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Rubber Soul

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Rubber Soul is an album by English rock band The Beatles, first released in December 1965. It was recorded in just over four weeks to make the Christmas market, and was a major achievement, with reviewers taking note of The Beatles' developing musical vision. Like most Beatles albums, the record was produced by George Martin and achieved widespread commercial success.

Contents

Overview

The album was a major artistic leap for the group, and often cited by critics, as well as members of the band, as the point where The Beatles' earlier Merseybeat sound began to morph into the eclectic, sophisticated pop/rock of their later career. Musically, The Beatles broadened their sound, most notably with influences drawn from the contemporary folk-rock of The Byrds and Bob Dylan. The album also saw The Beatles broadening rock n' roll's instrumental resources, most notably on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", the first rock record to feature a sitar.

Lyrically, the album was a major progression. Though a smattering of earlier Beatles songs had expressed romantic doubt and negativity, the songs on Rubber Soul represented a pronounced development in sophistication, thoughtfulness, and ambiguity. In particular, the relationships between the sexes moved from simpler boy-girl love songs to more nuanced, even negative portrayals. "Norwegian Wood", one of the most famous examples and often cited as The Beatles' first conscious assimilation of the lyrical innovations of Bob Dylan, sketches a poetically ambiguous, extra-marital affair between the singer and a mysterious girl. "Drive My Car" serves as a satirical piece of reverse sexism. Songs like "I'm Looking Through You", "You Won't See Me" and "Girl" expressed more emotionally complex, even bitter and downbeat portrayals of romance, and "Nowhere Man" was the first Beatles song to move beyond a romantic subject.

After completing the album and the accompanying single "We Can Work It Out" and "Day Tripper", the Beatles were exhausted from years of virtually non-stop recording, touring, and film work. They demanded time off, and spent the first part 1966 recovering and exploring the musical directions that would color their subsequent work.

The album had a 42-week run in the British charts starting on December 11 1965, and on Christmas Day took over from Help!, The Beatles' previous album, at the top position in the charts, a position the album would hold for eight weeks. The album became a classic — on May 9 1987, it returned to the album charts for three weeks, and ten years later made another comeback to the charts.

Rubber Soul is often cited as one of the greatest albums in pop music history. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted Rubber Soul the 40th greatest album of all time; in 2001 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 6. Rolling Stone magazine placed it at number 5.

The album was released on CD in 1987, using the 14-song UK track lineup. As with the CD release of the 1965 Help! album, the Rubber Soul CD featured a contemporary stereo digital remix of the album prepared by George Martin. This remix is a bit controversial among Beatle fans — many purists prefer the 1965 mix. Strangely, a few Canadian-origin CD editions of Rubber Soul and Help! accidentally use the original mix of the album, presumably due to a mix-up as to which tapes were sent to the pressing plant. As of 2006, these "mistakes" sell for a fair amount in the second-hand market, when properly identified.

In 2005, the entire album was covered under the title Rubber Folk for the Mike Harding show on BBC Radio 2. Each song was arranged and performed by a different folk musician or group. While originally developed for radio, the venture proved popular with listeners and a CD release is forthcoming, although Amazon UK do not currently list a release date.

Another tribute, entitled This Bird Has Flown - A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul, was released in 2005. It featured a variety of artists, including the Fiery Furnaces, Ben Kweller, and Yonder Mountain String Band, covering tracks from the album. It was produced by Jim Sampas and released by Razor & Tie Records.

The cover photo

The photo of The Beatles on the Rubber Soul cover looks stretched. Paul McCartney describes the story behind this in Volume 5 of the documentary film Anthology. The photographer was Bob Freeman, and he had taken some pictures of The Beatles at John Lennon's house. Bob was showing the photos to The Beatles in London; he was projecting the photos onto a cardboard of album size so they could imagine exactly how it would look like as an album cover.

They came across a photo that they liked. Just about when they were about to switch photos, the slide card fell backwards a little bit, which elongated the photo and it stretched. Then they shouted: "Ah! Can we have that? Can you do it like that?". Bob told them: "Yeah, I can print it like that." And that was how the unusual Rubber Soul album cover came to be.

