The Beatles, The #1 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Five

 

(Continued from Part Four)

The band promoted the album with another U.S. tour, highlighted by a famous concert before a world record crowd of 55,600 in New York City's Shea Stadium on August 15.  Along the way, they met Elvis Presley, who invited him into his home in Beverly Hills, California.  

The Beatles broke new ground when they became the first Rock group to be nominated for a Grammy Award when they were recognized as a nominee for Album of the Year.

In September, the group began a Saturday morning cartoon series, The Beatles, which aired for two years.  It was the first weekly television series to feature animated versions of real people.

Although love songs dominated this next classic album, the steps forward, not only on the thoughtful and mature lyrics but bringing forth musical innovations,  completely changed the way popular music sounded. 

The creative process of the group continued to grow, and the Beatles had a profound influence on their contemporaries in both the complexity of their songwriting as well as their increasingly innovative production techniques.  "We had been making albums rather like a collection of singles," producer George Martin said to author Mark Hertsgaard for his books A Day in the Life:  The Music and Artistry of the Beatles.  "Now we were really beginning to think about albums as a bit of art on their own."

Rubber Soul in 1965 was by far the best album the group had released to date.  Even the casual listener not living at the time can easily detect the difference in Popular music before the Beatles, and specifically before Rubber Soul, and that which evolved afterward.  There are nuances and complexities in the music that simply did not exist before.  

The lyrics went much deeper; previous songs by the group that had just scratched the surface of emotion and romance now explored the human experience much more fully.  Lennon and McCartney were entering their peak songwriting abilities at the time this album was recorded.  It was now evident that their talents were much, much greater than anyone to this point in the Rock Era, and as we would see, greater than any songwriter since.  

The Beatles are one of just three acts who consistently enjoyed hits with both sides of a single (Elvis Presley and Creedence Clearwater Revival are the others).  As true as that may be, few other A & B side in history can top these, The #4 Double-Sided Hits of the Rock Era*.

Paul and John both contributed to this next song, but the hallmark personalities of each came through.  Paul wrote the upbeat and hopeful verses and chorus, reportedly after a disagreement with Asher, while John wrote the pessimistic "Life is very short" counterpoint in the bridge.

"In 'We Can Work It Out', Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight," Lennon said for the 1980 book All We Are Saying.  "But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out, we can work it out' - real optimistic, y'know, and me impatient:  'Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.'"

Paul wrote his part with an acoustic guitar in one of the bedrooms at Rembrandt, the house in Cheshire he had bought for his father in July, 1964.  "Then it was George Harrison's idea to put the middle into waltz time, like a German waltz," McCartney said in the Barry Miles biography, Many Years From Now.

 

The Beatles needed just two takes to rehearse and record the song on October 20.  They then spent nearly five hours overdubbing, including the distinctive sound of Lennon's harmonium the group found hidden away in the studio.  Vocals for the song took up much of the evening session and were finished in a two-hour session on October 29.

"We Can Work It Out" reached the Top 10 in virtually every major country, going to #1 in the United States, the U.K. and Australia.  It was the Beatles' 12th million-seller in just two calendar years, topping the previous record set by Elvis Presley with 11.

 

The group recorded "Day Tripper" in three takes on October 16 and  released their two-sided smash the same day as Rubber Soul (December 3, 1965), though neither song appeared on the album.  The Beatles were popular enough to support the output of material.  "Day Tripper" was a bigger hit in the U.K. than "We Can Work It Out", reaching #1 there as well as in the Netherlands, while it peaked at #5 in the U.S.

The band performed "Day Tripper" at nearly all their shows until their final one in San Francisco's Candlestick Park in 1966.

Rubber Soul showcases the Beatles' new direction in music at a time when they were less interested in playing live and more interested in utilizing the recording studio as in fact its own instrument, which completely changed the perception of what a recording artist is.  

