1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 58. The Beatles – Rubber Soul (1965)

 

At this stage, it feels like Dimery’s list is a cycle of Dylan-Beatles-Soul, rinse and repeat. But the truth is that this cycle of influence is exactly what is going on in this stage of music. The intrusions into this triad by the likes of The Rolling Stone, The Byrds, The Who, folk musicians etc. Is also entirely warranted. Both sides of the Atlantic are taking bits of each other’s music and playing around with it, mixing it up, to throw out an original sound, and so it goes. 

The Byrds, for example, took bits of Beatles and Dylan, and threw out their distinctive sound. Here The Beatles take some Byrds, some Dylan, some Soul, some Country, mix it all up, add a dash of sitar and top it all off with some dabbling in drugs. The Byrd’s influences are clear on tracks like Run For Your Life and Drive My Car, but other songs show different influences. The Ringo Starr vocalled What Goes On is pretty much a country song. 

Others are harder to categorise. My Life could perhaps have been sung by Ella Fitzgerald, but is given a distinctive flavour, mostly thanks to George Martin’s insertion of a sped-up piano to mimic a baroque harpsichord piece. Michelle recalls a sort of French cafe jazz laid-back feel. And then there’s the majesty of Nowhere Man, somewhat Byrdsesque with the harmonies, prefiguring Eleanor Rigby, maybe echoing Dylanesque lyrics about a lonely, empty life. No chirpy romance here. 

But then, the rest of the album is perhaps more like the old murder ballads of the Louvin Brothers in its gender dynamics than the boy-meets-girl bubble gum pop. Norwegian Wood (a showcase for Harrison’s sitar) features the narrator sort of almost having a one-night stand – is the girl leading him on, or is he too awkward to capitalise on her offer? Either way he burns her house down in the morning. McCartney’s troubled relationship with Jane Asher fuel his songs, while I’d never realised that the narrator in Drive My Car is actually a woman, offering the man a chance to be her chauffeur when she’s rich and famous (with not a small amount of innuendo, of course. We all know that Grace Jones’ Pull Up To My Bumper has nothing to do with driving). 

I do like the multiple layers of meaning behind the title too. Since the Beatles aren’t African-American with all of the trials and tribulations that entails, they admit that they’ll never be able to play “real” soul, and so their version is “rubber”. This is also a friendly poke at The Rolling Stones who were called “plastic soul” by one critic. But also, call to mind the rubber souls of the boots of the Northern working class. It’s a little bit like Jimmy Rabbitt from the Commitments declaring that “the Irish are the Blacks of Europe”. And that's not a meaningless link, given the close cultural ties between Liverpool and Ireland. 

But enough maundering Simon, is it any good? For me this is certainly the beginning of where The Beatles become more musically sophisticated – Nowhere Man, Norwegian Wood, Girl, Michelle, all justifiably classics, but the rest are good beyond-pop songs too, and what’s fun about this list is seeing how the influences bounce back and forth between the performers of the time. It must have been a really exciting time to be making music. 

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