The Beatles
Revolver
Everyone in the world should have a fabulous brother who sends presents from Japan, truly it’s a fabulous thing. Xxx

Taxman begins with that old cough and 1-2-3 and straight away the whole thing’s got so much more energy than dreary pot-ridden Rubber Soul…the cover’s so bizarre as well, I remember being a teenager and really getting into listening to the Beatles albums on vinyl…weird cartoons of people and Beatles struggling in cartoon hair...

It’s good to hear this on headphones, and to hear precisely how each track is placed on the stereo field…drums on the left, guitar on the right, main vocal and harmonised backing vocals in mono, but why the little textual bits (ah-ha Mr Wilson) in the right speaker? Taxman’s a lot wittier (musically and lyrically) than one would expect, maybe it gets buried under the impact of being side one track one.

Eleanor Rigby appears and immediately dictates how I think of string quartets forever and ever. It’s amazing how everyone knows exactly what I mean when I say “Eleanor Rigby strings” – it’s almost become the new Allegro…remember when the Beatles Anthology came out? The strings-only version of this also incredible. And all those really, really sad opening images of lonely people in yellow Submarine, the women eating chocolates repetitively and the match-girl dropping her head in disappointment as we are told that “no-one was saved” – it always frightened me as a child.

I remember when I was young (still related to yellow Submarine) I thought that when John Lennon was singing, it was a woman, like Ethel Merman or similar…he does have (on some songs) a really peculiar voice, scratchy and whiny and slightly effeminate…I’m only sleeping demonstrates it along with all those backwards guitars…this album seems to do a perfect mix between arty and fun things…

Outside of the music, I’m reminded of the first time I owned this album – in Bolton Chris and I were walking up past Ritzy’s, past Sizzles and past X Records. It was a week before my birthday. Chris dropped into conversation “Oh by the way Liz, what’s your favourite Beatles album? Is it Sgt Pepper?” “Actually”, said I “It’s Revolver”. “Right” Chris nodded. “And you don’t have a CD player yet do you Liz?” (in the olden days and all) “No, just tape”. “Right” said Chris. Then he stopped. “Oh” he said “I’ve just got to go back to X-records for something, won’t be a minute”, went back and came out of the shop about a minute later carrying a bag with a tape outline in it, patting it and saying “I’ve got your birthday present in here! Bet you can’t guess what it is!” Chris is brilliant. Love you to is very Indian and not in a way that makes you want to gash your eyes out. I like the Indian one on Sgt Pepper too but I’ll rant about that alter.

For here comes “Here There and Everywhere” which will always, always, always kill me. There’s isn’t any more to say, it’s just so perfectly, perfectly written. I know that good people always belie and escape their origin, but it’s quite difficult to believe that the people gliding up and down those harmonies are four scally drop-outs.

Yellow Submarine. I suppose you need to give drummers something to do.

She said she said…it’s getting trippier and trippier but, obviously having done his singing bit, Ringo Starr is more awake for some amazing drums…maybe he’s not given the credit he deserves, this really is one shit-hot drumming bit…(even though the songs loses its way with the ¾ section, but it’s held together by the guitar mirroring the vocal line as a kind of continuity) – I suppose it’s a nice song but it’s a bit of a brain-fart too…

Good Day Sunshine is better (I’m firmly in the McCartney camp and always will be) – I have a vague memory of Fozzie Bear from the Muppets singing this dressed as a giant flower. As discussed with Sofia at different times over the last week, I suppose there can be something irritating about the artist/singer/composer/writer who consistently write things to the effect of “Gosh, flowers are nice and so are little birds”. There’s always the danger of Paul McCartney stepping into that territory, but in the spirit of pluralism there’s always something there…

And your bird can sing (speaking of little birds) – as said, always wanted to do this as a super-classical-Mozart-stylee string quartet…it is unfortunate this being a record from the 60s that “…and your bird can swing…” has different connotations than just dancing…

For No-one was covered by that Sofia Van Otter (?) on the lovely chamber album she did with Elvis Costello. I’ve been singing this around the house in anticipation of sitting down and listening to the whole thing. The French Horn is similarly gorgeous…if Beatle history is split into two, then this really has to be the start of Paul McCartney moving in properly to introduce all the little classicisms (probably that George Martin had an awful lot to do with it too) – not just in terms of instrumentation but the structure too – overall structure and harmonic…

Oh fuck, Dr Robert. Yep, just plain awful. Will repeat to myself as a mantra “Part of genius is genius losing its way. Part of genius is genius losing its way. Part of genius is genius losing its way. Part of genius is genius losing its way. Part of genius is genius losing its way. Part of genius is genius losing its way”. It works for Van Dyke Parks it can work for this. Tee hee giggle giggle we take drugs how cool are we? Tee hee Dr Robert is our drug dealer shhhh don’t tell anyone. We’re that cool. Drugs are cool. They give us insight. We’re so much more aware and better than we were and by definition better than you. Tee hee. If only you knew.

