THE BEATLES

Click start to play audio "While my Guitar Gently Weeps"
...weeping because it wasn't included on Rubber Soul!  

Rubber Soul is the sixth album by English rock band The Beatles, first released in December 1965. It was recorded in just over four weeks to make the Christmas market, and was a major achievement, with reviewers taking note of The Beatles' developing musical vision. Like most Beatles albums, the record was produced by George Martin and achieved widespread commercial success.

1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. Think For Yourself
6. Word, The
7. Michelle
8. What Goes On
9. Girl
10. I'm Looking Through You
11. In My Life
12. Wait
13. If I Needed Someone
14. Run For Your Life

Released. December 3, 1965
Recorded. Abbey Road Studios

   The album was a major artistic leap for the group, and often cited by critics, as well as members of the band, as the point where The Beatles' earlier Merseybeat sound began to morph into the eclectic, sophisticated pop/rock of their later career. Lennon later said this was the first album on which The Beatles were in complete creative control during recording, with enough studio time to develop and refine new sound ideas.

Musically, The Beatles broadened their sound, most notably with influences drawn from the contemporary folk-rock of The Byrds and Bob Dylan. The album also saw The Beatles broadening rock n' roll's instrumental resources, most notably on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". This track is generally credited as being the first pop recording to use the exotic Hindustani stringed instrument, the sitar and "Norwegian Wood" sparked a musical craze for the sound of the sitar in the mid-Sixties. The song is now acknowledged as one of the cornerstones of what is now usually called "world music" and it was a major landmark in the trend towards incorporating non-Western musical influences into Western popular music.

Harrison had recently been introduced to Indian classical music and the sitar by David Crosby of The Byrds. He soon became fanatically interested in the genre and began taking sitar lessons from renowned Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

Recording innovations were also made during the recording of the album — the keyboard solo in the middle of "In My Life" sounds like a harpsichord, but was actually played on a piano. George Martin found he could not match the tempo of the song while playing in this baroque style, so he tried recording with the tape running at half-speed. When played back at normal speed during the mixdown, the speeded-up sound gave the illusion of a harpsichord.

Other production innovations included the use of electronic sound processing on many instruments, notably the heavily compressed and equalised piano sound on Lennon's "The Word"; this distinctive effect soon became extremely popular in the genre of psychedelic music.

Lyrically, the album was a major progression. Though a smattering of earlier Beatles songs had expressed romantic doubt and negativity, the songs on Rubber Soul represented a pronounced development in sophistication, thoughtfulness, and ambiguity. In particular, the relationships between the sexes moved from simpler boy-girl love songs to more nuanced, even negative portrayals. "Norwegian Wood", one of the most famous examples and often cited as The Beatles' first conscious assimilation of the lyrical innovations of Bob Dylan, sketches a poetically ambiguous, extra-marital affair between the singer and a mysterious girl. "Drive My Car" serves as a satirical piece of reverse sexism. Songs like "I'm Looking Through You", "You Won't See Me" and "Girl" expressed more emotionally complex, even bitter and downbeat portrayals of romance, and "Nowhere Man" was the first Beatles song to move beyond a romantic subject. 

                                   After completing the album and the accompanying single "We Can Work It Out" and "Day Tripper", The Beatles were exhausted from years of virtually non-stop recording, touring, and film work. They subsequently took a three-month break during the first part of 1966, and used this down time exploring new directions that would color their subsequent musical work. These became immediately apparent in the next album Revolver.

The album had a 42-week run in the British charts starting on December 11, 1965, and on Christmas Day took over from Help!, The Beatles' previous album, at the top position in the charts, a position the album would hold for eight weeks. The album became a classic — on May 9, 1987, it returned to the album charts for three weeks, and ten years later made another comeback to the charts.

Rubber Soul is often cited as one of the greatest albums in pop music history. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted it the 40th greatest album of all time, while in 2000 the same magazine placed it at number 21 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2001 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 6. In 2003, the album was ranked number 5 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album was released on CD in 1987, using the 14-song UK track lineup. As with the CD release of the 1965 Help! album, the Rubber Soul CD featured a contemporary stereo digital remix of the album prepared by George Martin. This remix is a bit controversial among Beatle fans — many purists prefer the 1965 mix. Strangely, a few Canadian-origin CD editions of Rubber Soul and Help! accidentally use the original mix of the album, presumably due to a mix-up as to which tapes were sent to the pressing plant. As of 2006, these "mistakes" sell for a fair amount in the second-hand market, when properly identified.

Until very late in their career, the 'primary' version of The Beatles' albums was always the monophonic mix. According to Beatles historian Mark Lewison, the group, producer George Martin and the Abbey Road engineers devoted most of their time and attention to the mono mixdowns, and the band were usually all present throughout these sessions and actively participated in them. Even with their landmark Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, the stereo mixdowns were considered less important that the mono version and were completed in far less time than the mono mixdown.

While the stereo version of the original release of Rubber Soul was similar to that of their earliest albums, featuring mainly vocals on the right channel and instruments on the left, it was not produced in the same manner. The early albums were recorded on twin-track tape, and they were only intended for production of monaural records, so they kept vocals and instruments separated allowing the two parts to later be mixed in proper proportion. By this time however, the Beatles were recording on four-track tape which allowed a stereo master to be produced with vocals in the center and instruments on both sides, as evidenced in their prior albums Beatles For Sale and Help!. But George Martin was looking for a way to easily produce a stereo album which sounded good on a monaural record player. In what he admits was some experimentation, he mixed down the four-track master tape to stereo with vocals on the right, instruments on the left, and nothing in the middle.

Alternate takes of the album appear on Anthology 2 of the Beatles Anthology.

In 2005, the entire album was covered under the title Rubber Folk for the Mike Harding show on BBC Radio 2. Each song was arranged and performed by a different folk musician or group. While originally developed for radio, the venture proved popular with listeners and a CD release is forthcoming, although Amazon UK do not currently list a release date.

Another tribute, entitled This Bird Has Flown - A 40th Anniversary Tribute to The Beatles' Rubber Soul, was released in 2005. It featured a variety of artists, including the Fiery Furnaces, Ben Kweller, and Yonder Mountain String Band, covering tracks from the album. It was produced by Jim Sampas and released by Razor & Tie Records.