revolver VS rubber soul

youngEINSTEIN

youngEINSTEIN Said:rubber soul.peace, stein. . .

The_Hook_Up

Revolver

family_brick

David Stubbs, one of my favourite writers summed it up quite nicely:

In recent Greatest Album polls, it's become increasingly hip to cite Revolver as the finest Beatles album, and therefore, the greatest and most important rock album ever made. Revolver, so the new wisdom goes, is the album on which The Beatles begin to emancipate themselves from their Epstein-controlled moptop image and graduate to the second, more experimental half of their careers, from monochrome to colour, dragging Western popular culture behind them.

Revolver does contain a miniature masterpiece - "Eleanor Rigby". That apart, however, it's a hotpotch - conservative, derivative, saccharine, mean-spirited, whimsical and just plain tedious by turns, with the odd, tinny flurry of backward guitar hardly bolstering the argument for its monumentalism.

Let's examine this 35 minute "masterpiece". George Harrison's "Taxman" kicks it off. Over a petulant, jerky riff later ripped off by the similarly petulant, jerky Paul Weller on "Start", George Harrison delivers a tirade against the Inland Revenue which would embarrass even the most dyspeptic Daily Telegraph correspondent. "If five per cent should seem to small/Be thankful I don't take it all," whines Harrison with all the harrowing self-pity of one so hard done by he's down to his last three Bentleys. The supposed even-handedness of the overlaid harmony line, "taxman, Mr Wilson/Taxman Mr Heath" only exacerbates the small-mindedly disgruntled Poujadism of the song; "why, they're just as bad as each other, to my mind, these politicians."

This proto-Thatcherite drivel would be hard enough to swallow - but then who's this, three tracks later, waggling his sitar and filling the studio with Hindustani musicians? Why, it's George again, transformed from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells into pseudo-Eastern spiritualist, warning us of the futility of materialism; "A lifetime is so short/ A new one can't be bought." So stop moaning about your tax bills then, you late, lamented wanker!

Far from exhibiting the Beatles' hidden depths, Revolver inadvertently reveals their hidden shallownesses. Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a shambling, sub-Kinks paean to his own idleness which would later see him holed away for years in his Dakota apartment, smacked up to his fatuous eyeballs. McCartney's "For No One" is his astonishingly cold farewell to former lover Jane Asher, a formal back-step from true emotional responsibility worthy of Larry Sanders. Notably, he's comfier with the chocolate box blandishments of "Here, There And Everywhere", perhaps the soppiest song The Beatles ever recorded. But then, that's McCartney for you - hard and soft in all the wrong places.

Revolver is supposed to herald The Beatles' psychedelic futurism. If so, no one told McCartney. He also contributes the laboured, retro, Motown pastiche of "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Good Day Sunshine", which sounds like a jingle for a Kelloggs Cornflakes ad, and "Yellow Submarine", lambasting which is like like lambasting the Teletubbies.

Lennon, meanwhile, gives us the supercilious "And Your Bird Can Sing", noteworthy only for inspiring the "And Your Bird Can't Sing" joke when Yoko Ono took up her screeching career. The small-chorded, cynical "Dr Robert" and "She Said" are the last, grumpy 'old Lennon' stabs at the bullshit spawned by the burgeoning drugs culture - only for Lennon himself to weigh in for the finale with the biggest load of drug-inspired bullshit of the lot. "Tomorrow Never Knows" heralds his asinine decision to start taking LSD.

Revolver apologists regard this gormlessly naive, sub-Learyesque call to universal brainrot as the album's defining moment. Yet even here, Lennon hasn't the courage of his convictions, undermining the track with a lot of silly Red Indian noises and Goon Show-style tuneless piano, signifying that banal and very English fear and loathing of pretentiousness that passed for his "wickedly surreal sense of humour". As Lennon later proved on "Revolution", he was far too indecisive and pusillanimous a soul ever to lead "us" anywhere.

The only reason Revolver is feted by critics is as a hipper-than-thou debunking of the conventional wisdom that Sergeant Pepper was The Beatles' finest album. "Oh yes, everybody talks about Pepper but of course, Revolver is vastly superior. Came out a year earlier, you know." This, however, has become as conventional and under-examined a truism as the notion that Sergeant Pepper's very English, boiled sweet psychedelia is the apex of all rock achievement. The Beatles' brightest work was behind them in 1966, their truly darkest work ahead. Revolver was their greyest.

hcrink

UK Revolver

DustedDon

REVOLVER all day...

