The Beatles Mono Vinyl

Got a bit of down time tonight so I’m listening to more of The Beatles’ mono vinyl box set and loving it.

“Revolver” is for me the revolutionary Beatles album. Most people say “Sgt. Pepper’s” but for me “Revolver” set the stage for what was to come. It was the real breakthrough, the real subversive album.

Let me backtrack. I started with “Help!,” which is another favorite. I love this album, so catchy, so musical and warm, very acoustic, very rhythmic, and singable. Or sing-along-able. (One problem I have playing any Beatles album is I sing along and don’t hear how good the pressing/transfer/release is.)

“Help!” follows an album I don’t think much of, “Beatles For Sale.” That album always struck me as tired and a bit of a retread of what they’d done before. With “A Hard Day’s Night” they proved they could write enough original material for a full album - and great material - but they followed that up with an album with again a lot of covers, “Beatles For Sale.” It’s cool, it rocks, but in their evolution, it always stuck me as a step backwards.

“Help!” is a bit dismissed maybe because people think of it as a soundtrack album. And in the States “Help!” was originally released with a lot of orchestral music on it, movie score stuff, so a lot of fans maybe dismissed it. But if you listen to it again, you’ll hear some amazingly advanced music from the Beatles just three years after their first album was released. The music is rich, full, confident, and adept. The playing is strong, and the songwriting craftsmanship shows real growth. Yes there are some covers here as well - I’m talking about the current release, the CD that’s been available for years in the UK and the US as well as the mono vinyl album I played tonight - but there’s a bit more life on “Help!” than there is on “Beatles For Sale” and a bit of musical development I think. Though the song “Help!” isn’t one of my favorites (though I love the lyric), this is a surprisingly full album. “The Night Before,” “You’re Going To Lose That Girl,” “Ticket To Ride,” “Act Naturally” (great Ringo cover), “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” and the ever-covered “Yesterday” sounding much fuller and tighter in the mono vinyl release. If you’re a Beatles fan and haven’t played “Help!” lately, put it on and enjoy.

So from “Help!” I moved onto “Rubber Soul.” “Rubber Soul” is the first album where they began to break from the pop music mold. In the “Anthology” program, George (or Ringo?) says “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” sound like sides A and B of the same album. For a while I got that and agreed with it, but especially tonight, listening to them back-to-back in the original mono mixes, it’s clear how “Revolver” is worlds away from “Rubber Soul.” “Rubber Soul” still has the nice acoustic strumming of “Help!,” the bouncy catchy vibe. Cool, likable songs that get under your skin and don’t go away, but again, not a huge advance. Yes I hear some of the heavy drumming Ringo later used to great effect on “Tomorrow Never Knows” in “Rubber Soul,” and you hear the band flexing its muscle maybe, or embracing its freedom as a top act that can try their own things. But an odd album. It opens with “Drive My Car,” certainly no one’s idea of a brilliant song. Then you have the amazing “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” brilliant musically (for pop) in 6/4 time, but I think a little lacking lyrically. We know now this was about a fling John wrote about, but I’m not crazy about the lyrical structure. Of course, that’s just me, your mileage may vary.

Other tunes I love on the album include “Nowhere Man” and “I’m Looking Through You.” But this isn’t a huge advance beyond “Help!.” Great strong album, but again, part of the same mold.

Then you get to their next album, “Revolver.” Now THIS is revolutionary. By the time the album closes with “Got To Get You Into My Life” and the final song “Tomorrow Never Knows,” you know things will never be the same. This is a seismic shift in what pop music is capable of. Those final two tracks epitomize everything that made The Beatles great: catchy melodicism, innovative recording techniques, and a bit of daring avant-garde which they delivered with great musicality. The ballsy attack of “Tomorrow Never Knows” is simply brilliant to me. How did they get away with that, and how did they make it sound both threatening and cool at the same time? Both scary and hummable? Even today that song has an impact.

The ONLY false step on the album is the misfire of “Doctor Robert,” a song that would fit more peacefully on “Rubber Soul” than “Revolver.” One of the only songs the Beatles admitted to being a “drug song” (duh), it’s horrible. Musically nice, catchy, great swampy snaky vibe, but lyrically obvious and an attempt at clever cuteness that fails. Yuck. Great music, terrible lyric. (Though if you want to talk about terrible lyrics, we could pick apart John Lennon’s shocking “Run for Your Life” from "Rubber Soul," but let’s save that for another post.) I love the fantastic opener on “Revolver,” George’s “Taxman,” which rocks and shows how strong his contributions had become. Then you have “Eleanor Rigby,” “She Said She Said,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and “I Want to Tell You.” That makes a strong argument for this being their pinnacle achievement.

Next up: Another playing of “Sgt. Pepper’s.”