The Beatles, Revolver, 1966
Label: Parlophone
Producer: George Martin
Building exponentially off of the creative explosion of the previous year’s Rubber Soul, Revolver brought The Beatles–and once again, rock music itself–to another new level of creative vitality and recording innovation. With the end of the touring portion of their career on the horizon, even less concern was given to reproducing the musical effects of their records in a live setting. This invigorated their hunger for risk and experimentation in the studio. Their lyrical genius simultaneously continued to expand and mature as well, thanks to everything from their evolving life experience to the influence of other artists. That’s not to mention that of increased drug use, which undeniably seeps itself vividly into the sonic and topical results found on this album. Released nearly nine months after its predecessor, it represented the band’s longest gap between albums to date, and for good reason. It took them and producer George Martin over 300 hours to record this prolific and expansive production. To say they had come a long way from the primitive and limited confines in place when creating their debut Please Please Me just four years earlier was an understatement. The results were certainly worth all the time spent. Revolver instantly made its mark as a cosmic art-rock masterpiece and a pivotal touchstone in both music and pop culture history.
The growing creative power of guitarist George Harrison within the framework of the band is demonstrated immediately with the opening cut, “Taxman”. A drastic topical detour from the oft-visited world of romance and heartbreak, this instead was a sneering and eye-opening derision of the British tax code and its impact on the band’s earnings and emerging wealth. The arrangements on the track were equally removed from the band’s formative records, while Harrison’s delivery is so numb yet arresting and the band’s supporting harmonies already sound utterly tripped up and stoned. It’s essentially the beginning of psychedelic rock. Meanwhile, additional Harrison contributions covered further divergent landscapes with “I Want To Tell You” serving as a glimpse into the future sounds of rock music in the 1970s. Meanwhile “Love You To” picked up where “Norwegian Wood” left off by diving head first into both the sitar-based Indian influences of Ravi Shankar as well as the hallucinogenic affects of the hard drug counterculture.
The John Lennon-led tracks were likewise steeped within the emerging psychedelic sounds and influences of the time. “I’m Only Sleeping” represented his increasingly haunted presence in the band, as the tune creeps along with the same slow and infectious allure of a mind-altering substance, thanks in part to the band’s adventurous studio tricks with the song’s guitar riffs actually being played backwards. Elsewhere, “She Said, She Said” was later acknowledged to have been written during an acid trip (with actor Peter Fonda), and the lyrics and production certainly support that, while “Doctor Robert” flat out depicts a user’s dependence on his dealer. But that’s not to say that Lennon wasn’t still capable of providing refreshingly lighter moments. Case in point being “And Your Bird Can Sing”, a sprightly number that finds him at his melodic best, set to thick guitar licks and a delightfully inescapable jangle that recalled the youthful exuberance of their past hits.
It surely came as no surprise that Ringo Starr’s sole lead performance also provided one of the album’s most joyful moments. On paper, the premise of “Yellow Submarine” likely appeared to have also been penned during a drug flight, but the record is pure and simple novelty. An utterly goofy tune about a clan living underneath the waves, it could and probably should have failed miserably. But it somehow fits within the experimental context of the album, and its victory stems from its own self-awareness and Ringo’s spot-on delivery. There couldn’t have been a more suitable vocalist to handle the silly but challenging scope of this song.
As would be the case throughout their entire run, it’s Paul McCartney who truly keeps the album grounded in their pop-rock origins, while also doing his part to push their vision forward, though not in the trippy, altered settings of his counterparts. “Good Day Sunshine” returns bright and sunny pop to the forefront, as if to symbolize the drug users of the previous songs returning to their sober state and reawakening to the natural world around them. He delivers a pair of standards with the one-two punch of “Here, There and Everywhere” and “For No One”, both re-interpreted by a wide range of diverse artists since the record’s release. The former picks up on a post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys influence, while the latter is a baroque pop outing (complete with a French Horn solo) that takes a biting look at the events of two lovers sadly growing apart. McCartney’s true masterpiece on this album however is undoubtedly the flawless pop-rock classic, “Eleanor Rigby”. With a gorgeous orchestral arrangement from Martin that was on the level of any classical music recording, it brought a new sophistication to a rock record, and McCartney provides perhaps the most tender and passionate vocal of his career. The three-part storyline and vivid imagery would have been fitting in a C&W story song. Its depiction of the elderly woman in the chapel forgotten by the rest of the world added a new layer of social consciousness that was heretofore hardly prominent in pop music. It’s a landmark moment for multiple reasons, and retains the power to stop a listener in their tracks decades later. It’s timeless in every way.
Fittingly, the record closes with “Tomorrow Never Knows”, the ultimate adventure in studio experimentation which plays like the epic conclusion to a massive film production. A crashing amalgam of sounds, this is not a piece meant to be understood but merely experienced, and serves as a truly emblematic representation of what Revolver is all about. Many instantly proclaimed it as the best Beatles record of all time, and the best rock record of all time for that matter. Similar claims would be made for virtually every proper Beatles album to follow it.
So, what tomorrow inevitably revealed Revolver to be for the band was a ground-breaking change in direction that ultimately led to their most rewarding creative output, and the most significant run of landmark recordings in commercial music history. Revolver not only served as the dividing point between the Rock & Roll era and that of Classic Rock, but also the separation between the era of Beatlemania and the greatest, and sadly the final years of their legendary career.
Track Listing:
- “Taxman” (George Harrison)
- “Eleanor Rigby” (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) *1966 Single Release
- “I’m Only Sleeping” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “Love You To” (Harrison)
- “Here, There and Everywhere” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “Yellow Submarine” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “She Said She Said” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “Good Day Sunshine” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “And Your Bird Can Sing” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “For No One” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “Doctor Robert” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “I Want To Tell You” (Harrison)
- “Got to Get You Into My Life” (Lennon and McCartney)
- “Tomorrow Never Knows” (Lennon and McCartney)
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