#44 The Beatles- Rubber Soul
- agalvin19
- Oct 19
- 5 min read
What’s that strange herbal smell coming from the studio?
(Parlophone)
Released: 3rd December 1965
Producer: George Martin
Topped the chart:
19th December 1965 (for 8 weeks)
8 weeks total
Whether they were made of rubber or leather, The Beatles’ shoes were likely on their last legs by October 1965, and it’s not hard to see why—five studio albums in two-and-a-half years, multiple world tours, TV appearances and almost no time off: every day they weren’t playing live they were in the studio recording with increasing desperation and decreasing inspiration.
Not that this is a story told by the music, with each release raising the bar on sophistication and maturity, both in terms of the music they were producing and their use of the studio. Rubber Soul, that December’s big album release, would push The Beatles to their creative limit. There is no reason to think that the band were capable of moving the dial at this stage: the three songwriters were left with nothing in the tank, with just a handful of sessions set aside to put a record together. Recording started: 12th October 1965. In the shops: 3rd December 1965. Phew.
Yet, against the odds, The Beatles were about to set the template for album-orientated rock music for the next forty years.
A Hard Day’s Night is the first essential Beatles record, but in the 2 years since its release, the bounds that The Beatles had made were extraordinary. In a 1965 TV special designed to highlight new single Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out (not featured here, as was the way of things in the mid-60s), Peter Sellers read the lyrics of A Hard Day’s Night in the style of a Lawrence Olivier Shakespearean soliloquy and it serves to highlight just how simplistic the lyrics are. They’re a world away from the new songs being performed- Day Tripper was a wink to others taking LSD at the weekend in the guise of a woman who dares to reject a lover’s advances, while We Can Work It Out also looked to something new in Beatles writing: actual real-life relationships.
Both of these topics feed through to the album the single was supposedly promoting: Rubber Soul (a title both lame while also perfectly summing up the album’s off-kilter perspective, along with its infamously warped cover). As if that wasn't challenging enough, the band decided to ditch the cover versions used to fill out previous records, an insane choice when you consider there were precisely zero songs ready to go at the start of the sessions.
Yet as often was the case, when The Beatles’ backs were against the wall, they produced their finest work so far. Aside from a few examples of reaching back for very old Lennon-McCartney originals in the cupboard (Ringo vehicle What Goes On was from at least 1963; French fantasy Michelle goes back to the late 50s and Wait was a cast-off from the Help! sessions), most of what appears on Rubber Soul was written very close to their recording dates. But none of these songs feel like a panicked rush: they feel new and surprisingly relaxed, and there’s certainly one element in The Beatles' lives that contributed to this…
As has been covered to death elsewhere, Rubber Soul is The Beatles “pot album”, with the smell of grass seeping out the grooves in some of its finer moments, this combined with a new interest in LSD meant that the band were looking at their usual romantic subjects in new ways. No songs about holding hands and sleeping like a log for Peter Sellers to mock—the songs have characters, points of view, even sort of jokes. We get guys at bars trying to pick up ambitious women (Drive My Car, which even includes a punchline), frustrations aired against powerful women proving unobtainable (Girl), trying to cross the language barrier (Michelle) and even an extra-marital affair that may or may not lead to arson (Norwegian Wood). We also get some of our first Beatles songs not about love- Nowhere Man is about writer’s block, In My Life explores a yearning for times past from the lofty age of 25, and The Word could either be a treatise on love within society…or the ramblings of a stoned hippie. The majority of these songs were written and fronted by John Lennon, often painted as the most curious Beatles at this stage (though his songwriting partner was the one taking an interest in the avant-garde), and it’s his lyrics that create the turning point for The Beatles from pop boys to rock men.
In comparison, Paul McCartney—the only one of the four not to have indulged in LSD at this point—and his lyrics feel immature and trite. While Lennon is writing from the position of a chin-stroking adult, McCartney is petty and childish in his approach to relationship woes. You Won’t See Me is a stroppy and misogynistic song about a woman not making time for him, while I’m Looking Through You feels like an argument-ending dismissal with McCartney walking away with his nose high in the air. The lyrical equivalent of the silent treatment to his girlfriend of the time, Jane Asher.
That’s not to denigrate his songs, as they were every bit as musically expansive as what Lennon was producing—the Hammond drone on You Won’t See Me, the acoustic strum that brings I’m Looking Through You to life—and Rubber Soul stretched. Elsewhere, much has been made of the sitar on Norwegian Wood and while it’s a fumbling first attempt, it does find George Harrison trying to get a handle on a completely new way of making music for a Western pop record, one that would dominate the rest of his short life. That’s in addition to the trill of a sped up harpsicord on In My Life and George’s delay pedal on Wait.
When it comes to finding new sounds, Harrison is Rubber Soul’s MVP, adding a filthy fuzz guitar to Think For Yourself and the 12-strings Byrds-y wonder of If I Needed Someone, both written by him. George Harrison might not quite match Lennon’s purple patch of songwriting here, but for the first time he is on par with McCartney.
There are minor niggles that stop Rubber Soul from quite matching the band’s finest work—Run For Your Life is a misogynist nothing of a song that would have been beneath even the Rolling Stones at this stage; while George Martin’s decision to place the dreariest Lennon-McCartnery song in their catalogue, Ringo-fronted What Goes On as the opener to side two is baffling—when viewed in order, this album is the biggest sonic leap from The Beatles to date. It was also hugely influential: the re-ordered American version of the album that puts the focus squarely on folk rock quite literally blew Brian Wilson’s mind and pushed him to create the wonder of Pet Sounds a year later, perhaps the high watermark of young men making pop music for grown ups.
As totemic as Rubber Soul remains, The Beatles had something else up their sleeve that was ready to go one better…
Score: 9/10
Tracklisting:
SIDE A
1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won’t See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. Think for Yourself
6. The Word
7. Michelle
SIDE B
8. What Goes On
9. Girl
10. I’m Looking Through You
11. In My Life
12. Wait
13. If I Needed Someone
14. Run for Your Life
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