Rubber Soul
Studio album by The Beatles
Released 3 December 1965
Recorded 17 June and 12 October Ð 11 November 1965, EMI Studios, London
Genre Rock
Length 35:50
Label Parlophone
Producer George Martin
Professional reviews
* Allmusic 5/5 stars link (UK)
* Allmusic 5/5 stars link (US)
* Blender 5/5 stars link
* Pitchfork Media (10.0/10.0) 2009
* Q 5/4 stars link
* Rolling Stone 5/5 stars 2004
Rubber Soul is the sixth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released in December 1965. Produced by George Martin, Rubber Soul had been recorded in just over four weeks to make the Christmas market. Unlike the five albums that preceded it, Rubber Soul was the first Beatle album recorded during a specific period without being interrupted by tour dates (though the group's debut album Please Please Me was technically recorded in a single day, four of the tracks were recorded several months before). All of the Beatle albums after Rubber Soul (except Magical Mystery Tour) followed this process. The album was described as a major artistic achievement, attaining widespread critical and commercial success, with reviewers taking note of The Beatles' developing musical vision.
The original UK release shows the "soul" influence of the album's title. Track list changes to the US release, including two acoustic songs held over from the previous album, Help!, gave the US version a folk rock feel that critics attributed to The Byrds and Bob Dylan.
Rubber Soul is often cited as one of the greatest albums in pop music history. In 1998, Q magazine readers voted it the 40th greatest album of all time, while in 2000 the same publication placed it at number 21 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2001, VH1 placed it at number 6. In 2003, the album was ranked number 5 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2006, the album was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time.
Composition
Music
According to Richie Unterberger, "[The Beatles] and George Martin were beginning to expand the conventional instrumental parameters of the rock group, using a sitar on 'Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)', French-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'."
Musically, The Beatles broadened their sound, most notably with influences drawn from the contemporary folk-rock of the Byrds and Bob Dylan. The album also saw The Beatles broadening rock 'n' roll's instrumental resources, most notably on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". Although innovations of the kind had been made beforeÑBritish rock group The Kinks, after a visit to India, recorded the influential "See My Friends", which utilised droning guitars (mimicking the sitar, an Indian stringed instrument) and a circular, hypnotic rhythmÑ"Norwegian Wood" is generally credited as being the first pop recording to use an actual sitar. The track sparked a musical craze for the sound of the novel instrument in the mid-1960sÑa trend which would later branch out into the raga rock and Indian rock genres. The song is now acknowledged as one of the cornerstones of what is now usually called "world music" and it was a major landmark in the trend towards incorporating non-Western musical influences into Western popular music. George Harrison had been introduced to Indian classical music and the sitar earlier that year, that interest later being fuelled by fellow Indian music fan David Crosby of The Byrds, whom Harrison met and befriended in August 1965. Harrison soon became fanatically interested in the genre and began taking sitar lessons from renowned Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. A broadening use of percussive arrangements, led by Ringo Starr's backbeats and frequently augmented by maracas and tambourine, can also be heard throughout the album, showcased in tracks such as "Wait" and "Think for Yourself". Perhaps Starr's most unusual percussion source on the album, which was revealed by him to Barry Tashian of The Remains in the book Ticket To Ride, is created by his tapping a pack of matches with his finger. This "tapping" sound can be heard in the background of "I'm Looking Through You".
Recording innovations were also made during the recording of the albumÑfor instance, the keyboard solo in "In My Life" sounds like a harpsichord, but was actually played on a piano. George Martin found he could not match the tempo of the song while playing in this baroque style, so he tried recording with the tape running at half-speed. When played back at normal speed during the mixdown, the sped-up sound gave the illusion of a harpsichord. Other production innovations included the use of electronic sound processing on many instruments, notably the heavily compressed and equalized piano sound on "The Word"; this distinctive effect soon became extremely popular in the genre of psychedelic music.
As well as the sitar on "Norwegian Wood" and "The Word", they voiced the drug-influenced peace-and-love sentiments that would color many psychedelic lyrics.
The song "Wait" was initially recorded for, and then left off, the album Help!. The reason the song was released on Rubber Soul was that the album was one song short, and with the Christmas deadline looming, The Beatles chose to release "Wait" instead of recording a new composition.
Lyrics
Lyrically, the album was a major progression. Though a smattering of earlier Beatles songs had expressed romantic doubt and negativity, the songs on Rubber Soul represented a pronounced development in sophistication, thoughtfulness, and ambiguity. In particular, the relationships between the sexes moved from simpler boy-girl love songs to more nuanced, even negative portrayals. "Norwegian Wood", one of the most famous examples and often cited as The Beatles' first conscious assimilation of the lyrical innovations of Bob Dylan, sketches a failed relationship between the singer and a mysterious girl, where she goes to bed and he sleeps in the bath. "Drive My Car" serves as a satirical piece of sexism. Songs like "I'm Looking Through You", "You Won't See Me", and "Girl" express more emotionally complex, even bitter and downbeat portrayals of romance, and "Nowhere Man" was arguably the first Beatles song to move beyond a romantic subject.
