Growing up in the 1970s, Sergeant Pepper cast a long shadow not only over the Beatles career, but the whole of pop. With only 20 or so years of rock’n’roll to look back on, it was seen as an insurmountable achievement; fast forward to the 1990s and Pepper’s crown was tarnished – by now Revolver was seen as the Beatles’ peak, with the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds most frequently cited in an increasing number of “best album ever” polls. The White Album – disjointed in 68, more cohesive in the digital era – now often takes the accolades. Maybe it’ll be Let It Be’s turn soon.
All of which is harsh on Rubber Soul. For a start, it had been the guiding light for Brian Wilson on Pet Sounds, the album that spurred him on to overtake his Transatlantic rivals. While Frank Sinatra had put together albums that had a unified mood back in the mid-50s, no one had done it in the modern pop era. Rubber Soul may have had no obvious lyrical chain, but with George Harrison’s astringent guitar, some heavily compressed piano, and a thread of black humour, it was the first album of the rock era that sounded like an album, as much a concept as Sinatra’s Only the Lonely before it and the likes of Tommy to come.
Interviewed in Melody Maker in late 1965, the Beatles revealed that “comedy songs” were their new direction. As there had always been a streak of humour running through their songs, this isn’t immediately apparent, but the biggest clue is on the opening Drive My Car, which even has a punchline. Michelle is frankly hilarious, a baguette-and-beret pastiche which McCartney had written years earlier without any actual French words, just French noises. I especially like the droll “I want you, I want you, I wa-a-ant you … I think you know by now.” Another song with a mock continental sound was the Weimar-esque Girl, a downer take on the Third Man theme, though lyrically it wasn’t very funny at all. Girl is a rich girl put-down, similar to Mike D’Abo’s Handbags and Gladrags but, instead of finger wagging, it opts for an entirely exhausted approach. Lennon sounds desperate, caught in a game with an unfamiliar set of rules. Clearly, they weren’t hanging out with the girls from the Cavern or Iron Door any more. You’re minded of the likes of Maureen Cleave, Edie Sedgwick or Pauline Boty on songs like Girl, George Harrison’s cool but fierce Think for Yourself, and Norwegian Wood; on the latter the group find Scandinavian furniture frightfully exotic, and this is reflected by a wry vocal delivery and Harrison’s quite foreign sitar line. The exoticism of Rubber Soul is subtle, still grounded by Merseyside.
The Beatles were, by 1965, regulars at the soirees of pre-rock singer Alma Cogan’s home on Kensington High Street. Lennon nicknamed Cogan “Sara Sequin” and, according to her sister, had a fling with her; McCartney wrote the beginnings of Yesterday on her piano. It was quite the salon; the Beatles could have been rubbing shoulders with Cary Grant, Princess Margaret, Audrey Hepburn, Sammy Davis and Noël Coward. This was a new world for the moptops (which were by now a little shaggier, creeping over the tops of their black roll-neck jumpers, over the collars of their suede jackets – did they ever look better?) and on Rubber Soul they mirrored it with cheek and a little distance, but never with cynicism.
The Beatles were young adults. The lyrics are now more about sex than hand-holding – Drive My Car is a single entendre, and there are lines like “it’s time for bed”. Rubber Soul also contains the first elements of true darkness in the Beatle sound. I know Lennon’s cry for Help! had been real enough, but it’s still quite a shock to find death crops up on three of his Rubber Soul songs – Girl, Run For Your Life and In My Life. Alma Cogan would die in 1966, and Brian Epstein a year later; there’s an odd feeling of foreshadowing.
It has faults, of course – a few of the songs are a verse and bridge too long (noticeably Nowhere Man), and most of them audibly slow down, which may have been something to do with the smoky studio atmosphere. The humour borders on the puerile (“tit tit tit”), on the otherwise affecting Girl. And what’s with the gargled backing vocals on You Won’t See Me?
But it’s hard to frown at an album whose weaker tracks are generally thought to be Run For Your Life (an intentional throwback, an extended riff on a line from Elvis’s Baby Let’s Play House) and The Word, with its deliciously tough Lennon vocal, tart organ break, and a lyric that may be reductive and limp (“It’s so fine, it’s sunshine, it’s the word … LOVE!”) but is a good 18 months ahead of its time. How the hell did they manage that? Rubber Soul has a strong case for being the most concise and the most complete Beatles album.