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Believe it or not, there was a time a long time ago when people who had discovered the Beatles (imagine ever being in a position to "discover" that worldwide phenomenon) would timidly ask friends whose taste tended toward more "serious" music, "Uh, do you like, that is, ahem, the, uh, gulp, you know, Beatles?"
A girl I was corresponding with delicately broached the same question early in the international exchange of letters we had just begun: "Now that I've put a Beatles record on, it is impossible to write anything sane. Have you ever had a chance to see either of their movies, to hear their records? They are the best thing that has happened in eons." Having delivered this statement, she made fun of herself ("ah ha — ho ho ho — a chuckle up my gray flannel sleeve") because we were engaged in a longdistance courtship of sorts and she didn't want to spoil it at the start, should I prove to be unenlightened on the subject.
As it happened, I'd nervously explored the same question myself with a traveling companion who was so deeply into jazz I was afraid he would have nothing but disdain for the (ugh) "Fab Four." This was the same person who when we came within view of the Himalayas some days later standing in the back of a truck, said of the highest mountain range in the world (and I quote): "It's almost as great as the Beatles."
When I wrote back to the girl I was a little more restrained. "As for the Beatles, they've been the joy of my life."
The same girl and I eventually got together in Italy and spent the summer hitchhiking around and listening to (guess what) on cafe jukeboxes all over Europe. Actually, there was plenty of exciting non-Beatle music around ("Shapes of Things" by the Yardbirds, "Mystic Eyes" by Them, among many others), but the record we played the most was "Rain," a great road song with its ringing, chiming, soaring chorus ("Rain I don't mind" and "Shine the weather's fine"). In mid-August, after my hitchhiking partner and I had decided to get married, we walked into a record store in Salzburg, picked up a copy of Revolver, the brand-new Beatles LP, gazed with great excitement at the Aubrey Beardsleyesque cover, and sat down in a listening booth where we heard it, shared it, lived in it, loved it, together, from start to finish. We bought it (our first joint possession) and carried it back to the States. We still have it, our musical nest egg (copies do sell for upwards of 100 pounds these days).
Being There
One of the consolations of reaching "a certain age" is the privilege of having "been there" in time to witness or experience extraordinary events. Of course just because you were born too late to "be there" when the Beatles were in their prime doesn't mean you can't get as close or closer to their music now. But there's a dimension of excitement, suspense, and sheer wonderment that could be experienced only if you followed the trajectory of the phenomenon as it developed, from the first mega media onslaught of screaming teeny-boppers through the intoxication of the first movie to the pinnacle of recognition the group reached between, say, 1966 and the breakup in 1970.
For this reviewer, the true pinnacle (okay, the Mt. Everest) was achieved between June 1966 and June 1967. As much as they may have exceeded expectations before and after those dates, it was during that time period that the Beatles truly seemed to be touched with magic. The single, "Rain/Paperback Writer," began the "wonder year," to be followed two months later by Revolver, to be followed in February 1967 by the extraordinary doublebarreled single, "Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever," with Sgt. Pepper coming in June (and "All You Need is Love" soon after that).
"Rain" may be the least listened to of the great Beatles songs. If you ever wondered why Paul McCartney's playing was deemed extraordinary, you need only listen to what he's doing on "Rain" (not to mention "Paperback Writer"). McCartney plays bass the way Fred Astaire dances. "Rain" also delivers the essential John Lennon vocal, which means you don't hear it, you feel it. It goes through you. What is it that makes Lennon's voice cut straight to your marrow even though it's so deeply, chillingly unsentimental? It's like the voice of someone calling and crying from a mountaintop with the wind of absolute unimpeded possibility blowing through him and carrying his message. In this song, he's telling you anything is possible. It's also there in the passion with which he sings the lyrics of "All You Need is Love," telling us "nothing you can sing that can't be sung," "nothing you can do that can't be done," "no one you can save that can't be saved." As for George Harrison's contribution, he's simply always a poet. He puts the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin every time he solos. And the drumming? Ringo Starr thinks it's the best playing he ever did: the song "blows me away. It's out of left field. I know me and I know my playing and then there's 'Rain'."
Sharing the Music
"Rain" set us up for Revolver, which came out forty years ago this week: August 5 in England, and August 8 in the U.S.
So there we are in Salzburg sitting side by side in a record store listening booth responding for the first time in our lives to Revolver. Imagine how it was to hear the LP pure and clear, with virgin ears, song after incredible song. It's often the case that music has to grow on you, which, for me, was true of songs on albums like Help and Rubber Soul. The songs on Revolver came through on the first listening. No use trying to feel again what you felt on first hearing "Eleanor Rigby," which has become the equivalent of a musical institution, one of those songs like "Stardust" or "Old Man River." There were at last count 61 cover versions of the song, including performances by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and all the rest, from the Four Tops to the Boston Pops, not to mention the latest incarnation as part of the Cirque du Soleil Beatles spectacular in Las Vegas. Listening now, in 2006, you have to be in a special state of mind to hear it unburdened by the weight of its fame. Eleanor Rigby and Father MacKenzie have practically become cultural cliches, like Archie Bunker or, well, Old Man River.