Marginally better but not much – they let George Harrison loose to whine over a ploddy bass and a piano that can’t make its mind if it wants to be boring or rubbish. Doing more and more bass-playing with hmnahmna, I’m aware of how much a walking bass can disguise a lack of invention. Perhaps there just isn’t that much to do with this song, makes me think of some itchy adolescent. The hand-claps help but handclaps are usually sent from God to bind together half-written songs.

Now, got to get you into my life…McCartney McCartney….everyone says “Tamala Motown” for this but I think the harmonies are much more complicated…not that I don’t love Motown but this sounds more like the wacky late-60s complicated brass sections in things like Pufnstuf (which I’m trying to rediscover via Sofia’s current Mama Cass obsession). Again, it’s a different experience listening to it on headphones that it is on speakers, I think I prefer it on speakers, the sound washes around the room better,. It sounds almost a little clinical. In the Beatles Anthology there was an early version of this that’s almost reggae…bizarre.

Tomorrow Never Knows is, as is accepted, a mind-melt of weird noises and jarring drums…allegedly this comes out of St McCartney beginning to experiment with tape loops, and running them back and forth and back and forth until they saturate and distort themselves…of course it’s great but it does also sound a little like Sooty and Sweep having an argument. The last lines remind me of TS Eliot: Play the game existence to the end of the beginning. The text for this song comes from the good old Tibetan Book of the dead (which I checked out of Bolton library when I was fifteen after hearing this for the first time but couldn’t make head nor tail of it and feel rather damaged and disparaging of such hippy sentiments now to have another go – would rather read about geometry) which must have made everyone terribly happy and mystical at the time. It’s an amazing song. That’s a proper collage…integration of materials rather than juxtaposition (like in later stuff like Revolution 9 which is great just for the fact that they actually did it)…synthesis and all that jazz.

The Beatles
Rubber Soul
Am loving the current Beatle binge I’m on. It fits in well with the end of the summer term, end of placement, all that. The wit and the darkness of the Beatles comes out more in this album, the first two songs are all about deception and revenge. I love “you won’t see me”, especially the harmonies that lead each verse into the next one. Actually it was the first song I put on my stereo in Temple Villas. Am writing up research methods notes at the same time so this may become disjointed.

Oh, Nowhere Man. I still love this song, in my head I see that particular bit of Yellow Submarine where they come up over the rainbow as if it’s a rollercoaster with their hands in the air while poor old Jeremy Hilary Boob PhD sits in that ever-decreasing (vinyl?) circle. That whole “video” I think has informed my visual aesthetic for years now – really stuck on black and white with bits of red, green, yellow and blue. Very basic colours. The messiness of later psychedelic video-sections for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, for example left me cold. It’s horrible when the skirts all turn to smudges. The backing vocals are perfect and simple…something about that “ah, la-la-la-la” stayed with the rest of musical history.

There’s something drier and more wooden about this album than I remember, I’ve not heard it for a while now – it’s funny...Beatles albums like Revolver (which I don’t have anymore unfortunately…), and then the next three I have coming up (Sgt Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road) do suggest themselves to playing through and all the way through, Rubber Soul is less so. It still sounds like a collection of songs rather than a “piece”.

Have happily decided to ignore my notes on Research Methods. Most of the lectures were so crap that the notes I took were rather useless (evil French lecturer). Anyway, essay’s done and the Beatles are far more important.

Michelle – strangely enough I find this one ridiculous. I think it’s that terrible “I love you, I love you, I love you…” It always reminds me of that bit in Singing in the Rain where they produce the terrible version of the Duelling Cavalier and Gene Kelly does some unfortunate improvising.

Christ – now a Ringo Starr country atrocity. Am yearning to both skip and shuffle. Why the continued vogue for country music? It is not good to be a redneck and to be happy about it! I’d love to hear a country song where they hang their heads in shame and mourn their status as shaved apes. Extreme possibly but I’m happy in how I feel in the music I love and following quite a few years of being marginalised and ridiculed I’m loving the freedom to be opinionated. God, I don’t enjoy this album as much as I thought. They’re definitely starting to smoke pot in this album…the tunes go nowhere, there’s very little excitement anywhere…or maybe they’d save them for Day tripper and Paperback Writer (both wonderful).

OK, here’s a bit with “I’m looking through you”. Much better, the magical tambourine re-appearing to drench everything in wonder, as discussed previously. And of course “In my life” is always terribly nice. When I did some recording with the great Stephen Newcombe in York, he always told me that a song should be moving towards something – there’s really something of that in this song, the melody line seems to combine the old vertical horizontal dichotomy, using both the travelling tune and the shifting foundations…and then the final little misogynistic song that does admittedly bring in the tambourine again.

I feel quite enlightened now – I used to think “Oh, of course Rubber Soul’s a great album”. It is an advance and a change and obviously it’s the Beatles so it doesn’t do to be too churlish…but I like it a lot less than I like the holy three of Revolver, Sgt Pepper and White Album. Oh, no Revolver for me to write about, full steam ahead to Sgt Pepper. Must obtain a copy of Revolver with first temping agency paycheck this summer.