LF: Is the Beatles’ ‘Revolver’ the Best Rock Record Ever?

It is spring 1966, and the Beatles are ensconced in London’s EMI Studios, where they have embarked upon their latest manipulation of time. The Christmas season just passed had seen the release of the band’s sixth album, Rubber Soul, a game-changer of a disc that wedded American rhythm and blues to English folk music, as if the two genres were meant to go together all along. The Beatles, as the popsmiths-cum-pied pipers for teenyboppers, the lovable lads behind A Hard Day’s Night, were no more. Their middle-career era of high-toned, big boy art had commenced.

Rubber Soul continued to dominate the charts that spring. It featured organic sounds sourced from the streets of the city and countryside fields where one might have pictured John Clare wandering, but the Beatles, being the Beatles, were now moving entirely beyond Rubber Soul’s rustic-tinged soundscapes, as if such a masterwork were a mere digression in their journey towards something bigger, something better, something more “next,” if you will.

B4Y4A5 Beatles 1966 The Beatles arrive at London Airport to fly out to USA John Lennon Paul McCartney George Harrison Ringo Starr

In this case, that would be the finest album of their career, and conceivably the finest rock and roll record ever made: a 14 song affair clocking in at under 35 minutes with a bad pun serving as a title: Revolver. For what do records do? Revolve. And this one was going to feel like it did so more than any that had come before.

People tend to forget how short the Beatles’ career was as a record-making collective: a mere seven years, from Please Please Me in 1963 to Abbey Road in 1969. Their pace was extraordinary, with single calendar years featuring the completion and release of two LPs and three singles, the latter rarely sourced from the former.

Mix in tours, spates of recording sessions for the BBC, film work, all manner of personal appearances, and you start to wonder how on earth four men were able to leap about from style to style, inventing some in the process, serving as the definitive version of one kind of band in June, say, and then another in July.

Revolver, though, which would be released in August, was the ultimate shape-shifter document, for having just infused the ears of the world with an album that was all green and brown tones, with a wafting air of cannabis throughout, the Beatles went interplanetary.

There is no record that sounds remotely like Revolver, and certainly no Beatles record. John Lennon had just reached a compositional career high point on Rubber Soul with songs like “Girl,” “In My Life,” and “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” and now it would his partner Paul McCartney’s turn to hit the apogee-mark.

Lennon was writing on the guitar at the time, as he always had, but with a greater penchant for distortion and overdubbed layers of guitars that came at you in metallic waves, as if borne in from an Arthur Clarke novel. McCartney, meanwhile, had become quite the aesthete in London, living in town and taking in the theater, films, anything, as the Jefferson Airplane would later sing, with which he could feed his head. He was also, for the first time, writing on the piano, and it is from this yin and yang of two geniuses composing about as well as ever, on somewhat oppositional instruments, that those spring 1966 sessions were setting Revolver up as something of, well, an absolute mother of an album.

George Harrison, too, was excelling as a writer, and it was his “Taxman” that was granted the prize position as album starter. The Beatles didn’t muck about with what they chose to begin and, more important, conclude their LPs. As with “I Saw Her Standing There,” the song that launched their first record, “Taxman” features a cod count-in, with Harrison, in a sardonic, almost glib voice, intoning a flat “One, Two, Three, Four,” as the real count-in is shouted out beneath him, and away we go into Future Rock.

The lyric is a diatribe against the English taxation system, but it’s almost immaterial, given what is at play sonically, as the Beatles, clearly, have a new weapon they hadn’t before. McCartney takes a guitar solo where normally Harrison would, a fury of virtuosic playing to make Jimi Hendrix sit up and take notice, and few, if any bands, have ever been tighter. As players, these guys are all coming into their own. But there is no more important instrument on Revolver than the studio itself.

This was a first. You hear it right away in the texture of McCartney’s bass. A bass is not meant to sound this rounded, as if it were an instrument you could isolate in any given track, and study as a composition unto itself. Producer George Martin, always a man willing to try an idea, is now clearly abetting two songwriters who were coming up with a ton of them in terms of the new sounds they’d like to try and get, thus bestowing each of their songs with an extra kick towards places no one had gone before.

For McCartney, that involved working with engineer Geoff Emerick on making his bass sound like a rumble of low-toned, especially melodic guitars, knitted together in the soundscape. Lennon, meanwhile, was talking of being tied to cables and maneuvered around the room so that his vocals would sound preternatural, and tasked Martin with some requests that would have required drilling holes in his neck and inserting electrodes. The Beatles-go-Frankensteinian.

Lennon is always considered the band’s maven avant-gardist, but that’s misleading, and the point of no return moment in the Beatles career, as far as advancing on the realm of psychedelia goes, comes with the second number, McCartney’s “Eleanor Rigby.”