American release

Rubber Soul was the first US Beatles album to share its cover art with its UK counterpart; however, Capitol Records used a different color saturation, causing the orange lettering used by Parlophone Records to look like gold lettering, instead.
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Rubber Soul was the first US Beatles album to share its cover art with its UK counterpart; however, Capitol Records used a different color saturation, causing the orange lettering used by Parlophone Records to look like gold lettering, instead.

Rubber Soul came out in the United States three days after the British release, and began its 59-week long chart run on Christmas Day. It topped the charts for six weeks from January 8 1966, before dropping back. The album sold 1.2 million copies within nine days of its release, and to date has sold over four million in America.

Like other pre-Sgt. Pepper Beatles albums, Rubber Soul differed markedly in its US and UK configurations; indeed, through peculiarities of sequencing, the US Rubber Soul became something of a "folk-rock" album, thanks to the addition of "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love" (leftovers from the UK Help!) and the deletion of some of the more upbeat tracks ("Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man", "If I Needed Someone", and "What Goes On"). The tracks missing on the US version would later surface on the Yesterday . . . and Today collection. The track variation resulted in a shorter album length, clocking in at 29 min 59 s. In addition, the US stereo version has a "false start" at the beginning of "I'm Looking Through You."

The American version of the album also greatly influenced The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, who "answered" the album by releasing Pet Sounds in 1966. In turn, Pet Sounds greatly impressed the Beatles and served as inspiration for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

There were two different stereo versions released on vinyl in the US: the standard US stereo mix, and the "Dexter Stereo" version (a.k.a. the "East Coast" version), which has a layer of reverb added to the entire album.

The standard US stereo mix is available on CD as part of The Capitol Albums, Volume 2 box set.

Track listing (UK release)

Side one

  1. "Drive My Car" [SAMPLE (123k)]
  2. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" [SAMPLE (136k)]
  3. "You Won't See Me", featuring Mal Evans on Hammond
  4. "Nowhere Man" [SAMPLE (144k)]
  5. "Think For Yourself" (Harrison)
  6. "The Word", featuring George Martin on harmonium
  7. "Michelle"

Side two

  1. "What Goes On" (Lennon-McCartney-Starkey)
  2. "Girl"
  3. "I'm Looking Through You"
  4. "In My Life" [SAMPLE (217k)], featuring George Martin on piano
  5. "Wait"
  6. "If I Needed Someone" (Harrison)
  7. "Run For Your Life"

Track listing (US release)

Side one

  1. "I've Just Seen a Face"
  2. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"
  3. "You Won't See Me"
  4. "Think For Yourself" (Harrison)
  5. "The Word"
  6. "Michelle"

Side two

  1. "It's Only Love"
  2. "Girl"
  3. "I'm Looking Through You"
  4. "In My Life"
  5. "Wait"
  6. "Run For Your Life"

Release history

Country Date Label Format Catalog
United Kingdom December 3 1965 Parlophone mono LP PMC 1267
stereo LP PCS 3075
United States December 6 1965 Capitol Records mono LP T 2442
stereo LP ST 2442
Australia Unknown EMI Stereo 8-track cartridge 8X-PCSO-3075
Worldwide reissue April 15 1987 Apple, Parlophone, EMI CD CDP 7 46440 2
Japan March 11 1998 Toshiba-EMI CD TOCP 51116
Japan January 21 2004 Toshiba-EMI Remastered LP TOJP 60136
Worldwide Release April 11 2006 Apple/Capitol/EMI CD reissue of U.S. LP CDP 0946 3 57501 2 6

Personnel

with 
External links
The Beatles
John Lennon | Paul McCartney | George Harrison | Ringo Starr
Pete Best | Stuart Sutcliffe
Management
Brian Epstein | Allen Klein | Apple Records
Production
George Martin | Geoff Emerick | Norman Smith | Phil Spector | Abbey Road Studios
Official studio albums
Please Please Me (1963) | With the Beatles (1963) | A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Beatles for Sale (1964) | Help! (1965) | Rubber Soul (1965) | Revolver (1966) | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | The Beatles (1968) | Yellow Submarine (1969) | Abbey Road (1969) | Let It Be (1970)
A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Help! (1965) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | Yellow Submarine (1968) | Let it Be (1970)
History | Lennon-McCartney | Bootlegs | Discography | Anthology | Influence | The Quarrymen | London | Beatlemania | Beatlesque | Fifth Beatle | Paul Is Dead | British Invasion | Apple Corps | Northern Songs | Harrisongs | Startling Music
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