Currently playing on my Windows Media Player.
(UK Edition of The Beatles Revolver available at my Amazon.com store by clicking the picture above)
The UK edition of Revolver, by the Beatles.
When I was a teenager, I had a good friend who was a Beatles fanatic --he had literally every piece of vinyl that was ever stamped with their imprint. His knowledge was complete, encyclopedic, and thorough. I once asked him what the greatest Beatles album was. He replied, almost without hesitation, "Revolver. The British version."
Naturally, this took me by surprise -- Sergeant Pepper is usually cited by most people, or Abbey Road -- or even Rubber Soul. A few Philistines will even suggest it was the execrable "White Album".
I asked him why Revolver was the best, and he said, "It's got a little of everything."
Naturally, he was right. The key caveat he made was that it was the UK edition. Consider this comment from a reviewer on Amazon's site:
After hearing the CD reissue of Revolver, is anybody as mad as I am about what Capitol records did to the Beatle's early albums? For those of you too young to remember, they gutted the English versions, deleting two or three songs and then reissuing these in lame compilations that did not do justice to the original albums. Nowhere did this affect an album worse than Revolver. It's why it's suddenly starting appearing at the top of people's list of great albums: some of us never heard it until ten years ago.
Right on, brother. Capitol cut out three tracks on the U.S. version, according to Wikipedia -- "I'm Only Sleeping," "Doctor Robert", and "And Your Bird Can Sing." None of these are great Beatles classics. But to say it was ok to cut them from the album is like saying Angelina Jolie would still be sexy with only one ear -- while technically it's true, you'd have to say that you felt a little cheated.
I have gone through many iterations of what I am old enough to call my "record collection"; which is now composed of CD's and Windows Media files. About every ten years or so I have to rebuild it. I at one time had complete collections of various bands -- as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I go through phases. I have never had -- and never will have -- complete Beatles -- I don't really like the very early stuff or the very late stuff. I'm content to go with 1962-66, 1967-70, and a few albums -- Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper, and Revolver. To me, that is a pretty complete collection -- it has everything I consider necessary of theirs.
My old friend would have sneered at this -- I mean what's a complete Beatles collection without a recording of them playing "Three Cool Cats" live at The Cavern? -- but for me, it is more than enough.
Revolver is a transitional album -- it has some of what the early Beatles were, and clues of where they are headed. They are beginning to experiment with other instruments besides the two guitars, bass, and drums, and expanding into new instruments and arrangements. They are beginning to show that in addition to being a simple boy band, they have a little bit of talent.
Granted -- I've never been ready to jump on the "bigger than Jesus" bandwagon. The Beatles, while being the greatest rock and roll band of all time, are also the most overrated. Yes, they're great -- but in the scheme of things, if they never existed, the planet would keep on spinning. The Beatles aren't Beethoven.
But for what they were, they were the best. And Revolver is -- in my mind -- their best album.
The sound of the album -- especially in songs like "Taxman", "I Want To Tell You", and "Got To Get You Into My Life" are immediately recognizable as being from London, mid-sixties. There is a distinct sound to music from that era -- what I call the "George Martin" sound. You can practically see the girls in short dresses, the double decker buses, and bowler-hatted businessmen walking out of the pubs.
A more civilized time.
Once when I was young -- maybe about the same time I was first listening to Revolver, so, let's say when I was sixteen years old or so -- I met Congressman Bob Dornan, and had a conversation with him. My father was involved in Republican party politics, and Dornan was the speaker at a dinner. My father and I had the task of bringing him to the airport afterwards. Dornan was one of the most fascinating people I ever met -- and while he could have sat in the car and done some reading, or quietly stared out the window, he instead decided to politely interrogate me. He was a volcano of ideas, only some of which I remember. But one idea he mentioned has stayed with me my whole life. I'm not sure if it was an original idea of his, or if it was something he'd read.
It was about the role of cities in Western civilization.
He said that if you looked back at the past, you could regard a decade as belonging to a particular city, in terms of its cultural dominance. The 1980s were -- for him, if I remember correctly --going to be the decade of Los Angeles. The 1970s I believe he said belonged to New York. And the 1960s belonged to London. For each city and decade, he rattled off a string of associations that proved his point -- and proof positive of London's dominance of the 1960s was the rise of the Beatles.
There was much more to the conversation than that -- because it's a rather obvious point given his premise -- and I remember the energy he poured into his argument and the sheer weight of anecdote he brought to bear. For someone who was sixteen and fancied himself an intellectual, it was a memorable experience.
Revolver is, to me, prima facie evidence of Dornan's point -- a symbol of the height of British cultural influence in the 1960s. The James Bond films are also something similar to me -- they are a more of the same thing.
Some people see the hand of God in these things. I myself, do not. I do think, though, that cultures of nations, as expressed in the creative output of their cities, can be influential and shape the way in which we regard the world. I ascribe something like the Jungian collective unconscious as the author of these cultural memes.
So, for some reason, I am thinking of Britain in the 1960s. I'm reviewing the Bond films and listening to Revolver.
Why? I really don't know.
