Pre- and Post-Rubber Soul Beatles Albums

To my mind, you can split the Beatles' career into two sections: that which came prior to Rubber Soul, and that which Rubber Soul inaugurated:

Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul was released in the U.S. on December 6, 1965. That meant it arrived just about two years after "I Want to Hold Your Hand" got its first radio airplay here.

This album "spoke to me" as no prior Beatles album had. I had just started my freshman year at college, and Rubber Soul's songs seemed — oh, I don't know — a bit more "grown up" than their earlier songs had been.

Some background is in order. The 1964-1965 period encompassed my last two years in high school. Two of my best childhood friends, Gretchen and Ricky Murphy, became huge Beatles fans in late '63 or early '64 after we heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the car radio of their father's 1955 Chevy Bel Air convertible, which looked like this:

1955 Chevy Bel Air convertible

It must have been during the '63-'64 Christmas vacation. Gretchen, who had just gotten her driver's license, was driving Ricky and me to the grocery store on behalf of their mother. "IWTHYH" came on, and they heard it for the first time.

They were hooked.

From that time on, every time I went over to their house, they would likely be playing one Beatles album or another on a portable record player that may have looked a bit like this one:

1960s-style portable record player

I didn't own any Beatles records, not yet.

Don't get me wrong. I loved their music. I just wasn't a record buyer. I was more of a radio listener.

But Rubber Soul somehow changed that. I guess one main reason was that my father had just installed a fancy stereo setup into the room he used as a study and office. I was able to borrow it to listen to my records. The problem was, I didn't have any records yet. Rubber Soul was, if I recall correctly, my first.

I was at that point able to have Gretchen and Ricky (and other friends) over to listen to my records.

After Rubber Soul, there was Revolver. (I'm skipping over the Capitol album Yesterday and Today. Capitol was the U.S. record label associated with the Parlophone label that released the Beatles' records in the United Kingdom. Capitol would typically delete some of the tracks on the early Parlophone albums and later combine them with singles that had not appeared on any album. It would then release a "fake" Beatles record, such as Yesterday and Today, as if it were a brand new album.)

Anyway, after Revolver came Sgt. Pepper, which was the first Beatles album to be released in the same form in the U.S. as in the U.K. ... But I'm getting way ahead of myself ...