Monday 10 March 2014

The Beatles "Rubber Soul" (1965) (Album Review)



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The Beatles "Rubber Soul" (1965)

Drive My Car/Norwegian Wood/You Won't See Me/Nowhere Man/Think For Yourself/The Word/Michelle//What Goes On/Girl/I'm Looking Through You/In My Life/Wait/If I Needed Someone/Run For Your Life


You is the album seen as the 'stepping stone' towards greatness, the one even George Harrison thought of as 'Revolver Part One' and the record George Martin still thinks of as the best Beatles album, as 'deep' as the Beatles got before going all 'weird'. So many times have we heard this line nowadays (when 'Rubber Soul' generally gets voted fourth on the all-time Beatles list, after 'Sgt Peppers' 'Revolver' and 'The White Album') that we've all now come to accept 'Rubber Soul' as something really special as opposed to just the Beatles' latest release just in time for Christmas 1965 as it was considered at the time (the sales of this album are actually behind that for 'Help!') 'Rubber Soul' undoubtedly has a special place in the Beatles' pantheon and somehow it makes sense that it's this album that's slap bang in the middle of the fab four's album discography (if you discount the 'Magical Mystery Tour' - its an EP people! - and the 'Yellow Submarine' soundtrack anyway). Like the blurry, sideways, out of focus album cover (actually the result of an accident, the Beatles' regular photographer Robert Freeman demonstrating what the cover would look like by shining a projection onto a piece of cardboard that suddenly slipped sideways; overjoyed by the results - which made the bEatles look 'different' and 'adult' as per the 'Beatles For Sale' cover but better - the band insisted on the cover being released exactly like that), this record is 'stretched', a tug of war between the 'past' and 'future' going on throughout. As a result, 'Rubber Soul' is an enjoyable but schizophrenic LP, bouncing from genuine moments of inspiration to deadline-pressured rush-recordings and back across its 14 tracks. Interestingly half the original albums pressed have the 'album' lettering in muddy brown and half in gold and no one is quite sure anymore which it should be (a neat mirror of the album's contents, as we'll be seeing). Incidentally, this is the first Beatles album - and as far as I can make out the first album by anyone - not to feature the band name on the front cover, a technique some of the band will use into their solo careers.

In the 'red' corner (well, dark green really)are the songs that point the way towards the future,. Lennon, especially, hasahit a nicely rich vein of songs for this album, having been inspired by a meeting with journalist Keith Allsop who'd been a big fan of the witty wordplay in Lennon's books and had challenged him to write a pop song as deep and intellectual as 'In His Own Write'. Having enjoyed working on more 'autobiographical' songs like 'I'm A Loser' and 'Help!' in the past year - and increasingly turned on by Bob Dylan's first few albums - Lennon attacks this album with gusto, writing two songs that are inspired first-hand by events in his life ('In My Life' and 'Norwegian Wood') and writing two, possibly three more songs about the changes he's experienced across 1965 ('Nowhere Man' 'The Word', possibly 'Girl' depending on which Lennon interview you listen to). Drugs, too, undoubtedly played a part in 'opening' Lennon's mind - the Beatles had started smoking pot during the making of 'Help!' (both film and soundtrack) and both John and George had become recent converts to LSD after their dentist (of all people) spiked their drinks with acid in mid 1965. From here-on in Lennon's music becomes slower and less energetic (even lethargic at times - see 'I'm Only Sleeping') and his lyrics more sub-conscious and less concerned with the band's audience of teenage girls. It's arguably the last time Lennon's songs dominate the band he'd founded (the reason so many of 'us' true Beatles fans love 'revolver' is that its pretty much the only album where both John and Paul are on top form at the same time).

McCartney, too, is growing across this album but for very different reasons. Too sensible to take LSD across 1965 (and worried about its effect on Lennon, as he's since revealed) Paul's mind is being opened - and then closed - by girlfriend Jane Asher and her family. While Lennon's curiosity generally came from things that crossed his path, McCartney loved new experiences and ending up as part of the 'Asher' actress family gave him first-hand access to many of the biggest intellectual names on the 1960s scene (Paul even rang Bertrand Russell for a chat about philosophy after finding his name in the Asher phone-book - the 70-year old writer had never heard of The Beatles but seemed to enjoy the chat all the same). Many of Paul's songs on 'Rubber Soul' are about social climbing and overcoming the stigma he must have felt as a working class Liverpool boy with only a handful of 'O' levels, which ironically left his relationship with Jane in trouble. Macca's songs for 'Rubber Soul' are unusually troubled, with only one love song among them (and one first written as early as 1960 come to that) and lyrically at least are a huge step forward, acknowledging that the course of love isn't always smooth (until now 'Things We Said Today' is the only real example of McCartney's darker side which will be much more in evidence from now on; the single 'We Can Work It Out' was also recorded during these album sessions and McCartney's third song on the same subject would have fitted the album like a glove). Lennon, too, is growing bored with first wife Cynthia but is still unsure what to do about it all (the other side of that single, 'Day Tripper', is another song about an affair that would have fitted on this album nicely; things only speed up when he meets Yoko in 1967, but across 1965 and 1966 Lennon embarked on dozens of affairs, more so than at any time since the band's 'Hamburg' days; 'Norwegian Wood' and possibly 'Girl' are a direct result of these encounters, while 'Run For Your Life' sounds like John's jealousy over rumours Cynthia was doing the same while he was off on tour - a claim she denies to this day).

Notably John Paul and George are all moving away from the idea of 'romance' in their songs. 'The Word' is a huge leap forward for the day (we nominate it as our 'third ever psychedelic song' in one of our top fives, hot on the heels of The Kinks' 'See My Friends' and The Who's B-side 'Circles' and lyrically it's more psychedelic than either). This under-rated song might not have caused the 'peace and love with flowers' movement first-hand, but it's tale of brotherly rather than romantic love was a call-to-arms that influenced many (it's also one of the last songs jointly written by John and Paul and to feature the by now very different hallmarks of both writers together). That song isn't unique though: 'Nowhere Man' is a gorgeous song about loss of identity that makes no reference to love at all, a daring feat for the day; George's 'Think For Yourself', too, is about not being fooled by people who are only pretending to know something and that you can't trust things at face value, an unusual lesson for 1965 and a pointer towards George's 'breakthrough' songs on 'Revolver'. Even the songs about 'love' sound somewhat 'different': 'Drive My Car' ends with the girl falsely luring the narrator into a relationship as her 'chauffeur' before naughtily revealing she hasn't bought a car yet; 'Norwegian Wood' is an affair where the girl gets the better of the narrator so he takes revenge by turning arsonist - a tale of romance a long way from 'Love Me Do'; 'Girl' is hardly a portrait of an ideal romantic encounter either - the narrator sounds almost afraid of his loved one and her intelligence, which may be the single biggest departure on the entire album (there isn't a single rock song this pro-feminist by late 1965, even by girls - the contrast between 'Girl' and 'Run For Your Life', the rather misogynistic final song but first recorded for 'Rubber Soul', is striking and evidence of how quickly Lennon's mind changed over this period).

In the muddy brown corner, however, the Beatles simply didn't have the time to craft the album they really wanted to make (and from 'Revolver' onwards, will have the time to make once they abandon touring). Almost all of these songs were written on the run, recorded after a gruelling tour where everything had seemed to go wrong (the Philippines debacle, when the Beatles snubbed the Marcos family without even knowing it, having refused an invitation they didn't know was from them, happened around here). The Beatles also had less time than normal to make this album, the filming for 'Help!' having delayed that album until The Beatles also had less time than normal to make this album, the filming for 'Help!' having delayed that album until August - a month or two later than most mid-year Beatles LPs - and with pressure from EMI to release another album before Christmas the Beatles had to think fast. Sensibly Brian Epstein, realising the pressure on the band, cancelled their usual 'extra' tour at this time of year and the many BBC sessions the band had been doing regularly up until mid-1965 to concentrate on this LP, the first time the Beatles took over Abbey Road and worked through the night where necessary. Even so, it ever so nearly wasn't enough: no less than four songs were recorded in one long rush on November 11th, a day that EMI had made absolutely clear would be the last possible moment they'd have in order to mix an album and have it out by Christmas (as it happened this delayed the album's till December 4th, the latest they came to releasing an album for the Christmas market). For a time the band toyed with the idea of filling up a large amount of space with a bluesy Booker T-style instrumental they worked hard on (later released on 'Anthology Two' as '12 Bar original'); the title 'Rubber Soul' is a hangover from this period, a joke by Paul who feared that the Beatles attempts to 'do' American soul might get laughed at (a pun on the 'rubber soles' used in shoes - this album is a 'trip' remember, in the drug parlance of the day - he was playing around with the phrase for a while, declaring the first noisy take of B-side 'I'm Down!' recorded in Summer 1965 as 'plastic soul' as heard on 'Anthology Two'; the Beatles always had trouble with names with only 'Sgt Peppers' having a name fairly early on in the project that was still kept by the end). Figuring (rightly) that it would confuse a lot of their fans and smack of the 'money-making' they refused to associate with the Beatles name they solved the problem by reviving some older songs: months old in the case of 'Wait' (which was recorded for 'Help!' but discarded - the only thing the Beatles did to it for 'Rubber Soul' was add more percussion); years old in the case of 'Michelle' (which had started out life as a 'comedy' song McCartney played at parties - he only revived it at Lennon's request and at the last minute; ironically it's this hurried song that became the only Lennon-McCartney composition to ever win a 'grammy') and 'What Goes On' (toyed with as the Beatles' first single this Lennon song dated back to his Quarrymen days, before being handed over to Paul and Ringo for re-writes). Things weren't helped by a band decision to record only their own material for the album (the decision to return to covers after the all-original 'A Hard Day's Night' in July 1964 was a decision taken under pressure for both 'Beatles For Sale' and 'Help!' and by now the Beatles were running out of cover songs they could get up to speed in a matter of days).

