Sunday, February 1, 2009

Rubber Soul: The Album

This album illustrates many remarkable Beatles facts. The album was made in one month, with recording sessions spanning October 12 to November 11, 1965. The working title for the LP was The Magic Circle, but a McCartney remark in the studio about "plastic soul" (actually made during a session for "I'm Down") morphed into "rubber soul," an allusion to soul music even though the LP didn't really demonstrate this style of music as opposed to "I'm Down."

Geroge Martin commented that Rubber Soul showed a completely different side of the Beatles, who with this album began a long period of experimentation. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys noted the coherence the album seemed to have, which inspired him to do Pet Sounds, which in turn inspired McCartney to suggest Sgt. Pepper's. The Beatles were now using the sitar, harmonium, and fuzz bass, together with their traditional instruments. (McCartney began playing a Rickenbacker bass, which was used on most of the tracks.)

Martin also says that this album marks the time period when McCartney became more than a bit overbearing, requiring numerous takes for his songs and asking others, such as Harrison, to try parts over and over again, only to do the riffs himself in the end. As Martin said, McCartney was becoming an arranger and sound engineer as well as a composer.

It was released on December 3, 1965 in the UK and on December 6, 1965 in the U.S. Some of the tracks from Rubber Soul were included on Capitol's Yesterday and Today.

Tracks on the Parlophone release included:

Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood
You Won't See Me
Nowhere Man
Think For Yourself
The Word
Michelle
What Goes On
Girl
I'm Looking Through You
In My Life
Wait
If I Needed Someone
Run for Your Life

Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)