 

This is one of the first original Beatles songs to be not at all about love or romance and marks the beginning of Lennon's philosophical songwriting.  John had the uncanny knack to draw the listener into his world by presenting the song in the first person.  As great as it sounds here, John struggled with it.  Inspired to come up with a personal song as his contribution, he gave up after five hours and laid down when suddenly the entire song came to him in a flash.  Lennon later said that writing music was like being possessed.  "It has to go down or else it won't let you sleep, so you have to get up and make something of it and then you're allowed to sleep," he said.

Listening to a Lennon song can make you change your perspective on life.  He did this here with lyrics like "Doesn’t have a point of view, Knows not where he’s going to, Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”.

By getting away from the love song, John opened the door for his bandmates and other songwriters to write social songs about the turbulent times of the '60's.  It single-handedly changed the face of the music industry and paved the way for the experimental music that followed in the next decade.

McCartney feels that "Nowhere Man" was one of Lennon's best songs.  John's vocals, too, are extraordinary, intimately that gives voice to the voiceless.  Who at some point doesn't doubt their existence yet continue doing what they do best to keep their confidence up?

For this song, Harrison switched to a Fender Stratocaster Sonic Blues.  Lennon requested Lewisohn to make the guitars in this song as high-pitched as possible, and although the studio engineers were reluctant, Mark later agreed.  "Nowhere Man" reached #1 in Australia and Canada and #3 in the U.S. and sold over one million copies.

 

This next song is one of the group's best, but you won't find it in any list of top songs because it was never released as a single.  We call such songs Top Tracks* and in this case, near the top of The Top Unknown/Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*.  

"A lot of people said 'Michelle' would have made a good single," Paul McCartney said in an interview.  "There are songs which we like but we wouldn't like to have out as singles," he continued.  'Cause it's a very funny thing about putting a single out.  We always used to think for a single we'd have to have something pretty fast.  I don't know why.  They always sounded like the singles.  So when we did 'Michelle', we all thought it was okay, but we just didn't want it out as representative of us at the time."  

Enjoy "Michelle".

"This [next song] was about a dream girl," Lennon said.  When Paul and I wrote lyrics in the old days we used to laugh about it like the Tin Pan Alley people would," John continued.  "And it was only later on that we tried to match the lyrics to the tune.  I like this one.  It was one of my best."

Jackson Browne agreed in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for their "100 Greatest Singers of All-Time" issue:

             There was a tremendous intimacy in 

             everything John Lennon did, combined

             with a formidable intellect.  That is what 

             makes him a great singer.  In "Girl", he

             starts in this steely, high voice:  "Is there

             anybody going to listen to my story?"  It's

             so impassioned, like somebody stepping

             from the shadows in a room.  But when 

             he comes to the chorus, you suddenly

             realize:  He's talking directly to her. 

            When I heard this, as a young teenager,

            it hit the nail on the head.  It embodied 

            the feelings I was living with every day -

            completely burning with sexual desire,

            with almost a regret at being so

            overpowered.

The music too was much more developed and this inspired each of the members of the group to play different and play better.  The Beatles were all good at their instruments in 1965; they began to further develop their talent on Rubber Soul.  

Harrison added to the development of the band's sound by introducing the sitar on his piece, "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".  This one song alone added greatly to the development of Rock as a genre, a song much deeper than nearly all of the basic singalong songs before 1965.  

This gem certainly has its humor--"She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere and I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair."  This is another example of some of John's best lyrics, and it is the unconventional lyrics that drive the song.  What was the real purpose of John's visit with this woman?  What kind of "fire" did he light?  And what the heck is "Norwegian wood" anyway?  You probably have your own interpretation.  

Besides these curious lyrics, "Norwegian Wood" is also known for Harrison's use of the sitar.  David Crosby had introduced George to the music and sitar playing of Ravi Shankar, whom Harrison later met.  After the U.S. tour promoting Help!, George bought a sitar from a shop on Oxford Street in London in September and it may be this instrument that we hear him playing on "Norwegian Wood".  As the song was recorded in October, it didn't give Harrison much time to practice it.  