Had they had more time to work on it, it's likely 'Rubber Soul' would have been a very different album indeed. One of the first songs written for it was Lennon's 'In My Life', a song which in its first draft talked in much more detail about John's childhood and his memories of Liverpool. Paul, especially was moved by this idea (the melody line he wrote for 'In My Life' is proof of how sympathetic he was to his partner's new direction) and for a time the pair talked about writing a whole album about their childhood; discounting the special case of the Beach Boys' 'Shut Down Volume 2' (a compilation of their 'car' songs) this would most certainly have been the first 'concept album' in rock and roll. As it happened deadlines got in the way, but the Beatles returned to this concept in late 1966 when looking for ways to follow 'Revolver' (the album that would have been 'Sgt Peppers' only yet more deadlines meant that two of the three songs recorded for the project - 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny lane' - got released as a single instead). Then 'Rubber Soul' became a 'comedy' record for a time, inspired by the 'joke' endings on the next batch of Lennon and McCartney songs 'Drive My Car' and 'Norwegian Wood' and in keeping with the mood of late 1965 (when tongue-in-cheek humour was the mood of the day, at least in America). The challenge to John's intellect and Paul's fiery rows with Jane Asher shaped what we have instead, though.

One thing that does very much in 'Rubber Soul's favour is the sound of the album. Every other band from late 1965 onwards thought that writing more complex songs meant more complex recordings and too many great songs are lost under a sea of clutter (the Stones' work, especially their 1967 singles, suffer from this more-is-more feeling). Not 'Rubber Soul', which must be one of the best mixed albums around, in both the Beatles-overseen mono and George Martin-hemmed stereo versions. George's Rickenbacker guitar (inspired by The Byrds) shines and shimmers across this album, Ringo's drums have a kick they won't have until the 'White Album' and even with the stereo's insistence on keeping most of the vocals right-of-centre can't hide how much effort has gone into the harmonies across the album. Only Paul's bass isn't quite as loud as it could be and even then it's louder in the mix than any Beatles album up to this point. Time and again some 'surprise' has been added to each song's arrngement to show just how much thinking has gone on while recording this album: the oh-so Beatlesy sound of the cowbell on 'Drive My Car', the harpsichord solo on 'In My Life', the organ part that blossoms on 'The Word' like the sun coming out, the neat packing percussion on 'I'm Looking Through You' and most famously the plucked sitar part on 'Norwegian Wood' that inspired a million copycat versions. Many of the band's best group performances are here too, with 'Drive My Car' and 'Wait' powered along by a straightforward rattle even only reached previously on 'Ticket To Ride' and 'Help!' whilst the slower, lyrical material like 'Norwegian Wood' and 'Girl' are given a real sense of space. The building blocks of this album aren't always the best to build on (this album was written in an awful hurry after all), but what the Beatles did to these songs while in the studio was nothing short of miraculous. If only the Beatles had been given this much studio time for their other albums, instead of recording on days-off between touring, TV, radio and even pantomime commitments...

In all, then, 'Rubber Soul' finds the Beatles at a crossroads, the band on the verge of giving up touring without quite knowing what to replace their concerts with or even if people will still buy their records without being able to see them in person. The fab four know where they want to go but not necessarily how to get there and certainly not in the timeframe they've been given for making this album. A lot of things people have said about this album are wrong - or at least, they seem wrong to me. 'Rubber Soul' isn't the band's great step forwards - the Beatles have been reaching forward every album from 'With The Beatrles' onwards. The step between 'Help!' and 'Rubber Soul' isn't necessarily the biggest either - there are an awful lot of deep and groundbreaking songs on 'Help!' too, and arguably there's just as much filler on both that album and 'Rubber Soul' (my nomination for the biggest leap forward is the all-original third album 'A Hard Day's Night'). While it's true that parts of 'Rubber Soul' ought to be counted as a 'Revolver Mark One' (with all the hints at groundbreaking songs and experimental recordings that implies), 'Rubber Soul' should be considered every bit as much a 'Help!' part two, the last flowerings of the band's folk roots and with a hurried last few days of recording that don't leave much time for finesse or detail.

Yes, a lot of 'Rubber Soul' is every bit as terrific as music writers often say: it's hard to find a Beatles song as loved and 'complete' as 'In My Life' and 'Nowhere Man' sits in the top five ever Beatles songs for me, both songs saying so much in a little under three minutes each, mini masterpieces of the highest order. Fans of the Beatles' rarer songs will find much to love in 'Girl' and 'The Word' too, two very much under-rated songs that put many of the Beatles' peers to shame (fancy having songs these good and not releasing them as the all-important singles?) But there's an awful lot of recordings made up of perspiration rather than inspiration too: 'Michelle' is a poor man's 'Yesterday', with the same English verses repeated in French simply to fill in time; 'You Won't See Me' and 'I'm Looking Through You' are two of McCartney's scruffiest songs, clearly born of emotional anger rather than his usually cool detached gorgeous melodies (and interestingly much more Lennon-like than any of John's songs for this album); 'What Goes On' may be one of Ringo's better songs but it's no 'Octopuses Garden' never mind 'Yellow Submarine'; 'Wait' is too good to remain in the vaults but not good enough to match the best work on this album; 'If I Needed Someone' is a great song but 'borrows' so heavily from other material it's a wonder the Byrds didn't sue and 'Run For Your Life' is at least a year too late, one of the biggest anachronisms on any Beatles LP. In other words, I stand by every music writer whose ever said this is a 'great' LP (what Beatles album isn't?), but equal - perhaps even better - than the consistently exciting and progressive 'Revolver'? Hardly (though fans who rate it above 'Peppers' may have a point). In truth, taken as a whole, this album isn't quite up to 'Help!', however much evidence of genius there is on many of the album's songs. However when you realise that this was recorded inside two months and released less than four since the 'Help!' soundtrack came out - with lots of touring in between - and your question isn't 'why is half the album so bad?', more 'how did the other half of the album get to be this good?'

As a general rule the opening songs on Beatles albums tend to be recorded near the end of album sessions, often when the band realised they needed something 'meaty' to open the album. 'Drive My Car', however, is one of the few songs on 'Rubber Soul' to have existed before the recording sessions (it's the third song to be recorded especially for the album) and is one of the last that Lennon and McCartney worked on together. McCartney came up with the song's pounding riffs, which sounds like an amalgamation of two of the three 'in' sounds of 1965 (heavy soul and heavy rock - heavy 'folk' will take place on the next track). However he got stuck with the words which, in their first draft, were a lazy re-write of 'I Feel Fine' with a woman who wasn't pleased even with the 'diamond rings' narrator gives her. Sensibly realising that they needed something a little newer than that, Lennon came up with the 'beep beep yeah' chorus and after several hours of struggling the lyrics came together remarkably quickly after that. 'Drive My Car' is generally hailed as one of the first 'car' songs, but what's interesting is that this motorised 'chunky' song isn't anything like what most late 1965 record-goers would think of as a 'car' song: there's no sound effects of revving engines, no lyrics referring to 'freedom' and none of the walking tempo the Beach Boys had made their own. To be honest, the car doesn't play a particularly big role in the story anyway - its a sleazy double entendre for sex, unusual for the Beatles of 1965, playing on the sexual chemistry between the two characters in the song. The 'twist' at the end - when she reveals she's hired the narrator to be her chauffeur even though she doesn't have a car yet - is genuinely funny (the first time anyway), but somehow even these 'second' lyrics seem too slight for what's musically one of the Beatles' best rockers. The Beatles worked hard on the song, during their first session to break the 'no work beyond midnight' rule. The backing track is very unusual for the Beatles circa 1965: John restricts himself to harmony singing, Paul plays the fiery lead guitar solo for the first time as far as I can tell (did he disagree with the part George intended to play?) and - solo apart - there's no guitar on this song at all, George playing the 'bass' part as if it's a guitar instead (that's Paul playing the piano part too, making this track something of a McCartney tour de force). The result is breathlessly exciting and compared to the band's sloppy attempt at a similar song (the funky but rushed sounding B-side 'She's A Woman') the results are highly impressive. The vocals, too, are sublime, Lennon creating tension through the 'nagging' harmony McCarrney once gave to him on 'Twist and Shout' and Paul singing on the verses not the usual 'middle' lines but a powerful, gruff falsetto doubled by a more quiet bass part. Musically assured, technically sound but lyrically shaky 'Drive My Car' is a popular track for good reason but not up to the best on the album. Perhaps the lowest AAA moment of them all came when Lulu covered the song, appallingly, for a National Lottery 'Red Alert' programme in 2007 backed by the Spice Girl's Mel C that was so wrong on so many levels I'm amazed the pair weren't run over!

