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The Beatles · S7 E3
Rubber Soul
December 1965. The album where the Beatles stop being a pop group and become artists. Brian Wilson hears it and decides he has to make Pet Sounds
December 1965. Brian Wilson puts the new Beatles album on his turntable in Los Angeles and realizes, track by track, that pop music just changed and the Beach Boys are falling behind.
"Drive My Car" performed by Paul McCartney and George Michael at Live 8, Hyde Park, London, July 2, 2005. Forty years after Rubber Soul, the song that opened the Beatles' artistic revolution still hits like a freight train. Two billion people watched this broadcast, and McCartney chose this deep cut over any of his bigger hits to kick things off. That says everything about what this song means to him.
Drive My Car, The Beatles (1965)
The song almost didn't make the album. Lennon and McCartney had a version with the working lyric "I can give you golden rings," which they both agreed was terrible. They scrapped it over dinner at McCartney's house and rewrote the entire lyric around the "drive my car" hook in a single evening. Listen for the interlocking guitar riff that opens the track: George and Paul play in unison, creating a thick, funky sound that owes more to Stax Records than to anything the Beatles had done before.
Sources
Miles, Barry. "Many Years from Now." Secker & Warburg, 1997.
MacDonald, Ian. "Revolution in the Head." Chicago Review Press, 2005.
Four Weeks
The Beatles record Rubber Soul in just four weeks, from October 12 to November 11, 1965. They work from 2:30 in the afternoon until the early morning hours, sometimes cutting and mixing a song in a single session. The marijuana they've been smoking since meeting Bob Dylan loosens something in the writing: the songs are warmer, stranger, more personal.
Sources
Lewisohn, Mark. "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions." Hamlyn, 1988.
The Beatles. "The Beatles Anthology." Chronicle Books, 2000.
“When I heard it I said, that's it. I really am challenged to do a great album.”
— Brian Wilson
TAP TO REVEAL: How was the famous stretched cover photo created?
The Arms Race Begins
What Brian Wilson builds in response will reshape pop music. He locks himself in a studio for months, layering instruments nobody puts on pop records: French horns, harpsichords, bicycle bells, barking dogs. The result is Pet Sounds, released in May 1966. And when Paul McCartney hears it, he does exactly what Wilson did: he decides the Beatles have to go even further.
Sources
Carlin, Peter Ames. "Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson." Rodale, 2006.
Miles, Barry. "Many Years from Now." Secker & Warburg, 1997.
Rubber Soul in Four Facts
I'm Looking Through You, The Beatles (1965)
Paul McCartney writes this about Jane Asher after she returns from a long theatre tour in Bristol and he feels she's become a different person. The acoustic guitars attack in short, jabbing strums rather than flowing chords, and the frustration is raw. The Beatles recorded three different versions before landing on the one that made the album. It's the angriest song on Rubber Soul, and proof that the new Beatles aren't just more sophisticated, they're more honest.
I'm Looking Through You, The Beatles (1965)
"You don't look different, but you have changed." McCartney's lyric is devastatingly simple. He doesn't accuse, he doesn't argue, he just states what he sees: the person standing in front of him isn't the person he fell in love with. The whole song runs on that gap between appearance and reality, which makes it a perfect fit for an album called Rubber Soul.
What was the Beatles' direct creative response to Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds?
In April 1966, John Lennon walks into Abbey Road with a piece of paper covered in instructions for George Martin. He wants to sound like a thousand monks chanting on a mountaintop, and what they build together will shatter every rule of pop recording.
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