Recording
Until very late in their career, the "primary" version of The Beatles' albums was always the monophonic mix. According to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, producer George Martin, and the Abbey Road engineers devoted most of their time and attention to the mono mixdowns, and the band were not usually present for the stereo mixing sessions. Even with their landmark Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, the stereo mixdowns were considered less important than the mono version and were completed in far less time.
While the stereo version of the original release of Rubber Soul was similar to that of their earliest albums, featuring mainly vocals on the right channel and instruments on the left, it was not produced in the same manner. The early albums were recorded on twin-track tape, and they were intended only for production of monaural records, so they kept vocals and instruments separated allowing the two parts to later be mixed in proper proportion. By this time, however, the Beatles were recording on four-track tape, which allowed a stereo master to be produced with vocals in the centre and instruments on both sides, as evidenced in their prior albums Beatles for Sale and Help!. But Martin was looking for a way to easily produce a stereo album which sounded good on a monaural record player. In what he admits was some experimentation, he mixed down the four-track master tape to stereo with vocals on the right, instruments on the left, and nothing in the middle.
"What Goes On" is the first song which has Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) as co-composer beside Lennon/McCartney. The end of the song is different on the mono and stereo versions.
After completing the album and the accompanying single "We Can Work It Out" and "Day Tripper", the Beatles were exhausted from years of virtually non-stop touring, recording, and film work. They subsequently took a three-month break during the first part of 1966, and used this free time exploring new directions that would colour their subsequent musical work. These became immediately apparent in the next album, Revolver.
Packaging and concept
Album artwork
The photo of the Beatles on the Rubber Soul cover appears stretched. McCartney relates the story behind this in Volume 5 of the documentary film Anthology. Photographer Bob Freeman had taken some pictures of The Beatles at Lennon's house. Freeman showed the photos to the group by projecting them onto an album-sized piece of cardboard to simulate how they would appear on an album cover. The unusual Rubber Soul album cover came to be when the slide card fell slightly backwards, elongating the projected image of the photograph and stretching it. Excited by the effect, they shouted, "Ah! Can we have that? Can you do it like that?" Freeman said he could.
The distinctive lettering was created by Charles Front, and the original artwork was later auctioned at Bonhams, accompanied by an authenticating letter from Robert Freeman.
Capitol Records used a different colour saturation for the US version, causing the orange lettering used by Parlophone Records to show up as different colours. On some Capitol LPs, the title looks rich chocolate brown; others, more like gold. Yet on the official 1987 CD of the British version, the Capitol logo is visible, and the letters are not brown, nor the official orange, but a distinct green. The 2009 CD reissue uses the original UK cover design with the Parlophone logo.
The Rubber Soul cover was the first by The Beatles to not have the group's name on it. Though this wasn't the first time in rock/pop history this had been done (Elvis Presley, Them, and The Rolling Stones had done it previously), releasing an album without the artist's name on the cover was uncommon in 1965. Future Beatles albums, including Revolver, Abbey Road, Let It Be and the American compilation Hey Jude also have covers without the words 'The Beatles' on them. By contrast, The Beatles, commonly called the White Album, contained only the words 'The Beatles' on the cover.
Album title
McCartney conceived the album's title after overhearing a black musician's description of Mick Jagger's singing style as "plastic soul". Lennon confirmed this in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, stating, "That was Paul's title... meaning English soul. Just a pun." McCartney said a similar phrase, "Plastic soul, man. Plastic soul...", at the end of "I'm Down" take 1, on Anthology 2.
Release and aftermath
There were two different stereo versions released on vinyl in the US: the standard US stereo mix, and the "Dexter Stereo" version (also known as the "East Coast" version), which has a layer of reverb added to the entire album. The standard US stereo mix and the original mono mix are available on CD as part of The Capitol Albums, Volume 2 box set.
US release
Rubber Soul, the ninth Capitol Records album and eleventh official U.S. release (ST-2442), came out in the United States three days after the British release, and began its 59-week long chart run on Christmas Day. It topped the charts for six weeks from 8 January 1966, before dropping back. The album sold 1.2 million copies within nine days of its release, and to date has sold over six million copies in America.