'Norwegian Wood' is, frustratingly enough, the opposite. Lennon's Dylanesque lyric is one of his best, telling a 'story' about a real affair he had in such shady, haiku-like phrases and with such a 'Aesop's Fable' still moral ending that few fans assumed it was a 'true' story until John's revealing Rolling Stone interview of 1970 put the record straight. Like many a Lennon song on 'Rubber Soul' (continuing the theme of 'Help!' and 'I'm A Loser'), the narrator is having a huge crisis of confidence and is somewhat in awe of the manipulating female who offers him her home for the night. What many commentators miss now but would have been obvious in 1965 was that this 'girl' has her own home and a job to go to, suggesting either that she's much older than the narrator or much more independent (Lennon's character almost cringes when he admits that he doesn't have to get up for work in the morning and 'crawls off' to 'sleep in the bath' in one of the song's most quoted lines). The fact that the 'girl' laughs when she says this also suggests powerplay and one up-man-ship that a fragile Beatle can't match. Legend has it this song is about the journalist Maureen Cleave, who was close to Lennon even though it was a throwaway line in one of her interviews with him that kick-started the 'Beatles bigger than Jesus' row and was indeed both older and a lot more independent (most of her interviews with John comment in shock over how the Beatle slept his time away or stared unseeing in front of one of his many TVs, afraid that he was stagnating in his posh Surrey home miles away from anywhere). However Cleave has always denied she ever had a fling with Lennon and you sense from their conversations he was too in awe of her to even ask (is this song his imaginative scenario of how a fling with her would pan out? Or simply a tale about another person in similar circumstances?) The twist in the song, where the narrator gets his 'manliness' back by burning down her posh but fake Norwegian furniture was inspired by McCartney, who'd been teasing nearly-brother-in-law and later Apple boss Peter Asher (of Peter and Gordon) about some new redwood furniture he'd had put into his bedroom that was expensive but 'fake' looking. Lennon liked the idea that she was exactly the sort of woman to have the same social climbing values (given that the character is meant to be Lennon did she 'bed' him simply to boast at having slept with a famous musician?) but figured 'Norwegian Wood' was easier to rhyme. The 'twist', where the narrator hints that he burns the house down in revenge - which is never actually spelt out even though that's what most Beatle fans take the cryptic last line 'So I lit a fire' to mean - is McCartney's too. Musically the song is most famous for the second appearance of the sitar on a Beatles record (a George Martin-arranged bit of incidental music for the American 'Help!' soundtrack LP was the first). George Harrison both suggested it and played the rather wobbly part here - the only time he actually plays sitar on a Beatles or solo song (he plays it very much like a guitar, something which later shamed him once he started learning how to play it properly from Ravi Shankar in 1966). The accompaniment is certainly distinctive and was understandably hugely important in the 'explosion' of Eastern music in popular culture for the rest of the 1960s (George only got into the sitar after hearing then-Byrd David Crosby enthusing about it during a get together in the middle of the American tour - however the Byrds had shied away from using the sound, figuring it would be 'too different' for their fans to cope with; shockingly, despite being the one to teach George about Ravi Shankar's music, none of Crosby's songs will ever feature the sitar). However, the sitar doesn't really fit what is at heart a very folky song and even the lyrical hint at a new mysterious dangerous future still isn't quite enough. Unsure of what to do with the song, the Beatles recorded four differently arranged versions of this song (one of them released later on 'Anthology Two') more than any other Beatles song until the 'Not Guilty'/'Mary Jane' saga on the 'White Album' in 1968: none of them including the fourth and finished version quite comes off because, aside from a very at-home sounding Lennon, the Beatles aren't quite sure to do with such a jump in their sound, full of smoke-and-mirrors and cryptic clues. A shame because, lyrically at least, 'Norwegian Wood' is a classic Lennon song and a good example of the Lennon-McCartney team bringing out the best in each other's work.

'You Won't See Me' was a late addition to the album, recorded in the dying moments of November 11th 1965 when the clock was ticking down to the last possible moment a song could be added to the album to have it out in time for Christmas (this is the second of only two takes - arguably it would have been given a few more had the band had more time). Understandably, both composition and recording sound a little rushed, with one of the more hackneyed Beatle arrangements of the day, full of bland 'ooh la la' backing vocals (which the band used wholesale from their earlier recording of next song 'Nowhere Man') and an eccentric drum part from Ringo that seems to sputter drum fills at random across the song. While McCartney's double-tracked vocal has pkenty of conviction, you can sense he's still unsure about this song, which does make very public his conflicts with Jane Asher. Even more than 'I'm Looking Through You' (a song that only took it's harsh feel on during the third and final versions, recorded the same day) this song is a warning not to be pushed even further of 'you won't see me' (because I'll be gone!) Like 'Through You' this song is unusual for McCartney, his anger moving him away from his usual 'proper' song structure into Lennon territory, where a song is dictated by mood and emotion not melody. Indeed the AABBB rhyming structure is so asymmetrical that it makes McCartney's narrator sound obsessed and unreasonable, the song breaking out only for a lovely minor key middle eight that tries (and fails) to lift the tension. Even stranger is his decision to sing not his usual harmony part but a low, moody bass vocal that stretches Lennon's harmony to near-breaking point. This might not be the best McCartney song and by his standards it's ugly and hard to take even - the fact that at 3:20 this song became the longest Beatles recording released yet adds to the effect too, like an argument that's overstepped the mark as if to show it's the 'final' word on the matter - but it is good at getting the sense of claustrophobic-ness and desperation of a love gone wrong into song (the pained line that 'since I lost you it feels like years', even though the pair are to all attempts and purposes still together, cuts a lot deeper than most McCartney years, especially the wail with which he sings it). Overall, then, 'You Won't See Me' is a crucial step in his songwriting towards the darker, more elliptical and, yes, better songs on 'Revolver' and a world away from the songs Paul wrote for 'Help!' Listen out for the Beatles' road manager Mal Evans making his first of three appearances on a Beatles track, holding down a single 'A' note on a Hammond organ that really adds to the feel of unmoving unflinching stubborness.

'Nowhere Man', however, gets everything right. A gorgeously arranged and confidently played recording can't cover up the fact that this is one of Lennon's deepest and most confessional lyrics. With the deadline for the album looming (almost a month had gone by without many useable recordings completed) and the challenge to write something 'deeper' ringing in his ears, Lennon had spent a miserable day trying to write and had come up with exactly nothing. Exhausted, he went to bed early only for this song to appear almost fully fledged in his mind (in its way as miraculous a 'dream' as 'Yesterday' had been for McCartney the year before). Clearly the work of Lennon's sub-conscious, willing itself onto Lennon's mind once his need for commercial considerations had been in effect 'turned off', it's easily one of the greatest dozen songs he ever wrote. Speaking of himself in the third person, Lennon rails at his lethargic state in 1965 (his 'Fat Elvis' period when his oh-so sharp senses had been numbed money and drugs) and acknowledging his state of drifting in marriage, in his band and in life in general, Lennon somehow manages to make his state sound like both a blessing a curse. As a neutral listener we ought to feel pity for this character, whose blind to the truths of life ('sees just what he wants to see') and who actively waits for someone else to do the work for him ('Leave it all till somebody else gives you a hand') - but Lennon cleverly reaches out to the 'victim' in all of us, asking us openly 'isn't he a bit like you and me?' Indeed, the 'Yellow Submarine' chooses this character, the 'Nowhere Man' Jeremy, to become the most 'likeable' of all the cast loosely based on Beatle in-jokes and song references ('Quid Pro Quo! So little time - and so much to know!') A simply brilliant melody-line - even more amazingly written at the same time all the lyrics came through to Lennon, which is something even Paul's dream of 'Yesterday' provided him with - manages to be both sympathetically lethargic and triumphantly optimistic, with the song growing in every glorious repeat of the chorus. It suggests, too, that Lennon was keen to step on McCartney's toes after hearing the first version of Paul's Lennon-ish 'I'm Looking Through You', returning the favour with one of his most rounded and least harsh tunes. Full marks, too, to George Harrison's sublime solo, which cuts through the song as if trying to shake the narrator awake only to end in a marvellous high-pitched ringing noise, the alarm clock the 'Nowhere Man' needs to lull him out of the state he's fallen into. Thankfully we know Lennon the 'nowhere man' did have a 'happy ending' of sorts, when Yoko came into his life in 1967 - like 'Girl' and 'I'm Only Sleeping' this song demonstrates how hard Lennon was searching for her (or someone like her) before they met. Simply fabulous, a truly crafted song and one of the fab's best group performances of 1965 combining on a song about lethargy that ironically seemed to have more effort spent on it than most. Released as a single In Australia and Canada (though not Europe or the US) 'Nowhere Man' actually outperformed both sides of the 'official' double-sided single 'Day Tripper'/'We Can Work It Out'. Easily the album highlight. Pink Floyd were surely inspired by this song to write their masterpiece 'Comfortably Numb' too - the two songs even share a similar chord progression.

