What better way to start of the 20/20 section of our website than with a hindsight review of an album by the greatest band ever. The Beatles – Revolver.
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When I look at most lists that rank Beatles albums I mostly see Sgt. Peppers or The White Album as #1. They list the reasons why each of those are tops and for the most part they are not incorrect. But for my money, ‘Revolver’ is the best. Here we look at the United States release of the album.
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‘Revolver’ was, for me, the transition album between the “old” Beatles sound and the “new”. I think ‘Rubber Soul’ started it but the ‘Revolver’ album is right in the middle of it.
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The album starts with the George Harrison penned ‘Taxman’. A song that always gets me bouncing when I listen to it. Next we have the epic ‘Eleanor Rigby’. This song is special in so may ways but something interesting is that none of the Beatles played an instrumentation on it. Paul McCartney sang lead with John Lennon and Harrison providing some harmony vocals.
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Harrison’s ‘Love You To’ gives you more of his Ravi Shankar inspired sitar. ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ is next. I remember watching an episode of ‘Friends’ where Phoebe gets married and they play this song on the steel drums during the ceremony. As I was humming the song it prompted me to put on the song after the ep was over. It’s just one of those types of songs.
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‘Yellow Submarine’ was written by Lennon and McCartney and sung by Ringo Starr. It was the most successful song by Ringo on a Beatles project. Come on you know the beginning.. “In the town.. where I was born..”
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The last song on Side One is ‘She Said She Said”. This is one of my personal favorites on the Revolver album. Since I’m a hug fan of the Grunge sound, this one always struck me a something that could’ve inspired Stone Temple Pilots. It has that Seattle sound before it became popular in the 90’s.
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Side Two starts with another epic sing-a-long, ‘Good Day Sunshine’! Next is ‘For No One’. One of those great storyteller songs that was inspired by McCartney’s relationship with actress, Jane Asher.
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The song ‘I Want To Tell You’ give us that guitar tone that I LOVE along with that great ‘Revolver’ snare sound. Geoffrey Emerick, rightfully so, gets credit for the experimentation on songs like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ but I love what he did here on this track. It’s a prefect marriage of the basic instrumentation along with the piano and vocal harmonies.
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‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ gives us that great double tracked McCartney vocal track. Also want to note the horn section of the Blue Flames give this song an exceptional feel.
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Revolver ends with another one of my personal favorites on any Beatles album: ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ Make no mistake, that engineering and recording of this song was ahead of its time. Reverse loops and that sustained “C” note give me goose bumps each time I listen. Go right now and grab a pair of headphones and listen to everything that is going on here. In my opinion if it weren’t for ‘A Day In The Life’ from Sgt Peppers, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ could be my choice for the greatest album closer.
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The album as a whole makes up the best things about The Beatles. It bridged the time between ‘Rubber Soul’ and everything before to ‘Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and beyond. Unfortunately, according to engineer Geoff Emerick, this probably led to the Beatles transforming into a studio band. I believe it. But I’m glad we were blessed with an album like REVOLVER. Albums like this are one of the many reasons we love to create music reviews.
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10/10
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-JC