DB_Cooper

In recent Greatest Album polls, it's become increasingly hip to cite Revolver as the finest Beatles album, and therefore, the greatest and most important rock album ever made. Revolver, so the new wisdom goes, is the album on which The Beatles begin to emancipate themselves from their Epstein-controlled moptop image and graduate to the second, more experimental half of their careers, from monochrome to colour, dragging Western popular culture behind them.

Revolver does contain a miniature masterpiece - "Eleanor Rigby". That apart, however, it's a hotpotch - conservative, derivative, saccharine, mean-spirited, whimsical and just plain tedious by turns, with the odd, tinny flurry of backward guitar hardly bolstering the argument for its monumentalism.

Let's examine this 35 minute "masterpiece". George Harrison's "Taxman" kicks it off. Over a petulant, jerky riff later ripped off by the similarly petulant, jerky Paul Weller on "Start", George Harrison delivers a tirade against the Inland Revenue which would embarrass even the most dyspeptic Daily Telegraph correspondent. "If five per cent should seem to small/Be thankful I don't take it all," whines Harrison with all the harrowing self-pity of one so hard done by he's down to his last three Bentleys. The supposed even-handedness of the overlaid harmony line, "taxman, Mr Wilson/Taxman Mr Heath" only exacerbates the small-mindedly disgruntled Poujadism of the song; "why, they're just as bad as each other, to my mind, these politicians."

This proto-Thatcherite drivel would be hard enough to swallow - but then who's this, three tracks later, waggling his sitar and filling the studio with Hindustani musicians? Why, it's George again, transformed from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells into pseudo-Eastern spiritualist, warning us of the futility of materialism; "A lifetime is so short/ A new one can't be bought." So stop moaning about your tax bills then, you late, lamented wanker!

Far from exhibiting the Beatles' hidden depths, Revolver inadvertently reveals their hidden shallownesses. Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a shambling, sub-Kinks paean to his own idleness which would later see him holed away for years in his Dakota apartment, smacked up to his fatuous eyeballs. McCartney's "For No One" is his astonishingly cold farewell to former lover Jane Asher, a formal back-step from true emotional responsibility worthy of Larry Sanders. Notably, he's comfier with the chocolate box blandishments of "Here, There And Everywhere", perhaps the soppiest song The Beatles ever recorded. But then, that's McCartney for you - hard and soft in all the wrong places.

Revolver is supposed to herald The Beatles' psychedelic futurism. If so, no one told McCartney. He also contributes the laboured, retro, Motown pastiche of "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Good Day Sunshine", which sounds like a jingle for a Kelloggs Cornflakes ad, and "Yellow Submarine", lambasting which is like like lambasting the Teletubbies.

Lennon, meanwhile, gives us the supercilious "And Your Bird Can Sing", noteworthy only for inspiring the "And Your Bird Can't Sing" joke when Yoko Ono took up her screeching career. The small-chorded, cynical "Dr Robert" and "She Said" are the last, grumpy 'old Lennon' stabs at the bullshit spawned by the burgeoning drugs culture - only for Lennon himself to weigh in for the finale with the biggest load of drug-inspired bullshit of the lot. "Tomorrow Never Knows" heralds his asinine decision to start taking LSD.

Revolver apologists regard this gormlessly naive, sub-Learyesque call to universal brainrot as the album's defining moment. Yet even here, Lennon hasn't the courage of his convictions, undermining the track with a lot of silly Red Indian noises and Goon Show-style tuneless piano, signifying that banal and very English fear and loathing of pretentiousness that passed for his "wickedly surreal sense of humour". As Lennon later proved on "Revolution", he was far too indecisive and pusillanimous a soul ever to lead "us" anywhere.

The only reason Revolver is feted by critics is as a hipper-than-thou debunking of the conventional wisdom that Sergeant Pepper was The Beatles' finest album. "Oh yes, everybody talks about Pepper but of course, Revolver is vastly superior. Came out a year earlier, you know." This, however, has become as conventional and under-examined a truism as the notion that Sergeant Pepper's very English, boiled sweet psychedelia is the apex of all rock achievement. The Beatles' brightest work was behind them in 1966, their truly darkest work ahead. Revolver was their greyest.

