| Although there had been hints of a new direction on the preceding albums, Rubber Soul marked a major period of transition. John would later call it the beginning of the group's 'self-conscious' period; the end of the Beatles' tribal child-like' stage.
Despite the cover, with its deliberated distorted photograph of the Beatles suggesting the perception shifts of LSD and marijuana, this wasn't a psychedelic album. Musically however, it was an exploration of new sounds and new subject matter, introducing Paul on fuzz bass and George on sitar. When producer George Martin played the piano solo back at double-speed to create a baroque sound, it was the first time that they tampered with tapes an effect. There was a playfulness to Rubber Soul that extended form the wordplay of the title down to the 'beep beeps' and 'tit tits' of the backing vocals. Paul was quoted at the time as saying that they were now into humorous songs and both "Drive My Car", with its role reversal, and "Norwegian Wood", with its naive seduction scene, fitted into this category. For a group which had only ever sung about love, "Nowhere Man", a song about lack of belief, was a breakthrough: other songs like "The Word" and "In My Life" were only tangentially about boy-girl relationships. The love songs of this period showed a new maturity. Paul's "We Can Work It Out", stemming from his own troubled relationship with Jane Asher, was a long way from the simplicities expressed in "She Loves You" or "I Want To Hold Your Hand". John's "The Word" pointed in the direction of the universal love that would later be the basis of songs like "Within You Without You" and "All You Need Is Love". Recorded over a four week period in the autumn of 1965, Rubber Soul was released in December and became a chart-topping album in Britain and America. Four of the British tracks were left off the American album and these were replaced by two tracks from Help! |
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