The Beatles’ Timeless Masterpiece
During their seven-year recording career, the Beatles underwent a transformation that can only be described as astonishing. Much of the band’s early material consisted of repetitive, irresistibly catchy love songs, but over time, their recordings became increasingly ambitious and complex. The 1960s was a decade marked by significant social upheaval, and the Beatles’ music reflected the ideals of the emerging countercultural movement. Aided by the ingenuity of producer George Martin, the Beatles revolutionised popular music, creating songs and albums that are still beloved and widely discussed to this day.
1965’s Rubber Soul was a clear turning point for the Beatles, demonstrating their artistic maturation. After the previous year’s A Hard Day’s Night, it was the second album to exclusively contain songs penned by the band, and the lyrics were more thoughtful and introspective than anything they had written before. The Beatles drew inspiration from contemporaries such as Bob Dylan, adopting a mellow folk rock style. It marks the first appearance of the sitar on a Beatles record, with George Harrison playing one on ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’. Rubber Soul was their strongest body of work yet, and it promised an exciting future for the Beatles.
Revolver is the Beatles’ seventh studio album. A few weeks after its release on the 5th of August 1966, the band embarked on their final tour of North America, playing a setlist that included no material from the new album. This followed a tumultuous string of concerts in Germany, Japan and the Philippines. After their shows in Manila, George Harrison quipped, ‘We’re going to have a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans.’ John Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were ’more popular than Jesus’, as well as the band’s opposition to the Vietnam War, meant the American tour was overshadowed by controversy. Lennon’s apology tamed some of the backlash, but it did not dispel the ire of the worst of American society. Members of the Ku Klux Klan burned Beatles records and picketed their concert in Memphis. At that same concert, a lit firecracker was thrown onto the stage; the sound of the explosion resembled a gunshot, frightening the band.
The tour in August 1966 would be their last. Without the pressure of recreating their songs live, the Beatles were free to embrace the exhilarating possibilities of developing studio technology. Due to John Lennon’s frustration with the time-consuming process of manually double tracking his vocals, engineer Ken Townsend invented automatic double tracking, a technique which was used across the album. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the final song on Revolver, exemplifies the breathtaking experimentation that ensured it would stand the test of time. The song was predominantly written by Lennon, who took inspiration from the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It utilises tape loops, reversed guitar parts and vocals fed through a Leslie speaker cabinet, which was ordinarily used to amplify Hammond organs. Even now, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ makes for a pretty mind-bending listen, so it is hard to imagine how audiences would have felt back in 1966.
George Harrison wrote three of the songs on Revolver, the most he had contributed to any of the band’s records until that point. Though he was much less experienced than the titanic Lennon-McCartney duo, Harrison’s growth as a songwriter is apparent on Revolver, and his material is very much on par with that of his bandmates. ‘Taxman’ makes for a memorable album opener due to its acerbic lyrics and Paul McCartney’s deft guitar solo, whereas ‘I Want To Tell You’ cleverly employs melodic dissonance to reflect the lyrics about the difficulties of communicating one’s thoughts. However, ‘Love You To’ is the most noteworthy of this crop of Harrison’s compositions, as its structure and instrumentation are inspired by Hindustani classical music. It features members of the Asian Music Circle playing the sitar, tabla and tambura, with Harrison himself also playing the sitar. ‘Love You To’ was the first overtly non-Western Beatles song, and the Indian influence would appear in a handful of Harrison’s other songs for the band.
‘Eleanor Rigby’ is a haunting, deeply affecting song. The lyrics are devoid of first- and second-person pronouns (a first for the Beatles), telling a sombre tale of loneliness and death. Its instrumentation consists of the austere, staccato playing of an eight-person ensemble who function essentially as a double string quartet. The arrangement was composed by George Martin, who also wrote the string parts for songs such as ‘Yesterday’ and ‘I Am The Walrus’. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was released as a double A-side single, paired with ‘Yellow Submarine’. Considering the sophisticated material it shares an album with, a jolly children’s song like ‘Yellow Submarine’ may seem a little out of place. Even so, I regard it very fondly. It is the first Beatles song I remember hearing during my childhood, and Ringo Starr’s vocal performance makes it even more charming.
Despite successfully venturing into more unusual lyrical themes, the Beatles do not completely abandon the favoured subject matter of their early career. Indeed, the album includes one of their most enchanting love songs – ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. Paul McCartney deeply admired American musician Brian Wilson, and he has stated that the vocal harmonies in the introduction were inspired by the work of Wilson’s band the Beach Boys. McCartney’s tender lyrics are set to a delicate, beautiful melody, and the backing vocals lend the song an almost dreamlike quality. Another song centred around romance is ‘Good Day Sunshine’, which includes a jaunty piano solo played by George Martin. ‘Good Day Sunshine’ doesn’t hold the same emotional weight as ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, but it is impossible not to feel cheerful when you listen to it.
‘For No One’, the tenth song on the album, is my personal favourite. It has much stiff competition, but I find its melancholic beauty to be unmatched. McCartney is a sensational melodist, and the song is up to his usual standard in that regard, but it is the lyrics that make it special. They are sharp and poignant, laying bare a dying relationship in a sensitive yet unflinching manner. ‘For No One’ features a French horn solo played by Alan Civil, who was the principal hornist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1966 to 1988. The usage of counterpoint during the final verse, where Civil’s French horn intertwines with McCartney’s vocals, is exquisite. Amongst the hundreds of songs Paul McCartney has written over the course of his career, ‘For No One’ stands out as one of the very best.
The influence of drugs permeates the album, which was nothing new for the band. The Beatles had smoked marijuana since Bob Dylan introduced them to it in 1964, and it had a particular effect on Rubber Soul. In 1972, Lennon stated, ‘Rubber Soul was the pot album and Revolver was the acid’. Lennon and Harrison first took LSD in the spring of 1965, and they drew upon their experiences with it in their songwriting. Later that year, at a party during which both Beatles were under the influence of acid, Peter Fonda told Harrison about a near-death experience during his childhood. Lennon overheard this interaction, and it inspired him to write the song ‘She Said She Said’, directly quoting Fonda with the lyric ’I know what it’s like to be dead’. Other tracks with lyrics about drugs include Lennon’s grooving, guitar-based ‘Doctor Robert’ and ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’, McCartney’s Motown-indebted ode to marijuana.
Revolver is one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of popular music. Its fourteen songs span a wide range of musical styles and lyrical themes, making the members’ individual artistic sensibilities apparent while still forming a harmonious whole. There is no shortage of winning melodies, but the Beatles are practically unrecognisable as the band who made ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. If Revolver had been the Beatles’ final album, they would have still been legendary; that they released several more phenomenal records is testament to what an unbeatable combination the Fab Four were. Almost six decades after its release, Revolver still makes for a thrilling listen, and I have faith it will be loved and celebrated for many years to come.