The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Rubber Soul?

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 and the next few posts, I'll take a look back at all five of those. Right now, it's ...


Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul was the Beatles' sixth "studio" album — meaning an album of never-before-issued tracks recorded not in live performance but in a recording studio. This, like most Beatles LPs, was recorded in the famous EMI studio at Abbey Road.

According to Wikipedia, Rubber Soul "was the second Beatles album – after the British version of A Hard Day's Night – to contain only original material." Hence, it was the first original-material-only Beatles LP that we Americans could buy.

An early Christmas present, Rubber Soul arrived on Friday, December 3, 1965, in the United States and on Monday, December 6 in the U.K.

In 1965, the year Rubber Soul was released:

The first U.S. ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam. There were soon protest marches at the University of California, Berkeley. 

It was the year in which the miniskirt arrived, and it was the year advertising cigarettes on TV was banned in Britain. 

In the U.S., the Rolling Stones had their first no. 1 hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." 

Alabama state troopers attacked 525 civil rights demonstrators in Selma as they attempted to march to the state capitol of Montgomery. The event was called "Bloody Sunday." A second march, led this time by Martin Luther King, took place, but by prior agreement turned around peacefully at the Edmund Pettis Bridge. 

On December 8, the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council ("Vatican II") finished the four years of work that would modernize the church. 

In the U.S., the Rolling Stones finally had their first no. 1 hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

* * * * *

Wikipedia says the album name Rubber Soul came "from the term plastic soul, which popular African American soul musicians coined to describe Mick Jagger, a white musician singing soul music." I myself don't hear much Jagger-like "plastic soul" on Rubber Soul. To my mind, the Beatles could never compete with the Rolling Stones when it came to sounding black.

Instead, the Beatles have said that their inspiration for making an album such as Rubber Soul, one that clearly celebrates its folk-rock influences, came from Bob Dylan, with whom they had become friends and whom they wanted to emulate. Wikipedia:

Virtually all of the album's songs were composed immediately after the Beatles' return to London following their North American tour. The Beatles expanded their sound on the album, with influences drawn from African American soul music, the contemporary folk rock of Bob Dylan and the Byrds.

Dylan, by the way, has been credited with introducing the Beatles to marijuana. I think that occurred when the Beatles were on the North American tour mentioned in that quote.

For today's youngsters who don't realize who the Byrds were, they were a California group of (originally) five members who had been blown away by the Beatles' popularity but whose sound came from taking acoustic folk-style music and recording it with electric guitars. They were among the pioneers of folk rock, and their first hit was a cover version of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." Later in the decade, David Crosby of the Byrds helped found the group Crosby, (Steven) Stills & (Graham) Nash.

* * * * *

The Rubber Soul I personally first heard was, of course, the American version:

1. I've Just Seen A Face
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Think For Yourself
5. The Word
6. Michelle
7. It's Only Love
8. Girl
9. I'm Looking Through You
10. In My Life
11. Wait
12. Run For Your Life

The English version, unbeknownst to me as a Yank, had:

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
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

Stripped off in the U.S. were:

• Drive My Car
• Nowhere Man
• What Goes On
• If I Needed Someone

Added in the U.S. were:

• I've Just Seen A Face
• It's Only Love

This was to me the first "serious" Beatles album. The Beatles were not just trying to make hit songs now, but to take their music in new, more-"adult" directions. The group was now aiming in the direction of what in the late 1960s came to be called "rock" music, as distinguished from rock 'n' roll.

George Harrison was beginning to assert himself as a songwriter, instrumentalist, and lead singer. He played, quite surprisingly to most people at the time, an Indian sitar on John's "Norwegian Wood." And, per Wikipedia (I would learn later):

In the main guitar riff to [George's own song] "If I Needed Someone," the Beatles returned the compliment paid to them earlier in 1965 by the Byrds, whose jangly guitar-based sound [Roger] McGuinn had sourced from Harrison's playing the previous year.

Rubber Soul was the first Beatles compendium of songs written and sung by the various Beatles in their own individual rights, it seemed to me, rather than a group-oriented sound. I felt I could "hear" John's distinctive mentality in "In My Life," Paul's in "You Won't See Me." If Capitol had not stripped it out, I would have heard George's in "If I Needed Someone." Ditto, Ringo's distinctive mindset in "What Goes On."

On Rubber Soul and on the albums that came after it, you could always tell which Beatle's view of the world was being voiced by who was doing the lead singing.

There was also an international feel to Rubber Soul, with songs such as "Michelle" using French phrases and sounding French, and songs like "Norwegian Wood" sounding, in some indescribable way, sere and Scandinavian. That international approach impressed me as a freshman at Georgetown University who was making friends with students in the School of Foreign Service and in the Institute of Languages and Linguistics — many of whom were foreign-born or had spent time abroad.

It seemed to me in 1965 that as I was growing up and putting adolescence behind me, the Beatles' music, as evidenced by Rubber Soul, was likewise "growing up."

I should add, however, that not everybody who adored the Beatles in their "early Beatles" phase liked this new music of the group. I had a friend, Ricky, who was about four years younger than I was. He and his sister Gretchen (a year older than I) had every Beatles LP prior to Rubber Soul. When Rubber Soul came out, Ricky lost interest in the Fab Four, and I think Gretchen did too. And it was true to an extent: some of the raw excitement of the Beatles' early music had vanished.