Masterpiece #2: American triumph of folk-rock
While it is widely agreed that "Rubber Soul" is the album that pushed the Beatles' boundaries into the new frontier, it is not so clear how and why.
The USA version shows quite a different artistic direction from the UK version, with the emphasis on artistic.
"Rubber Soul" actually concedes to the British sensibility of not including the concurrent single, "Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out", and actually goes two steps further than the Brits in also excluding the follow-up singles "Nowhere Man" and "Drive My Car" as well. All of these songs are just too electric and too rocking to fit the artistic vision.
So while the British version is seen by critics as the album that opens up a new eclectic world of artistic freedom, the American version is more disciplined and focused, and thus even clearer and more powerful - and better.
And what the American version opens up is a new world of folk-rock. Did the control freaks at US Capitol Records know what they were doing when they selectively dipped back into the leftovers from the "Help!" album to do this?
Apparently they did, because they did not take the easy way by grabbing "Yesterday", which was already becoming the song that finally opened up the Beatles to acclaim among all generations, young and old, even though it had not yet appeared on an American album.
What they grabbed instead was "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love" to open Sides 1 and 2, songs whose guitars are so wooden and organic as to truly lead the way. Yes, Bob Dylan came first to folk-rock, and John Lennon already gave his nod to him with "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", and Dylan had already been stylishly slicked up with electric twelve-string guitar by The Byrds, and Simon and Garfunkel had turned all this into highly produced precious poetry.
But it was the Beatles who turned folk-rock into a genre for the ages. The second song on "Rubber Soul", the Bohemia with sitar "Norwegian Wood", could not have segued better from the first. And it keeps on going from there. Even the heavier electric songs miraculously sound light and organic. "In My Life" has been a favorite cover for mature adult folkies like Judy Collins ever since, but nobody else has ever given it the double tape speed piano that sounds like baroque harpsichord like the Beatles did. Non-folk rockers were also inspired, most notably the Beach Boys, who cited "Rubber Soul" as a key influence for their masterpiece album, "Pet Sounds".
All this emerges far more clearly in the American version than the British version. The American record execs had been messing with the Beatles' albums since the beginning, but here they somehow finally got it right.
1 - I've Just Seen a Face
2 - Norwegian Wood
3 - You Won't See Me
4 - Think For Yourself (George Harrison)
5 - The Word
6 - Michelle
7 - It's Only Love
8 - Girl
9 - I'm Looking Through You
10 - In My Life
11 - Wait
12 - Run For Your Life
(all songs Lennon / McCartney except as indicated)
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