After George featured it on this song, other copycats followed, with everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Box Tops to even B.J. Thomas releasing songs featuring a similar-sounding instrument.  Harrison loved the sound so much that he kept playing it on Beatles songs for the next two-and-a-half years.  Yet another example of this group paving the way for the entire industry.

This exciting level of innovation and a huge stride forward in the quality of lyrics and music led fans to play the album in its entirety and to think and explore the themes on the album.  With Rubber Soul, the album as an art form was born.  Listeners now needed to think about they lyrics and their meaning, as the Beatles intentionally challenged listeners to become more involved in listening to their music.

New students of music history are invited to listen to any album before this album, then listen to Rubber Soul to see if they can tell the difference.  They should be able to, even if they are not musically trained.  It is as different as night and day, but it was far from the last time the Beatles would come out with a groundbreaking album.

The album also marked a turning point in other ways.  For the first time, Lennon and McCartney began to separately have more influence on the songs, and listeners would from this point forward be able to detect the unique songwriting styles of each.  Friends since they met, a rivalry between the two geniuses began to emerge.  "The clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious," wrote engineer Norman Smith for Bill Harry's 2000 book The John Lennon Encyclopedia.

Although John and Paul were writing songs individually, they collaborated on this one at John's home in Kenwood, probably sometime in September or early October.  Paul had the melody in mind but they lyrics had much to be improved upon.  The two geniuses took a break and then suddenly:

             Wait a minute:  "Drive My Car!"  Then we 

             got into the fun of that scenario:  Oh, you

             can drive my car.  What is it?  What's he

             doing?  Is he offering a job as a 

             chauffeur, or what?  And then it became

             much more ambiguous, which we liked,

             instead of golden rings, which was a bit

             poofy.  "Golden rings" became "beep 

             beep, yeah".  We both came up with 

             that.  Suddenly we were in L.A.:  cars,

             chauffeurs, open-top Cadillacs, and it

             was a whole other thing.

And the lyrics meant something else besides chauffeurs:

             It was wonderful because this nice tongue- 

            -in-cheek idea came and suddenly there 

            was a girl there, the heroine of the story,

            and the story developed and had a little

            sting in the tail, which was "I actually

            haven't got a car, but when I get one

            you'll be a terrific chauffeur."  So to me it

            was L.A. chicks...and it also meant "you

            can be my lover."  "Drive my car" was an

            old Blues euphemism for sex, so in the

            end all is revealed.

The Beatles burned the midnight oil in a five-hour recording session on October 13, 1965, all spent working on this song.  These marathon sessions would soon be the norm and included numerous overdubs.  Ringo played two tambourines on the song, one playing the accents in the verses and the other playing a rhythm pattern as you hear in the chorus. 

In late 1965, while the group was recording the album, Jane Asher (Paul's girlfriend) accepted an offer to appear in a stage production.  There was an intense argument and the couple broke up.  Paul phoned Jane but she would not return his calls.

 

McCartney later said to Hunter Davies in the book The Beatles that it was "shattering to be without her."  "You Won't See Me" is one of the songs Paul wrote about their relationship.

The album's title comes from "plastic soul", a derogatory phrase McCartney had overheard black musicians using about Mick Jagger.  Harrison finally broke through with one of his songs, another which shows the tremendous growth of the group.  They were innovative in their early years, but now now they took on an unconventional image.  

McCartney played the fuzz bass on "Think For Yourself".

Add to that growth the fact that producer George Martin was himself developing, aiming to achieve a solid sound whether the album was played on a stereo or a mono record player.  Thus, Harrison's lead vocals are double-tracked and split between the right and left channels.

 

"I'm Looking Through You" is another song about the difficulties Paul had with Jane.  The Beatles first recorded it on October 24 in nine hours, a version first released on the compilation album Anthology 2 in 1996.  The group reworked the song on November 6, playing a faster version, but were still not satisfied.  Finally, on November 10, the band found the right arrangement that made it onto the album.  The Beatles recorded the rhythm track in one take and then overdubbed vocals and an organ played by Ringo.  That percussive sound you hear in the song is Ringo tapping a box of matches with his fingers.