'Think For Yourself' continues the Rubber Soul' obsession with 'funny noises' and like many a song from this album actually sounds better when heard as a 'backing track', where the sheer inventiveness of the sound of this recording can be heard without the vocal distractions. An angular song with more chord changes than anything the band come up with until 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun', 'Think For Yourself' never goes where you expect, an exciting ride thanks to two bass guitar parts (one a fuzz part played by McCartney) and once again no real guitar-work, unusual for a 'Harri-song'. One of George's earliest 'bitter' songs, he recalls in his 'I Me Mine' autobiography of 1980 that all these years on he can't recall what inspired it but it was probably 'something said by the Government'. My guess is that it was inspired by campaigns on both sides for the 1966 UK general election where both Wilson and Heath had actively sought out help from or compared themselves to the Beatles (see 'Taxman' from that very year for another example of George's bitterness against both men). Figuring that both campaigns were 'stupid' (anyone 'bright' enough to be a Beatles fan wouldn't start voting for someone because he had his picture taken with him or helped them get an MBE they didn't ask for) George surly tells them both - and people like them - to 'think for yourself' because they weren't getting any help from him. Of course George might also be talking to a girl here or, more likely, talking to 'himself' now that drugs and Eastern music have opened up his mind (a 'pisces fish' with a split personality you could see this song as the 'mystical' George talking to his more 'worldly' self). For once in their career the other Beatles do George proud on one of his songs, suggesting they considered this song better than anything he'd written to date with Lennon providing a marvellous jagged guitar part and McCartney's fuzz bass dominating the entire texture of the song, not to mention the spoof-Shirelles backing vocals the pair deliver, the perfect angelic-demon hybrid the song demands. Yes it's a little over-written in parts, like many of George's early songs ('If you've got time to rectify all things that you should') but this is the first real evidence that the 'quiet Beatle' had a voice away from soppy love songs and could inspire another of the band's better period performances. A much under-rated song.

'The Word' is another forgotten gem from a period when The Beatles were simply releasing too many all at once for the general public to take in. Nicely retro in feel, like the old cover of 'Mr Moonlight' from 'Beatles For Sale' sped up to sound like 'proper' rock and roll , lyrically it's a good 18 months ahead of it's time. 'The Word', for those who don't know, is 'love' and this is the first time the Beatles (or anybody) use the term to stand for something deeper than boyfriend and girlfriend: here it's the answer to all of life's problems and only a small lyrical re-write away from 'All You Need Is Love' (tellingly, Macca has started playing the two songs as a 'medley' on his 2013-2014 tour; it's also telling that the pair were so proud of this lyrics they actually re-wrote it out again in bright psychedelic colours with crayons - usually their songs were all written on scraps of paper as reproduced in George's 'I Me Mine' book; telling, too, is the fact that it was this lyric sheet Lennon gave away when Yoko came calling at his door the second time they ever met, desperate for a 'unique' gift to send John cage for his birthday - it is very Ono-esque in places in its profound simplisticness, even though the pair hadn't met when it was written). For now, though, psychedelia as we come to know it doesn't exist so instead the Beatles equate this sudden spiritual awakening to the closest genre in existence: gospel. Sounding like a group of converted preachers John and Paul howl at full stretch throughout the song, before leaving Reverend Lennon to speak-sing the song's verses about how love changed his life and a church organ majestically appears near the end of the song in one of the best placed instrumental break-outs of any Beatles recording. One of the last songs written by John and Paul physically together (ie not from separate songs cobbled together a la 'A Day In The Life' 'Baby You're A Rich Man' or 'I've Got A Feeling'), Paul revealed in the 1990s that the pair had tried to write a song just on 'one note'; in this they fail, adding in a cute 'tagline' ('It's so fine, its sunshine') that takes the song somewhere else, but the inventive lengthy one-note phrases ('The wo-ord...') do make for a memorable song that's another of the album's best. Another great band performance on the penultimate day of recording, where even Ringo gets the chaotic but fervent mood just right and the band ought to sound as tired and fed-up as they do on the songs recorded a day later, is the icing on the cake. Another much under-rated song.

'Michelle' is over-rated by seemingly everyone except the Beatle who wrote it. Paul has confessed many times that he'd never have dreamed of offering this song to the Beatles had they not been desperate for material and that it was Lennon who encouraged him to 'finish it off' (which is ironic given that it's this song - so often played for Lennon by well-meaning restaurant bands in New York - that apparently drove him round the bend whilst the Beatles feud was at it's height in the early 70s). The song had started out life before Paul had even met John, as a 'jokey' instrumental he used to sing along to at art school parties in cod-French in the vain hope of impressing girls during the late 1950s when the French sound was 'in' (as a result it's the second of three pre-Beatles songs to be released by the band, the first being 'I'll Follow The Sun' and the third 'When I'm 64'). The lyrics were added in a hurry for the album, with Paul contacting his old school friend Ivan Vaughan (who had first introduced John and Paul) who was now married to a French teacher for the 'French' translation of his lyric (Mrs Vaughan should have received a co-credit by rights, as Paul asked her for a 'suitable girl's name' he could rhyme - it was she who came up with the hook 'Michelle, ma belle'; to be fair he did send a handsome amount of money in return for her help). Lennon himself added the less inspired middle eight ('I need you'/'I want you' repeated three times, a trick he'd heard in Nina Simone's 'I Put A Spell On You', the record that 'haunts' him after his mother's death in the 'Nowhere Boy' film), perhaps in a belated attempt to get Macca's song to sound like a 'joke' once more. The closest thing to 'Yesterday' on 'Rubber Soul' (Paul's other songs are all hard rockers or jagged ruminations on his arguments with Jane Asher), it's no surprise that 'Michelle' was such a hit or that it was considered as a single before Lennon - horrified at what his suggestion had grown into - jealously squashed it on the grounds that only Paul plays on the song and so it wouldn't be a 'Beatles' performance. Caught somewhere between the earnestness of a successful pop song and joke it started off as, 'Michelle' deserved to become a favourite with the band's French fans (who had, most likely, never heard a pop band sing songs in French before - unless they owned some obscure re-recordings by The Hollies and Searchers anyway) but it's popularity with everyone else seems a bit misplaced for a song that, by Beatles standards, is a bit of a one-joke one-note throwaway.

Side two begins with 'What Goes On', which is the album's second of three resurrected songs for 'Rubber Soul'. The song started life as Lennon song from shortly before McCartney joined The Quarrymen and was, for a time, mooted as an early single instead of 'Love Me Do' (I'm surprised, then, that it wasn't played at the band's audition for Decca or on their early BBC sessions when material the band knew well enough to play in a hurry was in shirt supply). Good enough to have appeared as one of the early Beatles tracks, but not quite good enough for where they'd reached by 1965 standards, the song was handed over to Paul to re-write with Ringo chipping in some ideas too (he gets his co-credit - the first of only four - on a Beatles record as a result of adding the phrase 'tides of time'). The song is clearly meant to be re-arranged to sound like the country-and-Western vibe Ringo mined on 'Act Naturally' from 'Help!' but is too clearly a 50s-sttyle rock and roll song for the conversion to be complete and the rather scrappy recording doesn't help matters much either: George's Carl Perkins-style guitar solo is awfully scrappy and Ringo's simplistic repetitive drumming isn't helping. In short, the band sound like they don't care much because it's 'only' a Ringo song, not for the first or last time on a Beatles album, which is a poor fate for what's actually quite a promising if simple song about rejection. The song's title phrase('What goes on in your mind?') is pretty advanced stuff for a writer who'd only be a teenager at the time (few of Lennon's narrators even think of another person's feelings until as late as the 'A Hard Day's Night' days) and the song doesn't have the naiveté of many of the band's early songs (without a period recording, of course, we can't know how much of the song Paul re-wrote, but according to him it wasn't much and he left the chorus pretty much alone). Astonishingly the Beatles spent hours crafting the sub-'Green Onions' instrumental '12 Bar Original', re-working it several times to varying lengths, before scrapping the whole thing and rattling off 'What Goes On' within a couple of hours (quick work by 1965 standards).

'Girl' is a fascinatingly oblique Lennon song, the last 'new' song to be re-worked on by the band (although the final recording of 'I'm Looking Through You' and the overdubs for 'Wait!' came later), with a distinctive German feel (the only Beatles song to really display this, despite the Beatles' many links to that country). It's yet more evidence of Lennon's growth as a writer, about his longing for a girl who could stand up to him and be his equal and - in the first verse - makes him feel ever so slightly inadequate, seeming much older than her years. That's the irony in fact: the one Beatles song that's clearly meant to be about someone 'young' is actually one of the most grown-up characters of all Beatle songs, emotionally manipulative and who isn't privy to Lennon's compliments ('when you say she's looking good, she acts as if that's understood'). Some critics think this song is about another Lennon affair, others that it's about Astrid Kircherr - the German photographer and artist betrothed to 'fifth Beatle' Stuart Sutcliffe - who Lennon may well have had a crush on (and almost certainly inspired the similar sounding 'Baby's In Black'); for me, she's clearly imaginary and probably wish-fulfilment during his marriage to the very un-'Girl' like softly-spoken and gentle Cynthia; the 'somebody else' he longs to 'lend a hand' in 'Nowhere Man' (a dead ringer for Yoko in fact, Lennon saying as much in his solo years and adding the postscript that his 1980 song 'Woman' was deliberately written as a 'more adult' version of 'Girl' in more ways that just the title). The song's last verse is particularly interesting, Lennon going back to his 'Nowhere Man' persona and poetically complaining that too many people think he's 'lazy' and that 'a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure' (it's the same insecurity over not having a 'proper' job that saw him 'crawl off to sleep in the bath' in Norwegian Wood'). Lennon added that this verse (co-written with McCartney) was also a 'dig' at Christianity and it's teachings - hidden as well as he could given the fuss over the 'Beatles bigger than Jesus' non-event earlier in the year. Listen out, too, for the way that the song is narrated like a 'story' or a 'fable' a la 'Norwegian Wood', actively including the audience when Lennon asks as the opening line 'is there anyone going to listen to my story?' (do we take it, then, that the narrator is so hen-pecked that he even doubts if he has a right to be telling his 'story'?) Fascinating, groundbreaking and quite unlike anything else around at the time, it's a shame the other Beatles didn't take to this song as much as its author or that they had no time: Lennon's gorgeous vocal aside (his accentuated breath before each verse is a particularly clever touch, sounding both traditional and sighing over the character in the song) this is a flimsy recording, highlighted by Paul and George using the word 'tit' throughout their backing vocals (another memory of their Hamburg days no doubt, but not entirely in keeping with the rest of the song!)

