The Beatles - Revolver (1966)

On Rubber Soul, the Beatles sang about what was in their hearts. On Revolver, they said what was on their minds.

Revolver is the greatest rock album of all time. Period.  How could it not be, with four of the most innovative musicians ever - including two great songwriters and one very good one - delving into their own insightful thoughts?  Not only is it lyrically diverse, with only a handful of straight love songs and many of the rest exploring subject matter few rock and roll songwriters - Bob Dylan was one of the few exceptions - had ever bothered with, but the music went beyond what the Beatles had done before.  The rockers are grittier and more energetic, with the lighter pop tunes more intricately arranged.  But more to the point, Revolver expanded the possibilities of rock beyond the basic guitar-bass-drum setup; string sections, backward guitars, Indian instruments, and Dixieland ensembles all augment their music.  It's more diffuse than diverse  but somehow manages to work in one continuous listen.

Modern realities confront the listener of Revolver, with the weight of the world resting heavily on the Beatles' collective consciousness and with many bright and blissful moments in between, reflecting life itself.  Death is a common obsession; in Paul McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby," a tale of a lonely spinster and a priest who live unfulfilled lives set to a stirring string score, Eleanor dies alone with only the priest left to survive her and no souls left for him to save.  The thrashing, distorted guitars of "She Said She Said" illuminate a woman's philosophical explanation about what death is like as a state of being that her male companion would prefer not to imagine*, while Paul's somber "For No One" mourns a dying romance to the sound of a French horn straddling the gray area between a flat and a major key.  In "Love You To," George Harrison acknowledges life's brevity and pitfalls but hopes to find love and joy in the time he has, though he warns in the caustic "Taxman," written about how the British government allowed him to keep only five percent of his earnings (a shilling from every pound, when twenty shillings equaled a pound in pre-decimalized U.K. currency), that one certainty in life is no refuge from the other ("And my advice for those who die, declare the pennies on your eyes").

The Beatles, though older and wiser, still find on Revolver inspiration in life, real and surreal.  I love Revolver specifically because its songs are as significant for what they mean as for what they're about.  George's "I Want To Tell You," with Indian rhythms arranged to Western instruments, is about communicating with a lover but reveals an ongoing difficulty in the effort to do so.  John's "I'm Only Sleeping" is about a lazy dreamer on the surface but interestingly depicts sleep as a symbolic alternative to fast-paced lifestyles, while "And Your Bird Can Sing," ostensibly a critique of Swinging London trendiness, asks a deeper question:  What's the value of your most prized possessions when you can't understand your peers?  John's more philosophical visions, steeped in the influence of LSD, sometimes run toward the cynical ("Doctor Robert" is not about a physical exam), and he's countered here by Paul's clearer, simpler ruminations. From the lovely ballad "Here There and Everywhere," and the upbeat "Good Day Sunshine," with a piano riff as bright as the sun itself, to "Got To Get You Into My Life" and the bravado of its full brass section, Paul easily finds the beauty in the world that John misses.  Only the Beatles could pull off so many extremes at once, from the Ringo Starr-led novelty singalong of "Yellow Submarine," with its playful sound effects, to the avant-garde tape loops of "Tomorrow Never Knows," the epic closing cut that takes the listener out through a Carrollian rabbit hole.

And it all unfolds in just a hair over 35 minutes.  Revolver's fourteen songs create a vivid and complex but concise world of ideas and states of being that other bands would need a longer and musically less straightforward LP to emulate, and they still wouldn't come close to the genius displayed here.  Each of the individual songs could stand on their own, but as a collection, they make an album that's much greater than the sum of the parts.  Revolver is best described by a lyric that author Mark Hertsgaard misheard in "Love You To" - "the whole world in a plan."

(*The "she" of "She Said She Said" was actually actor Peter Fonda, who told John Lennon while both were tripping on acid that he knew what being dead was like because of a childhood accident he'd had.)

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(My next record review will be in early June.)