WOW???I was just about to say that. Almost word for word. Shit's mad gormlessly naive, yo.

analog_tape

Revolver

The_Hook_Up

David Stubbs, one of my favourite writers summed it up quite nicely:

In recent Greatest Album polls, it's become increasingly hip to cite Revolver as the finest Beatles album, and therefore, the greatest and most important rock album ever made. Revolver, so the new wisdom goes, is the album on which The Beatles begin to emancipate themselves from their Epstein-controlled moptop image and graduate to the second, more experimental half of their careers, from monochrome to colour, dragging Western popular culture behind them.

Revolver does contain a miniature masterpiece - "Eleanor Rigby". That apart, however, it's a hotpotch - conservative, derivative, saccharine, mean-spirited, whimsical and just plain tedious by turns, with the odd, tinny flurry of backward guitar hardly bolstering the argument for its monumentalism.

Let's examine this 35 minute "masterpiece". George Harrison's "Taxman" kicks it off. Over a petulant, jerky riff later ripped off by the similarly petulant, jerky Paul Weller on "Start", George Harrison delivers a tirade against the Inland Revenue which would embarrass even the most dyspeptic Daily Telegraph correspondent. "If five per cent should seem to small/Be thankful I don't take it all," whines Harrison with all the harrowing self-pity of one so hard done by he's down to his last three Bentleys. The supposed even-handedness of the overlaid harmony line, "taxman, Mr Wilson/Taxman Mr Heath" only exacerbates the small-mindedly disgruntled Poujadism of the song; "why, they're just as bad as each other, to my mind, these politicians."

This proto-Thatcherite drivel would be hard enough to swallow - but then who's this, three tracks later, waggling his sitar and filling the studio with Hindustani musicians? Why, it's George again, transformed from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells into pseudo-Eastern spiritualist, warning us of the futility of materialism; "A lifetime is so short/ A new one can't be bought." So stop moaning about your tax bills then, you late, lamented wanker!

Far from exhibiting the Beatles' hidden depths, Revolver inadvertently reveals their hidden shallownesses. Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a shambling, sub-Kinks paean to his own idleness which would later see him holed away for years in his Dakota apartment, smacked up to his fatuous eyeballs. McCartney's "For No One" is his astonishingly cold farewell to former lover Jane Asher, a formal back-step from true emotional responsibility worthy of Larry Sanders. Notably, he's comfier with the chocolate box blandishments of "Here, There And Everywhere", perhaps the soppiest song The Beatles ever recorded. But then, that's McCartney for you - hard and soft in all the wrong places.

Revolver is supposed to herald The Beatles' psychedelic futurism. If so, no one told McCartney. He also contributes the laboured, retro, Motown pastiche of "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Good Day Sunshine", which sounds like a jingle for a Kelloggs Cornflakes ad, and "Yellow Submarine", lambasting which is like like lambasting the Teletubbies.

Lennon, meanwhile, gives us the supercilious "And Your Bird Can Sing", noteworthy only for inspiring the "And Your Bird Can't Sing" joke when Yoko Ono took up her screeching career. The small-chorded, cynical "Dr Robert" and "She Said" are the last, grumpy 'old Lennon' stabs at the bullshit spawned by the burgeoning drugs culture - only for Lennon himself to weigh in for the finale with the biggest load of drug-inspired bullshit of the lot. "Tomorrow Never Knows" heralds his asinine decision to start taking LSD.

Revolver apologists regard this gormlessly naive, sub-Learyesque call to universal brainrot as the album's defining moment. Yet even here, Lennon hasn't the courage of his convictions, undermining the track with a lot of silly Red Indian noises and Goon Show-style tuneless piano, signifying that banal and very English fear and loathing of pretentiousness that passed for his "wickedly surreal sense of humour". As Lennon later proved on "Revolution", he was far too indecisive and pusillanimous a soul ever to lead "us" anywhere.