'I'm Looking Through You' is another song that seemed to cause an awful lot trouble. Another song written about the Paul-and-Jane saga, it was recorded again and again before simply having to be released in the state it was in during this last session, finished or not (the last recording for the album). An early case of McCartney perfectionism, most fans who've only come to it at the same time as the perfectly good earlier, acoustic version on 'Anthology Two' wonder what all the fuss is about: though missing the nagging and very contemporary electric guitar riff, the original has an enjoyably exotic off-beat rhythm and a slightly slower tempo more in keeping with the 'sighing' quality of the song. Lyrically this is another song about Paul's restless mind and urge to know everything, basically telling Jane Asher in a 'put-down' that he's no longer the uneducated working class Scouse lad she still treats him as (the song ought to be titled 'I'm Looking Down On You', McCartney's Narrator no longer to content to admire his beloved simply 'because' she knows more than him (he's 'seen through' educated people now anyway according to the lyrics). This song must have taken a lot of guts to write after such a public and by most accounts happy relationship: the Ashers had done a lot for McCartney, but clearly the hidden message of the song is that she hasn't asked him to do a lot back, respecting him for his musical talents and success. Could it be, too, that this is another 'drug' song about how someone (Lennon?) doesn't 'look different' but has clearly 'changed' (this is the start of the pair working apart - we spent a whole review discussing this theme last week for Jefferson Airplane's 'Surrealistic Pillow', although there change is a good thing). Another hint at the turbulent and rather upsetting year the Beatles had had in 1965 (with problems touring, the 'Jesus' backlash and a whole host of new groups competing for their crown meant being a Beatle wasn't as 'fun' as it had been 1962-64) 'I'm Looking Through You' is a snarling dog of a recording, with Paul's passionate lead guitar barely able to wait for his vocal to finish before sending off a peal of jagged chords musically 'lashing out' at the cause of all this upset. Another much under-rated song, with a middle eight that's perfectly judged at calming down the mood without losing touch with the main focus of the song, this should have been the 'B' side of 'We Can Work It Out', a song that has quite the opposite point of view. Again, though, the song sounds more like a Lennon-song, irregular and hard on the ear compared to most McCartney compositions but without Lennon's 'sixth sense' of where to take the track, meaning it's not up to the top level 'inspired' Paul songs from this magical period.

When the Beatles were inspired they were truly inspired. 'In My Life' is another case of Lennon giving in to his (drug-fuelled?), with this song very much a 'direct' response to the challenge laid down that his lyrics ought to be 'deeper'. Figuring that he ought to start with the lyrics rather than the music, Lennon started a poem about his childhood haunts (including both the 'Strawberry Fields' children's home and Penny Lane) and how much they meant to him. However, Lennon rightly thought the poem he'd written would only make sense to someone of his age from the same part of Liverpool and tried to re-write the, giving up when he couldn't decide what to do. Like 'Nowhere Man' the song as we know it came to Lennon late at night when he'd given up the struggle and is rightly regarded as one of the best he wrote, universal and identifiable but clearly written from personal feeling (even the lines about 'some are dead and some are living' is a 'more universal' re-write of a verse recounting adventures with school chums Stuart Sutcliffe - who'd died in 1961 - and Pet Shotton). Most songs about death and personal journeys either sound hysterical or grand and stately - Lennon's lyric is neither, with only the inevitable tagged-on ending that turns the piece into a 'love song' sounding anything less than fatalistically, detachedly serene. Equally inspired is the music, which was most likely written by McCartney the night after Lennon wrote the lyric (That's most people's memory of the song, although in John's 'meanest' days in the early 1970s he claimed the melody was his too - the trouble with having every song credited to 'Lennon/McCartney' is that we can never be 100% sure who wrote what). Certainly the melody sounds like one of Paul's: it's at one with the detached emotion he'll use on 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'For No One' from next Beatles album 'Revolver' and a rounded-ness where each piece 'fits' together remarkably well. If so, this may well be the single greatest song Lennon and McCartney ever wrote as a 'team', conveying the weariness of John and the optimism of Paul better than any other track ('A Day In The Life' similarly invokes both characters, but not at the same time which is much harder to do). John and Paul get the mood just right in the vocals, too, the double-tracking of their fresh-faced voices making them sound old as well as young, but as a group performance this recording could have been better. Ringo, unusually, doesn't seem to have grasped Lennon's more emotional lyric (he's usually at his best on John's more personal songs) and taps away rhythmically without any subtlety, although the worst casualty is a cod-Bach speeded-up harpsichord pastiche from George Martin which gets the mood totally wrong (Lennon really struggled with what to put for the instrumental, feeling the song needed 'something' at this point but reluctant just to have another guitar solo - surprisingly he was said to be quite happy with what Martin decided to play). As a composition, though, 'In My Life' is real evidence of just how good both Lennon and McCartney were when working together and how high the bar for their future songs will have to be set. Another album highlight.

'Wait' is a recording that has much more space for the band to get their teeth into and as one of the few guitars-bass-drums arrangements on the album is tailor made for the typical 'Beatlesy' sound. If the song sounds out of place, though, that's because the song was recorded in the dying days of the 'Help!' sessions, back when the band were under similar pressure to finish the LP (they ended up going for a cover of 'Act Naturally', recorded at the same session, instead). 'Wait' is clearly the 'old' Beatles, with neither John or Paul particularly proud of the track (uniquely they've both tried to 'blame' the other for writing it rather than take the credit: chances are it's mainly a Lennon song with a McCartney middle eight, swapping composer when the vocals switch between them) and it sounds very out of place here, a last gasp of their early Merseybeat sound circa 'A Hard Day's Night' with its central rhyme of 'home' and 'alone' (which is probably why it's hidden away here near but not at the end of 'Rubber Soul'. However, 'Wait' isn't as bad as its authors seem to think: certainly it's better than 'Act Naturally' was, the short snappy lines delivered staccato like are a nice variation on what John and Paul usually write and with the addition of some extra tambourine on the last day of 'Rubber Soul' sessions 'Wait' becomes genuinely exciting, the rawness of the song contrasting well with the songs either side of it. George's pedal steel guitar part - such an integral part of the 'Help!' sessions - sounds great here and Ringo's heavy-handedness is exactly what this rather clumsy but endearing song needs. IN a parallel universe, where this song didn't come out at the time, it would have been heralded as a lost gem and worshipped after a long-delayed appearance on 'Anthology Two' as an example of how clever even the Beatles' second-class songs are. Instead 'Wait's fate is to be the forgotten song off 'Rubber Soul' that nobody knows. No classic, then, but nothing like the 'horror' most fans seem to consider it.

'If I Needed Someone' is another great song - but arguably it's not one by George Harrison, whatever the credit says. The guitarist had become a huge friend with the Byrds across 1965, sharing their delight in 'unusual sounds' that John and Paul hadn't quite caught on to yet (this was the period when David Cosby was introducing anything that moved to the delights of both John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, taking their records around with him everywhere; memorably Crosby, Harrison and fellow Byrd Roger McGuinn ended up in the bath at a crowded party - possibly at Mama Cass' house - playing sitars). Cross-pollination between the two bands had made the Rickenbacker guitar the must-have instrument for music fans in 1965 and this is a kind of last hurrah for the instrument in the Beatles' hands before George turns to the sitar. However the riff George plays here is pure Byrds (he admitted at the time it was nicked straight out of the Byrds' arrangement for 'The Bells Of Rhymney', for which it's a dead ringer, and the unusual asymmetrical drumming of 'Mr Tambourine Man' B-side 'She Don't Care About Time', which it has to be said is rather better played by Ringo than Michael Clarke). Not so much a pastiche as a 'cover' of two songs with new words attached, the track is lyrically a love poem to new wife Patti Boyd and continues George's schizophrenic reputation across Beatles records of being soppier than even Paul and harsher than even John. George even tries to unite the two strands of his character for the first time, adding in a sour-sounding middle eight about how any other day he might not have fallen in love and the way he sings 'I'm too much in love' while clashing with the song's root note on the word 'lo-ove' makes romance sound anything but happy. A great guitar sound and a better performance than usual from Ringo can't hide the fact that the arrangement for this song is poor, though, with the song audibly struggling to get the end of its 2:22 playing time intact. The Hollies' much-mocked cover version of this song (released as a single a mere three days before 'Rubber Soul' came out) is actually superior to the Beatles in every way except the guitar playing (which is just a little too out of Tony Hick's comfort zone to master): the Clarke-Hicks-Nash harmonies soar much more convincingly than John and Paul's do and Bobby Elliott's pure jazz kick on the song gives it much more energy. So why did the Hollies cover this of all songs? Because it was offered to them frankly, the Beatles and Hollies having always been close till this point and George already realising that he was writing more songs than John and Paul would let him have space for and that a successful cover by another well-loved group would help his reputation no end. Unfortunately George had to go back on his word that the Beatles wouldn't do the song when John especially took a shine to the track (generally he was very sniffy about George's songs and was already going 'missing' when it came to recording them) and the Beatles needed material in a hurry. Whether ticked off because Brian Epstein was against him giving potential hit songs to a rival, sulking because he sensed the Hollies had done it better or genuinely because he disliked the Hollies version - co-incidentally recorded in the same studio (no 2) at Abbey Road as the Beatles' version even though the Hollies generally used studio no 3 - George ravaged his rival's work in the press, ending the close partnership between Liverpool and Manchester's leading bands and no doubt helping the Hollies single to stall at a lowly #20 (Hollies fans generally bought Beatles singles as well and may have felt 'split loyalties'). Most of the Hollies now generally agree that releasing the song was a 'mistake', but if anything the recording helps their reputation 40 years on from all the fuss, showing they were both releasing their own material superior to and recording the same song arguably better than The Beatles.