Like other pre-Sgt. Pepper Beatles albums, Rubber Soul differed markedly in its US and UK configurations; indeed, through peculiarities of sequencing, the US Rubber Soul was deliberately reconfigured to appear a "folk rock" album to angle the Beatles into that emerging and lucrative American genre during 1965, thanks to the addition of "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love" (leftovers from the UK Help!) and the deletion of some of the more upbeat tracks ("Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man", "If I Needed Someone", and "What Goes On"). The tracks missing on the US version would later surface on the Yesterday and Today collection (with "Nowhere Man" and "What Goes On" being released on a single in the meantime). The track variation resulted in a shorter album length, clocking in at 29:59. In addition, the stereo mix sent to the US from England has what are commonly called "false starts" at the beginning of "I'm Looking Through You." The track is also slightly shorter at the end. The false starts are on every American stereo copy of the album from 1965 to 1990 and are also on the CD boxed set, The Capitol Albums Vol. 2. The US version of "The Word" is also recognizably different because it has Lennon's double-tracking vocals, an extra falsetto harmony on the left channel during the last two refrains, maracas panning to the right channel during the instrumental break and panning back to the left channel and back to the right channel and fades a little longer. Also on the USA mono LP of this album, the version of "Michelle" is different because it has louder percussion and fades a little longer.
The Canadian LP shares the false start on "I'm Looking Through You".
CD reissues
The album was released on CD in the UK and US on 30 April 1987, using the 14-song UK track line-up. Having been available only as an import in the US in the past, the 14 track UK version of the album was issued on LP and cassette on 21 July 1987. As with the CD release of the 1965 Help! album, the Rubber Soul CD featured a contemporary stereo digital remix of the album prepared by George Martin. Martin expressed concern to EMI over the original 1965 stereo remix, claiming it sounded 'very woolly, and not at all what I thought should be a good issue'. George Martin went back to the original four-tracks tapes and remixed them for stereo. A few Canadian-origin CD editions of Rubber Soul and Help! accidentally use the original mix of the album, presumably due to a mix-up.
A newly-remastered CD version of the UK album, again utilizing the 1987 George Martin remix, was released worldwide on 9 September 2009. The original 1965 stereo and mono mixes were also reissued on that date as part of the mono box set.
Reception
The album was commercially successful, beginning a 42-week run in the British charts on 11 December 1965. On Christmas Day it replaced Help!, the Beatles' previous album, at the top of the charts, a position Rubber Soul held for eight weeks. The album was a major artistic leap forward for the group, and is often cited by critics, as well as members of the band, as the point at which The Beatles' earlier Merseybeat sound began to evolve into the eclectic, sophisticated pop/rock of their later career. Lennon later said this was the first album on which The Beatles were in complete creative control during recording, with enough studio time to develop and refine new sound ideas. The US version of the album also greatly influenced the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson believed it was the first time in pop music that the focus had shifted from just making popular singles to making an actual album, without the usual filler tracks. He "answered" the album by releasing Pet Sounds in 1966, arguably rock's first concept album.
Rubber Soul became a classic. On 9 May 1987, it returned to the album charts for three weeks, and ten years later made another comeback to the charts.
Track listing
British release
All songs written and composed by Lennon/McCartney except where noted.
Side one
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Drive My Car" McCartney 2:30
2. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" Lennon 2:05
3. "You Won't See Me" McCartney 3:22
4. "Nowhere Man" Lennon, with McCartney and Harrison 2:44
5. "Think for Yourself" (George Harrison) Harrison 2:19
6. "The Word" Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison 2:43
7. "Michelle" McCartney 2:42
Side two
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "What Goes On" (Lennon/McCartney/Starkey) Starr 2:50
2. "Girl" Lennon 2:33
3. "I'm Looking Through You" McCartney 2:27
4. "In My Life" Lennon 2:27
5. "Wait" Lennon and McCartney 2:16
6. "If I Needed Someone" (George Harrison) Harrison 2:23
7. "Run for Your Life" Lennon 2:18
American release
All songs written and composed by Lennon/McCartney except where noted.
Side one
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "I've Just Seen a Face" McCartney 2:07
2. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" Lennon 2:05
3. "You Won't See Me" McCartney 3:22
4. "Think for Yourself" (George Harrison) Harrison 2:19
5. "The Word" Lennon (with McCartney and Harrison) 2:43
6. "Michelle" McCartney 2:42
Side two
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "It's Only Love" Lennon 1:55
2. "Girl" Lennon 2:33
3. "I'm Looking Through You" McCartney 2:31
4. "In My Life" Lennon 2:27
5. "Wait" Lennon and McCartney 2:16
6. "Run for Your Life" Lennon 2:18
Personnel
The Beatles
* John Lennon Ð vocals, rhythm guitar, electric piano ("Think for Yourself"), other instruments
* Paul McCartney Ð vocals, bass, piano, guitar, other instruments
* George Harrison Ð vocals, lead guitar, sitar ("Norwegian Wood"), other instruments
* Ringo Starr Ð drums, lead vocals ("What Goes On"), Hammond organ ("I'm Looking Through You"), percussion, box of matches, other instruments
Additional musicians
* Mal Evans Ð Hammond organ
* George Martin Ð producer, piano ("In My Life"), harmonium ("The Word")