The only reason Revolver is feted by critics is as a hipper-than-thou debunking of the conventional wisdom that Sergeant Pepper was The Beatles' finest album. "Oh yes, everybody talks about Pepper but of course, Revolver is vastly superior. Came out a year earlier, you know." This, however, has become as conventional and under-examined a truism as the notion that Sergeant Pepper's very English, boiled sweet psychedelia is the apex of all rock achievement. The Beatles' brightest work was behind them in 1966, their truly darkest work ahead. Revolver was their greyest.

wow what a typical asshurt Im-smarter-than-you bullshit critical analysis...Revolver is better.

deathvalley90210

David Stubbs, one of my favourite writers summed it up quite nicely:

In recent Greatest Album polls, it's become increasingly hip to cite Revolver as the finest Beatles album, and therefore, the greatest and most important rock album ever made. Revolver, so the new wisdom goes, is the album on which The Beatles begin to emancipate themselves from their Epstein-controlled moptop image and graduate to the second, more experimental half of their careers, from monochrome to colour, dragging Western popular culture behind them.

Revolver does contain a miniature masterpiece - "Eleanor Rigby". That apart, however, it's a hotpotch - conservative, derivative, saccharine, mean-spirited, whimsical and just plain tedious by turns, with the odd, tinny flurry of backward guitar hardly bolstering the argument for its monumentalism.

Let's examine this 35 minute "masterpiece". George Harrison's "Taxman" kicks it off. Over a petulant, jerky riff later ripped off by the similarly petulant, jerky Paul Weller on "Start", George Harrison delivers a tirade against the Inland Revenue which would embarrass even the most dyspeptic Daily Telegraph correspondent. "If five per cent should seem to small/Be thankful I don't take it all," whines Harrison with all the harrowing self-pity of one so hard done by he's down to his last three Bentleys. The supposed even-handedness of the overlaid harmony line, "taxman, Mr Wilson/Taxman Mr Heath" only exacerbates the small-mindedly disgruntled Poujadism of the song; "why, they're just as bad as each other, to my mind, these politicians."

This proto-Thatcherite drivel would be hard enough to swallow - but then who's this, three tracks later, waggling his sitar and filling the studio with Hindustani musicians? Why, it's George again, transformed from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells into pseudo-Eastern spiritualist, warning us of the futility of materialism; "A lifetime is so short/ A new one can't be bought." So stop moaning about your tax bills then, you late, lamented wanker!

Far from exhibiting the Beatles' hidden depths, Revolver inadvertently reveals their hidden shallownesses. Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a shambling, sub-Kinks paean to his own idleness which would later see him holed away for years in his Dakota apartment, smacked up to his fatuous eyeballs. McCartney's "For No One" is his astonishingly cold farewell to former lover Jane Asher, a formal back-step from true emotional responsibility worthy of Larry Sanders. Notably, he's comfier with the chocolate box blandishments of "Here, There And Everywhere", perhaps the soppiest song The Beatles ever recorded. But then, that's McCartney for you - hard and soft in all the wrong places.

Revolver is supposed to herald The Beatles' psychedelic futurism. If so, no one told McCartney. He also contributes the laboured, retro, Motown pastiche of "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Good Day Sunshine", which sounds like a jingle for a Kelloggs Cornflakes ad, and "Yellow Submarine", lambasting which is like like lambasting the Teletubbies.

Lennon, meanwhile, gives us the supercilious "And Your Bird Can Sing", noteworthy only for inspiring the "And Your Bird Can't Sing" joke when Yoko Ono took up her screeching career. The small-chorded, cynical "Dr Robert" and "She Said" are the last, grumpy 'old Lennon' stabs at the bullshit spawned by the burgeoning drugs culture - only for Lennon himself to weigh in for the finale with the biggest load of drug-inspired bullshit of the lot. "Tomorrow Never Knows" heralds his asinine decision to start taking LSD.

Revolver apologists regard this gormlessly naive, sub-Learyesque call to universal brainrot as the album's defining moment. Yet even here, Lennon hasn't the courage of his convictions, undermining the track with a lot of silly Red Indian noises and Goon Show-style tuneless piano, signifying that banal and very English fear and loathing of pretentiousness that passed for his "wickedly surreal sense of humour". As Lennon later proved on "Revolution", he was far too indecisive and pusillanimous a soul ever to lead "us" anywhere.

