The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Revolver?

What was the "best" Beatles album? It seems like just about every new album by the Beatles was deemed "the best one yet" when it first came out. Looking back, every Beatles fan has his or her own favorite. I think most people would find their own personal favorite in the following list:

• Rubber Soul
• Revolver
• Sgt. Pepper
• The Beatles (The "White Album")
• Abbey Road

In this series of posts, I'm taking a look back at all five of those. In the previous post, it was Rubber Soul. Right now, it's ...


Revolver

The studio album that succeeded Rubber Soul, the Beatles' Revolver arrived in America on Friday, August 5, 1966, and in the U.K. on Monday, August 8.

In 1966:

The first "acid test" — a party promoting the use of the still-legal LSD — was held in California. Later in the year, LSD would be made illegal. 

In January, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam reached 190,000; then, in April, 250,000. In March, race riots erupted in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) endorsed the goal of Black Power. Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were held across the U.S. 

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in Washington, D.C.  

Actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong began his Cultural Revolution to purge and reorganize China's Communist Party. 

The Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded. 

A few days before the release of Revolver, sniper Charles Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 from atop the University of Texas at Austin Main Building tower, after earlier killing his wife and mother.

The legendary album Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan's seminal album Blonde on Blonde were released. Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident in Woodstock, NY, and would not be seen in public for more than a year. Grace Slick performed live for the first time with her new group, Jefferson Airplane. 

On the day Revolver was released in the U.S., groundbreaking took place in New York City for the building of the World Trade Center. A few days later, John Lennon apologized for his "more popular than Jesus" remark. On August 29, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, the Beatles gave their final live performance as a touring band. Later in the year, John Lennon met Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery in London. And the Beatles began recording sessions for their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP.

* * * * *

Back to Revolver: Its front cover was a work of art in itself, and its back cover gave us perhaps the coolest photo of the Beatles ever. I found the positioning of John in that photo interesting. As the nominal leader of the Beatles, he was pictured alone on the left side, with the other three facing him. Here are the front and back covers of Revolver:

* * * * *

But what about Yesterday... And Today?

Between Rubber Soul and Revolver in the U.S., Capitol Records released Yesterday... And Today, an album that contained:

1. Drive My Car
2. I'm Only Sleeping
3. Nowhere Man
4. Doctor Robert
5. Yesterday
6. Act Naturally
7. And Your Bird Can Sing
8. If I Needed Someone
9. We Can Work It Out
10. What Goes On
11. Day Tripper

These 11 songs included some omitted from the U.S. version of Rubber Soul, some other Beatles' songs that had been left out of earlier Capitol albums, and songs that had only been released as singles.

The Yesterday... And Today album cover was intended to be the one on the left below ...

... but owing to the fact that it depicted babies with severed heads and raw cuts of meat, a chastened Capitol hastily substituted the anodyne version shown on the right above.

* * * * *

Then came Revolver. In the U.S. it contained:

1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. Love You To
4. Here, There And Everywhere
5. Yellow Submarine
6. She Said She Said
7. Good Day Sunshine
8. For No One
9. I Want To Tell You
10. Got To Get You Into My Life
11. Tomorrow Never Knows

In the U.K.:

1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. I'm Only Sleeping
4. Love You To
5. Here, There And Everywhere
6. Yellow Submarine
7. She Said She Said
8. Good Day Sunshine
9. And Your Bird Can Sing
10. For No One
11. Doctor Robert
12. I Want To Tell You
13. Got To Get You Into My Life
14. Tomorrow Never Knows

The Brits got "I'm Only Sleeping," "And Your Bird Can Sing," and "Doctor Robert" on their version of Revolver — three songs that had already come out on Yesterday... And Today here in the U.S. The first and third of these were John's songs, the first bearing a message about the first-person subject's (John's own?) narcotized detachment, the second a cynical take on "doctors" who provide their patients with drugs. And so the lineup that put "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Doctor Robert" on the British version of Revolver spun the album further in a Lennon-like direction of commentary on the "scene" of the mid-1960s.

Meanwhile, George's "Taxman" was acerbic political commentary that bemoaned the huge portion of the Beatles' vast income that was being sucked up by high rates of taxation in Britain. George also provided Revolver with his raga-like, sitar-drenched "Love You To."

Paul's "Eleanor Rigby" was — surprisingly to many folks at the time, myself included — an existentialist anthem of great songwriting sophistication. I had an instructor at Georgetown — he was a Jesuit-in-training named John Cunningham — who cited it in his Philosophy of Man class as illustrative of the loss of innocence our baby-boom generation was experiencing.

Paul's other contributions to Revolver ran the gamut from the downbeat "For No One" to the unabashed love song "Here, There And Everywhere" to the pot anthem "Got To Get You Into My Life" to the upbeat, LSD-loving "Good Day Sunshine."

I have such a great memory of "Good Day Sunshine." In the summer of 1968,I had to take makeup courses in the early evenings at Georgetown. One evening I exited my classroom building and found its brick facade saturated with the red-tinted strong sunlight of the ending of the day. Out of the open window of a nearby dormitory, I could hear one of the Georgetown students playing "Good Day Sunshine" quite loudly on his record player. I was so thrilled at hearing and seeing "good day sunshine" at one and the same time, and I've never forgotten it.

John's "Tomorrow Never Knows" is extra special. John wrote, "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying." You could call this song philosophical; you could call it psychedelic. Whatever it was, it was and remains unique. John worked with Beatles' producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick to compress the sound of his voice and to include several aurally uninterpretable tape loops into the background accompaniment. This was an engineering tour de force in the days before digital audio made "sampling" easy. What you heard in "Tomorrow Never Knows" was like nothing you had heard before, but it also hung together as a song — unlike "Revolution 9" on the White Album.

So: Following Rubber Soul and preceding Sgt. Pepper, Revolver was a huge step in the evolution of the Beatles' music from rock 'n' roll to rock per se. Many fans consider Revolver to be the Beatles' finest album.