The tale of a lonely spinster, and the lonely people in her life, such as it was, is seen “wearing a face that she keeps in a glass by the door.” Well then. You didn’t get this on Rubber Soul, or anywhere else. Here the sound is clean, string-laden, the stuff of Edwardian minstrels leaving the band back home and tending to a respectful threnody.

McCartney explores more iterations of this sonic mood, though with more joy, throughout Revolver. “Here, There and Everywhere” is the finest love song of his career, a quiet, sunlit number, with degrees of affection becoming more pronounced in charming modulations. “For No One,” a piano track with a French horn solo by Alan Civil, is the emotional flipside of “Here, There and Everywhere,” and yet strangely uplifting as a song lamenting “what ifs.” McCartney is commanding melodic possibilities at the loftiest of levels, and you sense that there is nothing he can’t do with it. Including, even, making you look forward to a bit of heartache.

I guess I go by whether all of the songs are great and if you can listen to the entire album without getting bored.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

I have listened to a number of albums that had one or two really good tracks, and thought the others sucked.

if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur

I have never really been a Beatles fan. I thought they were good but just never bought into all that hype. I was a bigger Wings fan that Beatles fan.

Reminds me of a Jeopardy episode I saw way back in the 80 where the query involved "Paul McCartney's former band" (meaning The Beatles). The young contestant answered "What is Wings."

Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks â€¦ golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives â€¦ just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president

And the guy playing the 6 string is playing a Rickenbacker like Harrison did. That was not a common guitar in those days, when most played either a Fender or Gibson.

if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur

As I recall, many of the bands used Rickenbackers back then, most notably The Byrds, Paul Revere and The Raiders, The Hollies...I read somewhere that Pete Townsend used a Rick on "My Generation" and "Substitute".

Pretty sure Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills Nash & Young used the Rickenbacker quite a bit on their songs. Jefferson Airplane too IIRC.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Yep - one of the best for sure. As far as live albums, I'd put it right near the top.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

I prefer Night Moves - Stranger in Town is very good but just a little too polished for my druthers.

A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

When an acdc song comes on i know what it is within a few seconds. So how can they all be the same?

Having the best selling rock album out of every rock group in history isn't Revolutionary now is it?

Very few of the songs were about "drugs". I'm talking about stylistically, venturing into different sounds, you know - creative stuff instead of playing the same three-chord song over and over with little variation.

Seems to me you would want to do a little research before making a fool of yourself.

Lennon's son Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing he called "Lucy—in the sky with diamonds". Shortly after the song's release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the title nouns intentionally spelled LSD.

Lennon consistently denied this,insisting the song was inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books, a claim repeatedly confirmed by Paul McCartney.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

All I am saying is that AC/DC hasn't done anything stylistically different for what - 25 years?

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Oh - you are going by popularity? Good grief, is that how you judge the quality of music, by how many other people like it? What's "revolutionary" about that?

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Thriller wasn't a "rock" album, dip shit. Stone said, "Having the best selling rock album"

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Look, I like a few of their songs, actually the only music I don't like is rap and hip-hop.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Meat Loaf's debut is the #3 rock album - is that really the third best rock album of all time?

A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them.

Yes back in black is behind thriller. But i worded it carefully i didn't include solo artists. Michael Jackson is also very talented.

Really? Harrison is the only one I remember. Do not hear of anyone using them anymore.

I played in a band with a guy that owned one, but he always left it at home. He primarily used an Ephiphone, don't remember which model, solid body, a Fender Telecaster, and a Guild semi. Very talented guitar player. He usually played right handed, but strung the guitar for left hand. He could flip it over and still play. He could play right or left handed, and strung either way. You could always tell the guitar players in the crowd, they would stand at the edge of the stage, and would just stare. I saw him in the middle of a song flip it over and finish the song playing left handed. It would always freak them out.

if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur

Actually, there are quite a few - Tom Petty for one...R.E.M. uses them a lot as do most of the "jangle pop" bands, Smithereens, Bangles, Gin Blossoms etc.

Probably nothing you hear on the radio though - what passes for music these days on the radio for the most part is dreadful.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur

I'm from the 70's. Graduated HS in 78. Eight tracks were very popular throughout the mid 70's even until the late 70s. They were pretty much gone by 81, though.

I just hang onto that tape as a relic. I doubt it would even play anymore, even if I could find an 8 track tape player.

A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them.

I snicker to this day as to how Limbaugh hijacked a song by this group as the intro to his show.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

In bridge, you have wild cards called trump cards. The trump cards are really wild because they change from hand to hand, depending on the bidding.

A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."