The only reason Revolver is feted by critics is as a hipper-than-thou debunking of the conventional wisdom that Sergeant Pepper was The Beatles' finest album. "Oh yes, everybody talks about Pepper but of course, Revolver is vastly superior. Came out a year earlier, you know." This, however, has become as conventional and under-examined a truism as the notion that Sergeant Pepper's very English, boiled sweet psychedelia is the apex of all rock achievement. The Beatles' brightest work was behind them in 1966, their truly darkest work ahead. Revolver was their greyest.

i don't know anything about this dude. what is the private mind garden bone he is trying to pick with this critique?

family_brick

I just find Revolver difficult to enjoy on the whole, and feel its probably one of the most overrated LPs in the history of rock.

Rubber Soul, on the other hand, is great.

discos_alma

REVOLVER all day...

erewhon

Rubber Soul

hcrink

I just find Revolver difficult to enjoy on the whole, and feel its probably one of the most overrated LPs in the history of rock.

Rubber Soul, on the other hand, is great.

Huh?

DB_Cooper

I just find Revolver difficult to enjoy on the whole, and feel its probably one of the most overrated LPs in the history of rock.

Rubber Soul, on the other hand, is great.

Huh?

Your gormless naivete is appalling. BAN!

funky16corners

UK Revolver

hcrink

I just had to go look up what gormless meant.

family_brick

Damn I'm getting mauled. I thought it might be more evenly split. Surely SOMEBODY prefers Rubber Soul. Surely some of you dont really like Revolver a great deal. Surely.

Surely.

Snapping

Revolver for sure. That long critic diatribe posted above was silly. He just went through the tracklisting of the album and found something nasty to say about each song.

The_Hook_Up

Damn I'm getting mauled. I thought it might be more evenly split. Surely SOMEBODY prefers Rubber Soul. Surely some of you dont really like Revolver a great deal. Surely.

Surely.

not me...Revolver is my fave Beatles LP, followed by, at a close 2nd, "Abbey Road"
and "Help" at 3rd...

DB_Cooper

Damn I'm getting mauled. I thought it might be more evenly split. Surely SOMEBODY prefers Rubber Soul. Surely some of you dont really like Revolver a great deal. Surely.

Surely.

We're not really slamming you. More the critic who thinks big words and snappy disses are better than good ideas and clear expression.

markus71

Mother$!#@ing Revolver dude

funky16corners

Damn I'm getting mauled. I thought it might be more evenly split. Surely SOMEBODY prefers Rubber Soul. Surely some of you dont really like Revolver a great deal. Surely.

Surely.

We're not really slamming you. More the critic who thinks big words and snappy disses are better than good ideas and clear expression.

You're giving that writer too much credit. There is nothing snappy in that load of low-rent, grad school crap....

hcrink

Rubber Soul is a very good album. I just don't understand liking one while panning the other.

family_brick

To be fair to the critic, Mr Stubbs had a column in a UK mag that was all about slamming the hell out of accepted masterpieces, artists etc. It's not what he actually does for a living - he's a staff writer for the Guardian and The Wire magazine, and wrote the excellent book on Ace Records, for example. I was reading some old stuff of his recently (I loved the stupid shit he wrote as Mr Agreeable for the Melody Maker back in the day) and thought of his Revolver piece.

I dont want to read the 'reaper' piece he wrote on Miles Davis, I dont think I'd enjoy it on any level.

http://www.mr-agreeable.net/story.lasso?section=reaper

youngEINSTEIN

Rubber Soul is a very good album. I just don't understand liking one while panning the other.

yeah. they are both top notch albums?

peace, stein. . .

p_gunn

US rubber soul

LaserWolf

When I was a teen I knew some people into Arica.
I thought they were groovy and spiritual and organic.
I went to some of their parties.
They later become involved with EST and then Wellspring.

So, which Arica record is better?
The brown one or the red one?

Which alternate side better?

hcrink

I like the brown one, but I think Telly Savalas prefers the pink.

dukeofdelridge

I'll be up front: I thought "gormless" was a reference to mark gormley. I was pretty sure I could join the conversation... but, after double-checking, I'm not sure...

I have heard both albums. The only thing I really take away from either of them is how my dad told me about the Rubber Soul cover, and how it blew minds. I'll choose Rubber Soul because of that...

johmbolaya

UK Revolver, mono

Mjukis

UK Revolver, mono

My copy's pretty busted though. BTW, that text "slagging off" Revolver was terrible. Read Ian MacDonalds book on the Beatles instead of that crap.