And the reason, I guess, is that this is still recognizable pop music, and if it was revolutionary at the time then it was a call from the future form that pop music would settle into. I've been thinking a while about some of the points I've made about "authenticity," and about how experimentalism and sensing the character of the author in the music became essential in rock music after the Beatles. As each Beatle pursued their own interests, it added up to a collection of 14 great songs with their own voices, together yet apart - a quality that would be blown up to epic proportions of subsequent records. Here, though, John's "In My Life" and "Girl" sit well with Paul's "Michelle" and "You Won't See Me" and it's all of a piece.
I think that because this album isn't as up-front about its brilliance, and subtler in its pop appeal, it's the most underrated Beatles album. It has rough points - the closing number, the unabashedly misogynistic "Run For Your Life" despite being catchy, is one of the most embarrassing things the Beatles recorded. Literally, I get embarrassed for listening to it. (John stole the opening lyric, "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man" from an Elvis song called "Baby Let's Play House," but the King managed to wait a whole song and build up to that statement so you wouldn't take him too seriously, whereas John put it right up front so you would.) "Wait" is considerably better, if simplistic by mid-60's Beatles standards. It has a zen-ness to it, in its shaking tambourines and softly bent guitars. "But if your heart breaks, don't wait, turn me away / And if your heart's strong, hold on, I won't delay." It would have been considered excellent just two years earlier. "What Goes On," the obligatory Ringo tune, shows how his microcosmic career within the Beatles was diverging, keeping true to that Western twang he displayed on "Act Naturally." Kind of a neat diversion in this folk-tinged proto-acid album. And in any case, it fits well with the album's undercurrent of trying to see into the hearts of others.
George Harrison's two contributions, "Think For Yourself" and "If I Needed Someone" both enhance his songwriting profile. Lyrically, they're extrapolations of his earlier efforts, putting a somewhat "iffier" spin on boy-girl narratives, wrenching open the quirks that tend to get missed out by mainstream writers. Sonically, they're lavish bits, with the roaring fuzz bass on "Think" and the commanding Byrds-esque 12-string on "Someone." He only got a few spots per album, but he made good use of them, drizzling each with special features.
A bunch of the songs, mostly Paul's, were really forward-looking pop numbers: smart but not psychedelic, meaningful but playful. "Drive My Car" doesn't get enough love. "You Won't See Me" and "I'm Looking Through You" are other great solid pop pieces that fill in the gaps of this album, do the heavy lifting, the way "The Night Before" and "You're Going To Lose That Girl" did on Help. Except they're way better. Every inch of "You Won't See Me" is slathered in greatness, from the backing vocal to the spiky guitar to the title phrase, which has been noted seems like the next step up the evolutionary scale from Help's "Tell Me What You See." It takes that John-esque angst from "No Reply" and replaces it with Paul's common touch. Dig also the scattershot guitar bursts in "I'm Looking Through You," it gets my heart racing. That these are the relatively minor tunes, not the blockbusters, shows how on-top-of-their-game this band was.
The album is laced, however, by several extreme highlights, mostly "Lennon" songs, although one really sweet spot is "Michelle," whose success is in being very simple without being simplistic, sweet but not saccharine, minor but not forgettable. Think about how it exemplifies the difficulty in communicating feelings. McCartney's songs on this one have a throughline of romantic disconnect. Lennon's are more observational. "Norwegian Wood," one of my favourite Beatles songs ever, is a perfect short story which offers no insight or explanation for the behaviour of its characters, it's just stuff that happens and speaks largely for itself. The sonic landscape, based on acoustic guitar and sitar (my favourite use of that instrument on a Beatle song) sweeps the listener up in the tale, then drops us back out of it, leaving uswondering what we've peeked in on. And in the long run, it's part of the Beatles' charm that sometimes they did things like this, just once, so perfectly, then never went back to it again. Because they had more stuff to try.
Then there's "Nowhere Man," which honestly always shocks me with how good it is. It shows how much they'd learned, from everything they'd been through, from themselves, from Dylan and other musicians along the way. It's a song about how useless and apathetic Lennon thinks everyone (including himself) is. It manages to be both catchy and meaningful -- and features a bitchin' guitar break that, like all great solos, seems to underscore the song's meaning. This was one of the first pop songs you really had to think about. Likewise, there's "The Word," one of many "Love will set you free" type anthems the Beatles penned, and for the first time it seems fairly obvious they're not really talking about romantic love. It's an anthem for the dawn of hippyism that is maybe a tad naive (though far from being "All You Need Is Love,") it's actually a bit practical if vague. Still, it gets its message across and is funky as hell, with Paul's bassline. With songs like these, they were either pointing their formerly teen audience into adulthood, or moving along with them.
And when you talk about "mature pop," you get to songs like "Girl," which espouses complicated emotions of a true love-hate relationship with a well-formed, dynamic female character (although she doesn't come off well,) and "In My Life," which depicts the strange balancing act between the past and the future for anyone in their mid-20's, who has lived some but still has a lot of time ahead. John Lennon was the same age when he wrote this that I am now, and it freaks me right the hell out. As on "Help," he digs down deep and comes up with something very personal, and specific yet extraordinarily relevant to listeners. This is his version of a "Yesterday."
Rubber Soul is one of my very favourite Beatles albums to listen to, one of the least susceptible to changing tastes and times. It's very chance-taking, and yet not in the sense that it's extreme... the music is lively and meaningful at once without ever being too loud or too low-key. All of the songs distinguish themselves with unique features, yet because of where the band was "at" at the time, they sound like they belong together. Here is a thoughtful band, with ideas about their music, writing tunes that have well stood the test of time.
For a while now it had seemed clear that each album was a chance to check in on the band as they moved through their lives and careers. That would only grow stronger as time went on, but here is where "who they are" begins to become crucial to what music they made and how it defined them. This is album is full of that extra ingredient, that sense of "who made this" that makes all great rock and roll what it is.
Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca
// Amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment