Revolver [US]

Bruce Beatlefan (August 25, 2005)

The further removed we get from the 1960's the less distinct the immediacy and intensity of our feelings from that time become (also, the fewer people there are who HAVE memories of those years). "With the Beatles" was a sensation partly because the Beatlemania phenomenom was so all-encompassing, and "Sgt Pepper's L.H.C.B." was so incredible partly because it spoke so well to the Flower Power/Summer of Love feeling of that era. Now in 2005 the memories have changed and diminished, but anyone can pop in a CD and hear the music exactly as it was...and that is very good news for the "Revolver" album, probably the finest collection of songs in any Beatles album. Three reasons why the songs are so good: George, Paul, and John...

George has three tracks (he has never had more than two on previous LP's). Because he had to "fight for space" with Lennon/McCartney, he made sure a song was pretty darn good before presenting it to his mates. "Taxman" and "Love You To" were pretty darn good, and have received their just due from fans and critics both then and now. For me, however "I Want to Tell You" is just an amazing song and remains somewhat of an undiscovered jewel. The "innovative" fade-in of two years ago's "Eight Days a Week" was simply a fade-in; here George takes the fade-in idea to a momentum-building work of art, climaxing with a wonderfully buoyant song.

Paul has his coming of age as a songwriter in this album. In previous albums Macca cannot shake a one brilliant/one turkey song ratio (For every "Yesterday" and "All My Loving" there is a "Hold Me Tight" and a "What You're Doing"). Paul gives us six songs of amazing quality on Revolver, showing a breadth of styles and feelings never seen before. "Good Day Sunshine" and "Here There and Everywhere" are classic Paul, but the soulful energy of "Got to Get You Into My Life", the barstool singalong of "Yellow Submarine", and most significantly, the bleak pessimism of the brilliant "For No One" and "Eleanor Rigby"...well, this is a Paul McCartney were have never seen before. Substandard songs from Paul become a thing of the past (subsequent Beatle albums feature Paul being silly, but never substandard). Note: three times in this album Paul uses the device of chopping his second verse short to cut into an instrumental break rather abruptly ("Y.Sub.", "G.D.Sunshine","For No One"). It turns out he does this a lot ("I'll Follow the Sun", "Penny Lane", "Lady Madonna" are a few). Does anyone else do this? Was Paul even aware that he did this so much?

John makes a clean break from his introspective "Dylanesque" phase (songs like "I'm a Loser", "Nowhere Man", "...Hide Your Love Away") and enters into a fascinating phase of songs wrapped around pieces of ideas from just about anywhere. TV ad jingles give him ideas for three songs ("Cry Baby Cry", "Good Morning Good Morning", and one from the Imagine album I can't recall), bits from newspaper headlines give him "A Day in Life", a carnival poster gives him "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite", and so forth. This may seem at first like a diminishing in his songwriting art, but it is amazing the songs he could assemble from these scraps of thread...