but one of their best ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve read that the title itself is a playful variant on the \u2018plastic soul\u2019, i.e. fake\/inauthentic soul, a term McCartney used about their own Little Richard inspired B-side, I\u2019m Down. and when you consider that their previous waxing was Help!<\/em> (both out in \u201865), the quantum leaps in both breadth and depth are striking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things The Beatles went on to become so well known for, with the help of producer George Martin, was their deep dive into the use of the studio itself, and the production, as a further aspect of creativity. And in tandem, the development of the album as an artistic package and statement, as opposed to merely what the term album denotes, a collection<\/em> of songs.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rubber Soul <\/em>was written and recorded after the US summer tour in which their performance at Shea Stadium both set new attendance records, and helped push them across several thresholds. Meeting such folk as Dylan and Presley, getting deeper into pot and LSD, and further exposure to contemporary Afro-American popular music, all conspired to enhance, expand and enrich their creative aspirations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather bizarrely, to my mind, it was EMI policy at the time to alter the US albums, which in this case meant removing four tracks! The UK\/European release comprised:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Side One<\/span>
Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood
You Won\u2019t See Me
Nowhere Man
Think For Yourself
The Word

Side Two<\/span>
What Goes On
Girl
I\u2019m Looking Through You
In My Life
Wait
If I Needed Someone 
Run For Your Life<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The entirety of what was originally side one is terrific. The first four tracks in particular being properly stellar. Think For Yourself is a bit of a dip, but The Word, a pre-emotive \u2018Summer-of-Love-bomb\u2019 picks things up again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Side two kicks of with one of Ringo\u2019s best turns on lead vocals, and two very strong Lennon numbers, in Girl and the humbly sublime In My Life (you gotta dig GM\u2019s fake harpsichord solo!). If I Needed Someone is yet more proof that George Harrison\u2019s best writing occurred whilst he was a Beatle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The album ends with Run Four Life, which is very like Think For Yourself, in both tempo and feel. speaking of feel, not only has the overall sound become more complex, nuanced and personal, it\u2019s also several shades darker, with anger and alienation entering the frame, where before it was mostly happy go lucky boy meets girl romance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on a sartorial footnote\u2026 I\u2019m very tempted by this<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019d love to have a jacket like Lennon\u2019s!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Not sure what the source for the above alternate cover type image is. But it\u2019s interesting to see a variant. considering how goofily dressed they sometime got later on, they\u2019re looking pretty cool and fab, in a slightly beatnik hipster type way, here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
* Back in the days before record covers with artwork and info became a thing, shorter playing 78s were stored in what resembled what are now the inner sleeves, albeit in heavier card stock. And collections of multiple discs would actually literally make up an album, akin to a photo album. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Probably my favourite Beatles album. And a pretty groovy cover to boot. Love that period \u2018rubber\u2019 font! Whilst this is the sixth Beatles album, it\u2019s only the second to not feature any covers. And the strength of the all original set is superb. Arguably not just their best yet, but one of their best ever. … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “MUSiC: Rubber Soul, The Beatles, 1965”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-1QT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7123"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7526,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123\/revisions\/7526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}