 

"In My Life" is an autobiographical song John wrote after being asked why his book, In His Own Write, revealed more about him than his songs did.  Lennon's lyrics refer to Stu Sutcliffe, the early Beatle and a friend of John's who died in 1962, and another friend by the name of Pete Shotton.  

The group left a space for an instrumental break, which Martin filled the next morning by playing a piano and then speeding up the tape to make it sound like a harpsichord.

Early in the sessions for a new album, Paul and John realized they needed to get a single released.  

 

Paul wrote most of this one, which takes the form of a letter from an ambitious songwriter to a book publisher.  McCartney was intrigued by the rhythmic possibilities of the phrase "paperback writer", according to author Steve Turner in the 2016 book Beatles '66:  The Revolutionary Year, and Paul came up with the basic framework for the song during an hour-long drive from London to Lennon's house in Surrey.  On May 30, the Beatles released the single "Paperback Writer", which topped charts in the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, West Germany, New Zealand, Ireland and Norway and sold over one million copies.  It is The #159 Song of the Rock Era*.

This next song is a great example of how lyrics can be amplified by the music that goes with them.  When the Beatles arrived in Sidney for a concert, they stepped off the plane to pouring rain, and thousands of fans thought nothing of getting soaking wet if they could greet the group.  Lennon remembered the moment in the book The Beatles Anthology:

                We were having hysterics, laughing.  It 

                was so funny, coming to Australia and

                getting on a big van, all soaking wet; we

                thought it was going to be sunny.  We 

                only got wet for about fifteen minutes, 

                but the kids got wet for hours.  How

                could we be disappointed when they

                came out to see us and stood in all the

                rotten wind and rain to wave to us?  

                They were great, really great.  I've

                never seen rain as hard as that, except

                in Tahiti.

"Rain" can be interpreted to be about people complaining about the weather.  There are only 44 words used in the song, but since they are stretched out over several beats, there is an added emphasis on them.  As a result, there is a tendency to give the lyrics more meaning, almost as if a secret is being disclosed.  

The music, too, suggests that the weather is a symbol, accomplished by the Beatles making the music sound like the condition they are describing.  Paul said that the group had trouble with the rhythm track so they played it fast and then slowed it down.

What this means is that they played the backing guitar at a fast speed, recorded it on tape and then played the tape back at a slower speed.  John also stumbled onto an idea of recording a guitar and voices backwards.  He sang and played his guitar to the backing track while it was being played backwards, then reversed the direction of the voice and guitar and combined them with the backing track while being played forward.  

Ringo's stop and go drumming also helps to accentuate the "rain or shine" aspect of the music.  Taken together, the Beatles are giving the message not only that they don't mind if it is sunny or rainy but also "fast or slow", "backwards or forwards", "stop or go", or "high or low".  John sings the lines, "I can show you", and he does.  Later when he sings "Can you hear me?", Lennon is talking about more than the words he is singing.  Notice that John's voice is altered on these two lines.  

Remember that "Rain" is paired with "Paperback Writer" on the single, and it could be quite possible that both sides are about the expression of art.  Reflecting on this, the polar musical effects contained in the song convey a deeper message.  The hidden meaning of the song is that, like rainy or sunny, fast or slow, it doesn't matter where you are in life, or what you experience in it, but how you react to those experiences and what you do with them.

"I can show you" and "Can you hear me?", then, are used to invite the listener to explore more, and by summoning the listener into a world where the music itself tells a story, Lennon's "Rain" is groundbreaking.

Short promotional films of both "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" were released, which cultural historian Saul Austerlitz said were "among the first true music videos."

The unique fact about the Beatles is they never had a slump, a bad album, a time in which they struggled to write and record high-quality songs.  It is just one great album after another for their entire career.  Join us for Part Six!