Closer 'Run For Your Life' would have made a fine closer on any past Beatles album, a Lennon 'original' that fits in the same slightly 'crazed' feel as 'Twist and Shout' and 'Money'. Only the second Beatles original to close an album, it doesn't fit here at the end of 'Rubber Soul'. A nasty song, threatening revenge and murder on a girl whose messing around, it might have made sense at the start of the album but here at the end it sounds both ike a throwback to days gone by and as if the Beatles have learned nothing through the album 'journey'. Lennon particularly hated the song in later life (especially when Yoko got him into 'women's lib' - and a lyric with more differences to this than his own 'Woman Is The Nigger Of The World' from 1972 is hard to find), although it does sound like it's at least partly truthful and more evidence that a Beatle relationship was in trouble (despite his many affairs and his open relationship with Yoko, John still petitioned first wife Cynthia for adultery when their split became inevitable with very little proof). Like George, John lifted the best parts of the song from another writer entirely - this time Arthur Gunter and his obscure Elvis Presley song 'Baby Let's Play House' (both songs even start the same way: 'I'd rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man...') Luckily for Lennon, very few Elvis fans knew the song and those that did weren't listening to Beatle records, although I'm still; half-surprised Gunther (who died in 1976 long after the record came out) didn't sue (the steal is every bit as blatant as 'Come Together's Chuck Berry lines, which ended up in a lawsuit that cost Lennon no end of headaches, a rock and roll covers album he didn't want and a nervous breakdown). The song hAs also been belatedly banned by most American radio stations for its 'misogynistic tones' - the first time the Beatles have been banned in the West since 'I Am The Walrus' in 1967 (when fans wrote in asking why 'Baby Let's Play House' hadn't been banned as well the station promptly banned that too). Like much of 'Rubber Soul's weakest moments the recording sounds rushed and unfocussed (Lennon even garbles his lines a few times...'mmemy rather see you dead...') and yet 'Life' was the first song recorded for the album, at a time when - by 1965 Beatle standards - they had all the time in the world to get things right (well, two months). Annoyingly, though, Lennon's guitar riff - a sort of histrionic update of 'You Can't Do That' - is inspired and John's (not George's) scatterbrained solo in the middle is genuinely exciting. Unfortunately it's wasted in this song, a return to the days of the 1950s and early 1960s, before 'Girls' started manipulating characters in songs a la 'Norwegian Wood' and 'Girl' that already seemed like a distant time when this song came out in 1965. If ever a song demonstrated how much the Beatles changed the world it's how out of place this song sounds at the end of this LP.

Even with such a fall from grace on the last three tracks and with a bit of a lull in the middle, however, 'Rubber Soul' is still a great LP. John and Paul are inspiring each other to some of their best work to date while still very much working as a team here, George is stretching himself as never before however many guitar solos Paul 'nicks' from him and Ringo gets his first songwriting credit (for all of three words). By late 1965 standards 'Rubber Soul' was undeniably a great LP - only the Who's debut 'My generation' and the final Searchers album 'Take Me For What I'm Worth' and the Beatles' own 'Help!' get near it for growing sophistication and maturity. Lennon, especially, lays claim to his reputation as one of the greatest writers and singers of them all with many of the best songs of his career on this record. There's no denying, too, how influential this record was: Brian Wilson famously considered the record to be full of 'all good songs' and began crafting 'Pet Sounds' as his response. Ironically enough, though, consistency is the biggest problem for both of these albums: 'Pet Sounds' filling up space with instrumental filler and misguided love songs in the same way that the rushed circumstances behind the making of 'Rubber Soul' show through in a composition here and a recording there. In the long run, 'Rubber Soul' might perhaps be best regarded as a stepping stone to even greater, more marvellous creations (namely 'Revolver') in the same way that 'Pet Sounds' now can (leading to the unfinished 'Smile') The Beatles' greatest album? Not yet. But the fact that an album containing 'Nowhere Man' 'Norwegian Wood' 'In My Life' and 'Girl' still isn't quite there yet is surely evidence of just how amazing the Beatles' catalogue is and why, from the next album on, each album release becomes a 'world event' of humungous proportions, not just a new collection of songs...Overall rating - 7/10



A now complete list of Beatles links available at this website:
'Rubber Soul' (1965) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-beatles-rubber-soul-1965-album.html

'Revolver' (1966)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-6-beatles-revolver-1966.html
'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts.html

'Magical Mystery Tour' (1967)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/news-views-and-music-issue-45-beatles.html

'The Beatles' aka 'The White Album' (1968)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-25-beatles-beatles-aka-white.html
'Yellow Submarine' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beatles-yellow-submarine-1969.html
The Best Unreleased Beatles Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-we-want-to-see-on-beatles.html

A Complete AAA Guide To The Beatles Cartoons http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/an-aaa-guide-to-beatles-cartoons.html
The Beatles: Surviving TV Appearances http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-beatles-surviving-tv-appearances.html
A 'Bite' Of Beatles Label 'Apple' http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-bite-of-apple.html
The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part One: 1958-63 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-non-album-songs-part-one.html
 The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part Two: 1964-67 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-non-album-songs-part-2-1964.html
The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part Three: 1968-96 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-non-album-songs-part-three.html
The Beatles: Compilations/Live Albums/Rarities Sets Part One: 1962-74 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-compilations-live-sets-and.html
The Beatles: Compilations/Live Albums/Rarities Sets Part Two: 1976-2013 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-beatles-compilations-live-albums.html
Beatles Bonuses: The Songs John and Paul Gave Away To The World/To Ringo! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/beatle-bonuses-songs-given-awayringos.html

Essay: The Ways In Which The Beatles Changed The World For The Better https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-beatles-essay-ways-fab-four-changed.html
Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/the-beatles-five-landmark-concerts-and.html

Top Ten AAA Singles ('A' and 'B' Sides) (News, Views and Music 236)




We've rather lost sight of things in the past twenty years, now that we appendage them to the back of obscure album re-issues without a glance, but once upon a time the single was king. Two whole blasts of three-minute pop we knew wouldn't be popping up on an album any time soon and so much cheaper to buy you had half a chance of purchasing them with your pocket money or wage packets back in the days when albums were things you got as presents for Christmas (if you were lucky). We've talked a lot on this site about 'B' sides and my belief that it's on flipsides that you can hear the 'real' artist at work - especially in the 1960s when the single was at its peak - without the pressure of scoring a hit 'A' side or the slog of recording 12 album tracks in a day. What we've done this week, though, is study the 'A' and 'B' sides together, to see which singles were positively crackling with everything that was good and great about a band and a point in time and which singles in effect represent the best 'values for money'. Some 'A' sides have been given short shrift because the flipsides weren't much cop. Some of our 'B' sides are missing too because they were put out on the back of singles that for whatever reason weren't quite first rate. But here, limited to one representative per release, are what we consider ten releases of pure gold, listed in chronological order.

1) The Beach Boys: 'I Get Around' b/w 'Don't Worry Baby' 11/5/1964

So many people know 'Don't Worry Baby', that sweet Beach Boys song of worry and regret, that they assume it must have been a hit in its own right, especially given the ridiculous six-singles-a-year contract Capitol had given the band across the 1960s. It wasn't: amazingly this song was beaten to the 'A' side by one of the very few Beach Boys tracks that are even better known, 'I Get Around'. With a fast-paced 'A' side full of guts and confidence and a few references to surfing plus a 'B' side ballad worrying about letting other people down with a few references to cars, the Beach Boys really do show off all the sides of their 1964 arsenal on this track.

2) The Searchers: 'Goodbye, My Love' b/w 'Til' I Met You' ?/3/1965

The 'A' side is one last gasp masterpiece of crafted pop so un-missably good that even the dying trend of Merseybeat in 1965 got reversed by this magical song. 'Goodbye My Love' should have launched a whole new career for The Searchers as a 'thinking' band, with real gutsy emotion, a production to die for and harmonies that dazzle even by the band's high standards. Couple that with one of the band's greatest original compositions, though - a classy ballad that's warm and romantic with a hook to die for - and you have even more value for money. The fact that the 'A' side is a 'goobye' song and the 'B' side a 'hello' song only helps with the symmetry.

3) The Beatles: 'Ticket To Ride' b/w 'Yes It Is' 9/4/1965

There are many great Beatles pairings out there and most fans would probably plump for either 'Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out' or 'Hey Jude/Revolution', two releases often held up as being everything a single should be. For my money, though, this earlier one from 1965 is even better. Both songs have a mournful, claustrophobic, 'heavy' sound that's unique for the times but both achieve it in very different ways. 'Ticket To Ride' might be the most musically gifted song about being dumped ever, turning misery into an I'll-show-them powerhouse of pop perfection, full of hooks you can sing along to and enough something 'else' to make it interesting. The 'B' side is just as sad and just as revolutionary but in a quieter, reflective way. Only George's pedal steel gets in the way of hearing those Beatles harmonies in full flight on a song that manages to address the sadness that's in a good half of the Beatles' earlier catalogue but in darker, more adult tones. In turns denying and then wallowing in sadness, these two songs sound like they were made for each other.