Listening to Revolver now, one of the things that makes it so special is the way the songs set one another off. "Taxman" suggests an edgy intensity with topical references to Prime Ministers Wilson and Heath, and a strong Indian flavor that carries a special impact (not unsurprisingly) if you are on your way back from that country. And the great line "My advice for those who die/Declare the pennies on your eyes") anticipates the perfect ending of the novel-in-miniature that follows, with "no one saved" and Father MacKenzie "wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave." The emotional charge of "Eleanor Rigby" is that much more potent because the embittered, driving, relentless "Taxman" has brought you to it. And then, in turn, "Eleanor Rigby," driven by two violas and two cellos, brings you to "I'm Only Sleeping" and John Lennon's cry from the mountaintop. Given John's fondness for the effect of recording backwards (initiated at the end of "Rain"), it's no surprise that he uses the same device here, with the result that the backwards guitar solo captures the "yawning" idea perfectly while "floating upstream" offers a sneak preview of Lennon's ultimate virtuoso piece "Tomorrow Never Knows" ("relax and float downstream").
One way to appreciate how effectively the songs interact on Revolver is to listen to Sgt. Pepper, where the concept is explicitly packaged, but where the songs are more self-contained. Admitted, one of the most exhilarating transitions ever recorded is the move from "With a Little Help from My Friends" to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the one between the Lennon and McCartney sections of the magnificent "A Day in the Life," but for the most part, it's as if each song were a separate poster advertising itself like the one that inspired "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite."
McCartney's "Here, There, and Everywhere" is almost too pretty, but it works because it follows another strong, driving song by Harrison, "Love You Too," where India moves to the forefront with sitar and tabla. Again, George comes up with a dark line to contrast with the sweet, sunny love song waiting on the horizon ("There's people standing round who'll screw you in the ground"). Even so, if this record were a movie or a sporting event, Paul's gentle ballad is probably the point at which people might duck out to buy some popcorn or use the facilities. The matching McCartney song on the other side, "For No One," is one of his very best, however, and no one's going to walk out while it's playing.
"Yellow Submarine" is just the bit of fun that's needed at this point in the sequence. Paul's comment says it all: "I wrote it as a kid's song. And then we thought it would be good for Ringo to do." Again, the impact is in the contrast effected when the kid's song leads you to one of the most brilliantly intense tracks on the album, "She Said She Said." This is John's masterpiece, more so even than "Tomorrow Never Knows." Yet the vocal high point of the song, the moment when he's on top of the mountain again, is when he looks back to how it was to be a kid: "When I was a boy, everything was right." By the way, there's nothing of the "kid" in Ringo's drumming, which, as usual, is beautifully integrated into the song. One of the side effects of living with this music is the difficulty of resisting the urge to sing along, because when you do, you miss details such as the way Ringo again and again is able to execute exactly what every song needs from him.
Something else worth noting is that there are only too tracks over three minutes in length on this LP, both on side one. The brevity of the songs underscores the element of interplay. "Good Day Sunshine" (with its irresistible chorus) blends nicely with Lennon's "And Your Bird Can Sing," two upbeat songs that contribute to the impact of the melancholy "For No One," one of the dozen or so of McCartney's compositions that tempt one to throw around words like "perfect" and "perfection." That sort of terminology also offers one way to describe the chemistry of the Beatles: McCartney achieving the possibility of perfection, John exploiting and exploring the glories of imperfection.
After "Dr. Robert" spins off "For No One" with a delirum of ringing, singing guitars, John's satirical touch, and great playing by all four, you come to the last three tracks, which are like a microcosm of the whole album. First, George Harrison's third stand-out song, and the most haunting composition of his on the album, "I Want to Tell You;" then Pauls' big number "Got to Get You Into My life" with the brilliant scoring of the trumpets and an all-out McCartney vocal in the tradition of "Hey Jude," and "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight." But what reallty lifts the performance is the way George's guitar comes chiming in toward the end.
Then, finally, "Tomorrow Never Knows," which the Beatles tried and succeeded in matching and transcending in "A Day in the Life." John calls it his "first psychedelic song." While it may not be the first song of its kind, it helped inspire a whole genre of music bearing that name that also branched off into progressive rock in the 1970s. "That's me in my Tibetan Book of the Dead period," John said. "I wanted to sound like a Dalai Lama singing on a hilltop."
But then he was already on a mountaintop when he sang "Rain." So were all four of them.
Happy Birthday, Revolver.
The quotes are from William J. Dowlding's handy book, Beatlesongs.