A Classic Album

I thought that I’d try something a little different today. Yes, it is still music, and yes my series Listen To The Band plays a set of songs by the same artist, but I’ve never before concentrated on a particular album. If this works there are many other albums I could do this for, so let’s see how it goes. I’m calling it A Classic Album, but I guess I’ll have to amend the ‘A’ if I do it again!

The first post in my occasional Listen To The Band series was about the band who for me symbolise everything that was great about the music that I grew up with, and despite my parents’ predictions of “they won’t last” their influence has grown over the years. I could only really be talking about one band, couldn’t I? Of course I mean The Beatles. But which of their albums to choose? It was a difficult decision, but I’m going with this one:

That then presented me with another difficult decision: which of its tracks should I play? Giving you all of them might have felt like overkill, so I’m playing seven of them and I hope you’ll enjoy these as much as I do. Frankly, I could have played them all!

The Beatles released Rubber Soul on 3 December 1965 in the UK and 6 December in the US. These were the days when the American versions differed, but I’m going – naturally – with the UK release, This contained 14 tracks, whereas the US version had just 12 – four of the UK tracks were left off until later albums, and two were added from cuts that didn’t make the US version of Help! I’ve never understood that! I’ll tell you more about the album along the way, but let’s get started with the music. I should point out that most of these will be audio-only clips, as music videos hadn’t really taken off at that point. This first one was among the four that didn’t make it in the US, but was the song that opened the album here:

Drive My Car was a Paul McCartney composition, to which John Lennon also contributed lyrics. George Harrison – the band’s most knowledgeable soul-music fan – suggested they arrange the song with a dual guitar/bass riff in the style of Otis Redding’s contemporary single Respect, which they duly did. The Wikipedia page for the album quotes some of the usual bollocks spouted by critics who invent their own motives for the song: guys, just leave it alone, it’s a story about a girl who wants to be famous and promises a guy a job as her chauffeur. Sexual innuendo? Really? I was only 12 when this came out and had a very sheltered upbringing!

This was the next track on the album:

John Lennon has said that he wrote Norwegian Wood about an affair and that he worded it to hide the truth from his wife, Cynthia. The lyrics tell of a meeting between the singer and a mysterious girl, where she goes to bed and he sleeps in the bath: in retaliation for her not following through with the promise he thought he was on, the singer decides to burn down her wood-panelled home. Fun lyrics, typical of John’s sense of humour, but I think most people now remember the song for George’s sitar playing. And there is more of the critical bollocks on Wikipedia, too.

This was track 4 in the UK release:

The sound on that live performance of Nowhere Man isn’t as clear as the recorded version, but I think it adds something to see them playing it live to an audience who listened rather than screamed. It is one of John’s songs, written about the effects of taking LSD and how that made him feel. He has been quoted as saying that he had spent several hours attempting to write with no success, and then this came to him ‘fully formed.’ If only things like that happened to me! He had spells of self-hatred, and later referred to this as his ‘fat Elvis’ period!

Flipping the album over to Side Two now. This was the second song on that side:

That video for Girl is, perhaps, slightly misleading. It isn’t an official one, just something that I found on YouTube, and the scenes are of course from the Help! movie which didn’t include this song. Still, they are fun to watch. This is another John Lennon composition, and has been described by one of the more lucid critics as being a counterpoint to the ‘anger’ of Drive My Car. I can see what he means, as this is a delicate song. John said that he wrote it about an archetypal woman he had been searching for and would finally find when he met Yoko Ono a year later.

Side 2 Track 3 is a Paul McCartney composition:

There are several videos of Paul playing the song in solo gigs in much later years, but I want to stay as true to the album as possible so I’m going with this clip. I’m Looking Through You is generally held to be about troubles  Paul was having at the time in his relationship with the actress Jane Asher.

The next track on the album is the one that I think is my all time favourite Beatles song, which is really saying something! It’s another by John, and it is lovely:

John considered In My Life to be his “first real major piece of work”. The lyrics evoke his youth in Liverpool and reflect his nostalgia for a time before the onset of international fame. Paul has claimed that he wrote the melody, but John said that he only contributed to the middle eight. Whoever is right, it is a beautiful song of nostalgia and I absolutely love it. The piano solo was played by their producer, George Martin, who recorded it on his own and added it to the mix: it has a slightly baroque feel to it which I think enhances the nostalgic feel of the song.

As I said at the outset, I think seven tracks is as many as I should play you, and it wouldn’t feel right not to include one of the two that George wrote. So, in closing, this is Side 2 Track 6, though it was one of the four missed out on the US release:

George wrote If I Needed Someone as a love song to Pattie Boyd, an English model to whom he became engaged in December 1965 and married the following month, though yet again the critics have chimed in with various other interpretations. Yes, you’ve guessed it: I think they are talking bollocks again. The jangly guitar is in the style of The Byrds, with whom The Beatles had formed a kind of mutual appreciation society at the time, and fed off each other’s influences. It may not be the deepest set of lyrics on either a Beatles record or one of George’s solo efforts, but you have to remember that he and the others were still quite young at this point: at the time of the album’s release (let alone when the songs were actually written) John and Ringo were 25, Paul was 23 and George just 22.

In case you are wondering which tracks I haven’t played, or just want to hear them anyway, here are links to the others:

You Won’t See Me

Think For Yourself

The Word

Michelle

What Goes On

Wait

And the track that closed the album, Run For Your Life

What else can I say about the album that hasn’t already been said, some of it even by people who knew what they were talking about. If you want an in-depth view the Wikipedia page is here, and you’ll see that I have quoted selectively from that. Needless to say, the album went to #1 in many countries, the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Germany among them. It has sold more than 6m copies in the US, even though you guys were short-changed on the track quota, and more than 600k here in the UK. It has been inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame, for what that’s worth, and has featured on numerous ‘best of’ lists, including the 2014 Rolling Stone magazine ranking of ‘the forty most groundbreaking albums of all time.’ Not too shabby, really. Rubber Soul was the sixth of twelve studio albums released by The Beatles, all of which bar one reached #1 here – the odd one out was Yellow Submarine, which had to be content with getting to #3. Were they the best or most influential band of all time? You make up your own mind, but for me they win both accolades.

I’ve had a lot of fun putting this together and playing all of these great songs again. I hope you’ve enjoyed it too: please let me know, and I’ll happily take suggestions for other albums that merit this kind of focus. I already have a list but I’m always pleased to hear your thoughts!

See you again on Sunday 😊