4) The Hollies 'Look Through Any Window' b/w 'So Lonely' 27/8/1965

Even The Beatles were second to The Hollies in crafting a pop song into a production showcase and energising it into something exciting and vibrant. The Hollies do this lots of times during their career but their material is particularly strong on this single. 'Window' is a Graham Gouldmann song that sounds like it was born for the band: from the opening guitar lick to the last magical swirl of harmonies, this reflection on how other people live never lets up for a minute. The original 'B' side should have been an 'A' side too and is a real lost gem of the 1960s, filled with a real sadness and self-indulgent wail over a boy-girl split that's so intense it's almost painful to hear. The 'flipside' to 'Window' in more ways than one, together this is a glorious single made up of opposite subjects that are both subjected to the same shining sheen of guitars, harmonies and drums. Hollies fans might also want to check out the 1970 single 'Gasoline Alley Bred' b/w 'Mad Professor Blyth', which would have made this list too hads we not restricted it to one entry per band.

5) The Who: 'Substitute' b/w 'Circles' 4/3/1966


By the standards of their peers, The Who never cared much for 'B' sides: these tended to be either album tracks, cover versions or - on one memorable occasion - an instrumental named 'Waltz For A Pig' when copyright problems means the band weren't able to release one of their own songs. The band's fourth 45rpm release, though, is essential on both sides. 'Substitute' is the follow-up to 'My Generation' and just as groundbreaking in its own way. The band might have written it as a spoof after being fed up of newspaper reports calling them a 'substitute Rolling Stones' but the song cleverly straddles the line between earnestness and being mocking. Few songs are funnier, actually, with the narrator wishing he could substitute his new girlfriend for being back home with his mum ('at least I'll get my washing done!') and - in a line censored at the time - finding himself of mixed race even though his parents are both the same colour. No wonder this kid is mixed up. One possible reason for it is the character on the glorious 'B' side though with 'Circles' our candidate for the 'second ever psychedelic song ever written' during an earlier top ten (in as much as you can ever define a word like 'psychedelic'). This narrator is confused, a recent heartbreak leaving him so emotionally wrought he can't work out which way is up anymore. So there we have it - a clever twist on the 'sound' The Who are already becoming established for and a hint at what's to come the following year, but both - like quite a high percentage of Pete Townshend songs when you study them - are songs about being lost and hopelessly out of your depth, but being too afraid to let anyone find that fact out.

6) The Kinks: 'Dead End Street' b/w 'Big Black Smoke' 18/11/1966


These two songs are so similar they sounded like they belonged together even when spread 20 tracks apart across some Kinks Kompilation. 'Dead End Street' is my candidate for the single greatest Kinks single anyway (along with 'See My Friends' perhaps), a gloriously dark singalong about what it means to live on the poverty-line with no hope of escape that tells it exactly how it is. Had this been a film (it was in fact an early music video that few people saw because its 'carry on with coffins' humour was a bit risque for the age) it would have been a bleak noir classic. The 'B' side 'Big Black Smoke' is a song about a parent's fears for her child as she gets sucked up into the London underworld, a gloriously dark singalong about what it means to live on the poverty-line with no hope of escape. Both songs seem to be inspired by Ray Davies actually moving out of his home-area of Muswell Hill for the first time and acknowledging the influence on his writing of the 'ordinary' people who walked past his window there. Two songs very much coming from the same place and with the same hallmark of quality.

7) The Rolling Stones: 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' b/w 'Child Of The Moon' 24/5/1968

The Rolling Stones had been losing headway somewhat in 1967, with drug busts, commercial flop singles (although I still consider the band's releases of the year to be amongst their greatest ever work) and Brian Jones' decline rather getting in their way. 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' was very much intended as a 'comeback' single and boy did it deliver: it singlehandedly sounded straight and focussed and returned the band to the slightly subversive sound they'd made their own. The flip side, though, proved that they were just reaching their peak as a psychedelic unit too with a song as beautiful and other-worldly as any in their canon. As good a 'hello' and 'goodbye' as any in music, this single had everything.

8) Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young "Ohio" b/w "Find The Cost Of Freedom" ?/6/1970

We keep mentioning this classic single, but then we need to: the fight against 'Nixon and Tin Soldiers' might have changed over the years but fight it we still do. Can there ever have been a single more moving than this one, inspired by the Nixon-sanctioned shooting of a group of anti-Vietnam protestors at Ohio University? Written the day of the shootings, recorded the day after and in the shops just outside a fortnight, 'Ohio' wasn't just a single but a battle cry, almost as immediate as a newspaper but a hundred times as influential. Needing an appropriate B-side at short notice, Stephen Stills offered up an unfinished song that started with a ghostly acoustic intro, went into a single prophetic verse and ended in a golden climax of harmonic unison (the song was 'finished' as the title track of CSN's 1982 LP 'Daylight Again'). The two go together as if they were always meant that way, one a battle cry and one a requiem for those fallen, the 'A' side tied to a specific moment in time and a 'B' side that shows how timeless the fight is (Stills wrote it about the American Civil War). It was CSNY's peak moment - they even killed off sales for 'Teach Your Children' which would almost certainly have got to #1 - and shows how moving, courageous and intelligent music can be at its best.

9) Lindisfarne: 'Lady Eleanor' b/w 'Nothing But The Marvellous Is Beautiful' ?/1/1971


Most fans, if they bought 'Lady Eleanor' at all, bought it as a double 'A' side with 'Meet Me On The Corner' on the back of it (it was this 1971 re-issue, closely on the heels of 'Fog On The Tyne', that became a runaway hit). But this original release - Lindisfarne's debut in fact - is even better. The 'A' side is a flowing Elizabethan ballad that hypnotises and entrances almost as much as the mysterious lady at its core and is clearly about the heart ruling the head, for all the narrator's attempts to stop himself falling in love. The 'B' side is a stop-start prog rock epic before the genre properly existed, musing on how to make the most out of life (the answer 'if you shut your eyes you'll know without even knowing'). The 'head' to the 'A' song's heart it's another classic Alan Hull song and while clearly not as magical or unforgettable as the 'A' side makes for a fitting companion, figuring that regardless of outward consequences our hearts will always tell us what's 'beautiful' and tell us we're on the right path.

10) Oasis: 'Some Might Say' backed with 'Acquiesce' 'Headshrinker' and 'Talk Tonight' 24/4/1995

The single took a bit of a hit in the 1970s when album sales began to grow and singles tended to feature what songs were on a forthcoming album anyway. Gloriously bucking the trends and turning the clock back 30 years in so many ways were Oasis, whose love of a good 'B' side (releasing at least two, usually three, with every single across their career) has often been remarked on by this site. Had we stuck with simply the 'A' side and the 'lead' 'B' side then clearly 'Wonderwall' b/w 'Masterplan' (most fans' choice as their greatest flipside) deserves a mention. However just look at the sheer eclecticism and sizzling songs on this single: 'Acquiesce' is a concert favourite, a stunning song that features the Gallagher's contrasting 'voices' at their best on a song about 'brotherly love' that might apply to them or humans everywhere. 'Headshrinker' is the loudest, rawest, most raucous recording Oasis ever made and the song I always play people who moan to me that Oasis couldn't really play. 'Talk Tonight' is another of my all-time Oasis favourites, a reflective acoustic ballad sung by Noel written when oasis seemed to have broken up, about a fan who calmed him down and encouraged him all the pain and worrying were worth it (she's right, given exquisite songs like this one). And I haven't even mentioned the 'A' side yet, 'Some Might Say', a song that isn't the most obvious Oasis single then or now but was crucial in persuading the public that Oasis could 'do' complex and 'structured' as well as play across a wall of noise. Like many of the band's 1990 releases, it's infectiously enthusiastic and hopeful but brave enough to still paint life the way it really is. All in all not bad for a £1.99 single.

And that's that. Join us for a discussion of more album tracks and - ooh - all sorts of other good stuff same time, same place, next week!

