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.