The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Sgt. Pepper?

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 Revolver. Right now, it's ...


Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper revolutionized the world of popular music when it appeared in the United Kingdom on Thursday, June 1, 1967. It was released one day later in the United States. Time magazine, according to Wikipedia, "declared it 'a historic departure in the progress of music.'"

In 1967:

U.S. astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed when fire broke out in their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch pad test. On January 3, 1967, Jack Ruby, American killer of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died. On February 18, J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American physicist who was one of the "fathers of the atomic bomb," died. North Sea natural gas was first pumped ashore at Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire. U.S. labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa began serving an 8-year prison sentence for attempting to bribe a jury. Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, defected to the United States. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed he could "solve" the John F. Kennedy assassination; his theory as based on a conspiracy that he said was planned in New Orleans. JFK's body was moved to its permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery. 

At historically black Howard University in Washington, DC, students protesting the Vietnam War draft shouted down the head of the U.S. Selective Service System, Gen. Lewis Hershey, with cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!" Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the Vietnam War during a religious service in New York City. Boxer Muhammad Ali refused military service on religious grounds and was stripped of his heavyweight title and not allowed to fight again for three years. Six days of race rioting in Newark, NJ, left 26 dead. Nine days of race rioting in Detroit left 43 dead. Race riots spread to other U.S. cities. Thurgood Marshall was nominated as the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Murderer Richard Speck was sentenced to death in the electric chair for killing 8 student nurses in Chicago. The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan, and Syria. The British Parliament decriminalized homosexuality.  A bill legalizing abortion passed in the British Parliament.

American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated in Arlington, Virginia. Communist guerrilla leader Che Guevara was captured and executed in Bolivia. Joan Baez and 38 others were arrested in Oakland, CA, for blocking the entrance to a military induction center. When tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters marched in Washington, DC, poet Allen Ginsberg symbolically chanted to "levitate" the Pentagon. 

Navy pilot John McCain, now a U.S. senator, was shot down over North Vietnam and made a POW. U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, in opposition to the Vietnam War. In Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Christiaan Barnard carried out the world's first heart transplant. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Once again, the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded. 

The Doors released their first album, The Doors. Later, the Doors would sing "Light My Fire" on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in the U.S. and would defy network censors by including the word "higher," seemingly a drug reference. On February 20, Kurt Cobain was born. The "Summer of Love" took place in San Francisco; it came in the wake of a "Human Be-In" in Golden Gate Park. The Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, was released in the United States. The classic "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction opened at Disneyland in California. Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu were married in Las Vegas. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their debut album, Are You Experienced. The three-day Monterey Pop Festival occurred in California. 400 million viewers watched "Our World," the first live, international, television broadcast via satellite; it featured the debut of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love." 

The Bee Gees released their first album, Bee Gees' 1st, in 1967. Pink Floyd released their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The original lineup of Fleetwood Mac made its live debut in the U.K. at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival. Beatles manager Brian Epstein was found dead of a barbiturate overdose in his locked bedroom. The final episode of the TV series "The Fugitive" aired in the U.S. The TV series "The Prisoner" had its world broadcast premiere in Canada. The musical "Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" opened off-Broadway. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their Axis: Bold as Love album. The only psychedelic rock album by the Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request, was released. On October 3, American folk singer Woody Guthrie died; the father of folk musician Arlo Guthrie, he was an early hero of Bob Dylan's. The Beatles released their Magical Mystery Tour LP.

* * * * *

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper was manifestly a concept album. The idea was that the Beatles would wear uniforms and adopt the imaginary identities of four members of a once well-known marching band. This "Lonely Hearts Club" band, led by the fictional "Sgt. Pepper," would now cease "going in and out of style" and accordingly make its big comeback: "... may I introduce to you / The act you've known for all these years ... ." That song, the first track on the album, segued into "With A Little Help From My Friends," in which a sad-voiced band member, Billy Shears —portrayed by Ringo — tells us exactly how he "gets by" in life.

Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album to be issued with the same song lineup in the U.S. as in the U.K.:

1. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. With A Little Help From My Friends
3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
4. Getting Better
5. Fixing A Hole
6. She's Leaving Home
7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!
8. Within You Without You
9. When I'm Sixty-Four
10. Lovely Rita
11. Good Morning Good Morning
12. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
13. A Day In The Life

The rest of songs in the lineup, starting with "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," did not exactly carry forward the original idea of portraying members of Sgt. Pepper's fictional band. Yet all were exceptional songs that showcased musical ideas never before used in popular music. Often the songs segued aurally from one to the next, and they all seemed to form a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Along the way, you heard (says Wikipedia) "a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music."

Once you got to the final track on the album, "A Day In The Life," you were reveling in ecstasy, thinking it couldn't get much better than this. But then it did get better.

"A Day In The Life" commented on news stories John Lennon had read in the newspaper: "a lucky man who made the grade" and "blew his mind out in a car"; later "a crowd of people turned away," even though "the English army had just won the war." After several verses like that, John indicates "I'd love to turn you on" and steps aside, and we hear a seeming non sequitur from Paul:

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late 

Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream

So both song motifs turned out to be about drugs! Then John returns to his main theme:

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall 

And again he sings:

I'd love to turn you on ...

Then comes a musical cacophony, followed by a slowly fading piano chord ... and finally some incomprehensible voices occupying the "inner groove" of the vinyl LP. There have been many theories about who is saying what in that gobbledygook groove; I have no real thoughts on the matter. However, the main idea was to make the record player keep playing this incomprehensible hash over and over, instead of lifting the tone arm and stopping play of the record. Yet the record player I used would quit playing the record even before reaching the inner groove, so I had no idea of this behavior until years later. And on a CD or digital version of the recording, there is of course no mechanical way to keep playing the "inner groove" over and over and over ...

* * * * *

Sgt. Pepper was the first popular music LP whose (back) cover featured song lyrics:

Notice that the photo of Paul has him with his back to the camera. In 1966 a rumor had started that Paul was dead and had been replaced by a near-lookalike. Many fans thought this photo, inasmuch as it didn't show his face,  confirmed that!

* * * * *

Now: I invite you to listen to all the great stuff on this album ...

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.

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.