Masterpiece #3: The avant-garde album
"Revolver" simply stuns from one song to the next, each one starting fresh as a new expression of what Beatles music is.
Song One opens with the same "one-two-three-four" count which opens the very first Beatles album's youthful energetic lead into "I Saw Her Standing There". But here it's a greedy old coughing codger counting money - the "Taxman". It's a very stark spare song which allows its individual elements to stand out, particularly George's spikey guitar, heretofore like no other.
In stark contrast, Song Two is a driving string quartet, "Eleanor Rigby", but not the sweet syrupy strings of "Yesterday".
Song Three, "I'm Only Sleeping", rescued to its rightful place from the executive poaching of "Yesterday and Today", is based not on a spikey guitar or string section, but on a very fluid backwards guitar.
Topping that, Song Four is based on sitar, but not the seamlessly integrated sitar of "Norwegian Wood" but a fully fledged rock-raga, "Love You To".
Three more songs need special mention: "For No One" is a baroque pop masterpiece that echoes Rubber Soul's "In My Life" but with just a hint of modern dissonance near the end of each verse. On "I Want to Tell You", the dissonance gets much louder and central to the foundation of the song. Then finally, they let out all their avant-garde stops on "Tomorrow Never Knows" - which foreshadows "Revolution #9" at the end of the "White Album", but integrated into a fully formed song with sitar, mellotron and all manner of musical effects, not a mere sound collage.
The USA version of "Revolver" actually survives the theft of three of its fourteen songs fairly well, because all the songs stand so well on their own. In fact, the three stolen songs are among the least weird on the album, despite all being John Lennon songs, so the USA version sounds even more avant-garde without them. But more is simply better, 14 vs. 11. And why mess with a masterpiece?
1 - Taxman (George Harrison)
2 - Eleanor Rigby
3 - I'm Only Sleeping
4 - Love You To (George Harrison)
5 - Here, There and Everywhere
6 - Yellow Submarine
7 - She Said She Said
8 - Good Day Sunshine
9 - And Your Bird Can Sing
10 - For No One
11 - Dr. Robert
12 - I Want to Tell You (George Harrison)
13 - Got to Get You Into My Life
14 - Tomorrow Never Knows
(all songs Lennon / McCartney except as indicated)
No comments:
Post a Comment