A NOW COMPLETE List Of Top Five/Top Ten/TOP TWENTY  Entries 2008-2019
1) Chronic Fatigue songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/news-views-and-music-issue-1-top-five.html

2) Songs For The Face Of Bo
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/news-views-and-music-issue-2-top-five.html

3) Credit Crunch Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/news-views-and-music-issue-3-top-five.html

4) Songs For The Autumn
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/news-views-and-music-issue-4-top-five.html

5) National Wombat Week
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/news-views-and-music-top-five-national.html

6) AAA Box Sets
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/news-views-and-music-issue-6-top-five.html

7) Virus Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/news-views-and-music-issue-7-top-five.html

8) Worst AAA-Related DVDs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/news-views-and-music-issu-8-top-five.html

9) Self-Punctuating Superstar Classics
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/news-views-and-music-issue-9-top-five.html

10) Ways To Know You Have Turned Into A Collector
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/news-views-and-music-issue-9-top-five.html

11) Political Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/news-views-and-music-issue-11-top-five.html

12) Totally Bonkers Concept Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/news-views-and-music-top-five-totally.html

13) Celebrating 40 Years Of The Beatles' White Album
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/top-five-issue-13-40-years-of-beatles.html

14) Still Celebrating 40 Years Of The Beatles' White Album
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-14-top-five.html

15) AAA Existential Questions
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-15-top-five.html

16) Releases Of The Year 2008
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-16-top-five.html

17) Top AAA Xmas Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-17-top-five.html

18) Notable AAA Gigs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/news-views-and-music-issue-19-top-five.html

19) All things '20' related for our 20th issue
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-views-and-music-issue-20-aaa-songs.html

20) Romantic odes for Valentine's Day
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-views-and-music-issue-22-top-five.html

21) Hollies B sides
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/news-views-and-music-issue-23-top-five.html

22) 'Other' BBC Session Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/news-views-and-music-issue-24-top-five.html

23) Beach Boys Rarities Still Not Available On CD
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/news-views-and-music-issue-25-top-five.html

24) Songs John, Paul and George wrote for Ringo's solo albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/news-views-and-music-issue-26-top-five.html

25) 5 of the Best Rock 'n' Roll Tracks From The Pre-Beatles Era
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/news-views-and-music-issue-27-top-five.html

26) AAA Autobiographies
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/news-views-and-music-issue-28-top-five.html

27) Rolling Stones B-sides
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/news-views-and-music-issue-29-top-five.html

28) Beatles B-Sides
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-30-top-five.html

29) The lllloooonnngggeesssttt AAA songs of all time
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-31-top-five.html

30) Kinks B-Sides
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-32-top-five.html

31) Abandoned CSNY projects 'wasted on the way'
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-33-top-five.html

32) Best AAA Rarities and Outtakes Sets
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/news-views-and-music-issue-34-top-five.html

33) News We've Missed While We've Been Away
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-35-top-five.html

34) Birthday Songs for our 1st Anniversary
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-37-top-five.html

35) Brightest Album Covers
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-37-top-five.html

36) Biggest Recorded Arguments
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-38-top-five.html

37) Songs About Superheroes
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-39-top-five.html

38) AAA TV Networks That Should Exist
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-40-top-five.html

39) AAA Woodtsock Moments
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-41-top-five.html

40) Top Moments Of The Past Year As Voted For By Readers
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-42-top-five.html

41) Music Segues
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/news-views-and-music-issue-43-top-five.html

42) AAA Foreign Language Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/news-views-and-music-issue-44-top-five.html

43) 'Other' Groups In Need Of Re-Mastering
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/news-views-and-music-issue-45-top-five.html

44) The Kinks Preservation Rock Opera - Was It Really About The Forthcoming UK General Election?
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/news-views-and-music-issue-46-top-five.html

45) Mono and Stereo Mixes - Biggest Differences
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/news-views-and-music-issue-47-top-five.html

46) Weirdest Things To Do When A Band Member Leaves
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nerws-views-and-music-issue-48-top-five.html

47) Video Clips Exclusive To Youtube (#1)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/news-views-and-music-issue-49-top-five.html

48) Top AAA Releases Of 2009
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/news-views-and-music-issue-50-top-five.html

49) Songs About Trains
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/news-views-and-music-issue-51-top-five.html

50) Songs about Winter
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/news-views-and-music-issue-52-top-five.html

51) Songs about astrology plus horoscopes for selected AAA members
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/news-views-and-music-issue-53-top-five.html

52) The Worst Five Groups Ever!
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/news-views-and-music-issue-54-top-five.html

53) The Most Over-Rated AAA Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/news-views-and-music-issue-56-top-five.html

54) Top AAA Rarities Exclusive To EPs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/news-views-and-music-issue-57-top-five.html

55) Random Recent Purchases (#1)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/news-views-and-music-issue-58-top-five.html

56) AAA Party Political Slogans
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/news-views-and-music-issue-60-top-five.html

57) Songs To Celebrate 'Rock Sunday'
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/news-views-and-music-issue-61-top-five_21.html

58) Strange But True (?) AAA Ghost Stories
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/news-views-and-music-issue-61-top-five.html

59) AAA Artists In Song
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-63-top-five.html

60) Songs About Dogs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-65-top-five.html

61) Sunshiney Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/news-views-and-music-issue-67-top-five.html

62) The AAA Staff Play Their Own Version Of Monoploy/Mornington Crescent!
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/news-views-and-music-issue-68-top-forty.html

63) What 'Other' British Invasion DVDs We'd Like To See
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/news-views-and-music-issue-69-top-five.html

64) What We Want To Place In Our AAA Time Capsule
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-issue-70-top-five.html

65) AAA Conspiracy Theroies
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-issue-72-top-ten.html

66) Weirdest Things To Do Before - And After - Becoming A Star
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-top-ten-aaa-stars.html

67) Songs To Tweet To
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/news-views-and-music-issue-74-top-five.html

68) Greatest Ever AAA Solos
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/news-views-and-music-issue-75-top-ten.html

69) John Lennon Musical Tributes
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/news-views-and-music-issue-77-top-five.html

70) Songs For Halloween
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/news-views-and-music-issue-78-top-five.html

71) Earliest Examples Of Psychedelia
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-79-top-five.html

72) Purely Instrumental Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-81-top-five.html

73) AAA Utopias

74) AAA Imaginary Bands
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-82-top-five.html

75) Unexpected AAA Cover Versions
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-83-top-five.html

76) Top Releases of 2010
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-84-top-five.html

77) Songs About Snow
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-85-top-five.html

78) Predictions For 2011
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011_01_02_archive.html

79) AAA Fugitives

80) AAA Home Towns
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-88-home.html

81) The Biggest Non-Musical Influences On The 1960s
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-89-top-five.html

82) AAA Groups Covering Other AAA Groups
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-90-top.html

83) Strange Censorship Decisions
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-91-top-ten.html

84) AAA Albums Still Unreleased on CD
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-92-top-five.html

85) Random Recent Purchases (#2)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/news-views-and-music-issue-93-top-ten.html

86) Top AAA Music Videos
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-issue-94-top-ten.html

87) 30 Day Facebook Music Challenge
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-issue-95-top.html

88) AAA Documentaries
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-top-five-aaa.html

89) Unfinished and 'Lost' AAA Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-issue-97-top-ten.html

90) Strangest AAA Album Covers
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/newsa-views-and-music-issue-98-top-ten.html

91) AAA Performers Live From Mars (!)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-99-top-ten.html

92) Songs Including The Number '100' for our 100th Issue
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-100-top-five.html

93) Most Songs Recorded In A Single Day
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-101-top-five.html

94) Most Revealing AAA Interviews
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/news-views-and-music-issue-102-top-five.html

95) Top 10 Pre-Fame Recordings
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/news-views-and-music-issue-103-top-ten.html

96) The Shortest And Longest AAA Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-104-top-ten.html


97) The AAA Allstars Ultimate Band Line-Up
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-105-top.html

98) Top Songs About Sports
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-106-top-ten.html

99) AAA Conversations With God
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-107-top-ten.html

100) AAA Managers: The Good, The Bad and the Financially Ugly
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-108-top-ten.html

101) Unexpected AAA Cameos
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-109-top-ten.html

102) AAA Words You can Type Into A Caluclator
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-110-top-five.html

103) AAA Court Cases
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/news-views-and-music-issue-111-top-five.html

104) Postmodern Songs About Songwriting
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/news-views-and-music-issue-112-top-five.html

105) Biggest Stylistic Leaps Between Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/news-views-and-music-issue-113-top-ten.html

106) 20 Reasons Why Cameron Should Go!
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/news-views-and-music-issue-114-top.html

107) The AAA Pun-Filled Cookbook
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-115-top-five.html

108) Classic Debut Releases
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-116-top-five.html

109) Five Uses Of Bird Sound Effects
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-118-top-five.html

110) AAA Classic Youtube Clips Part #1
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-119-top.html

111) Part #2
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-120-top.html

112) Part #3
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-121-top.html

113) AAA Facts You Might Not Know
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-122-top-ten.html

114) The 20 Rarest AAA Records
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-123-top.html

115) AAA Instrumental Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011_12_04_archive.html

116) Musical Tarot
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/news-views-and-music-issue-125-top-23-i.html

117) Christmas Carols
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011_12_18_archive.html

118) Top AAA Releases Of 2011
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011_12_25_archive.html

119) AAA Bands In The Beano/The Dandy
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/news-views-and-music-issue-128-top-five.html

120) Top 20 Guitarists #1
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/news-views-and-music-issue-129-top-ten.html

121) #2
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_01_15_archive.html

122) 'Shorty' Nomination Award Questionairre
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_01_22_archive.html

123) Top Best-Selling AAA Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_01_29_archive.html

124) AAA Songs Featuring Bagpipes

125) A (Hopefully) Complete List Of AAA Musicians On Twitter
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_02_19_archive.html

126) Beatles Albums That Might Have Been 1970-74 and 1980
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_02_26_archive.html

127) DVD/Computer Games We've Just Invented
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_11_archive.html

128) The AAA Albums With The Most Weeks At #1 in the UK
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_18_archive.html

129) The AAA Singles With The Most Weeks At #1 in the UK
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_25_archive.html

130) Lyric Competition (Questions)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_15_archive.html

131) Top Crooning Classics
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_22_archive.html

132) Funeral Songs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/news-views-and-music-issue-142-top-five.html

133) AAA Songs For When Your Phone Is On Hold
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-143-top-five.html

134) Random Recent Purchases (#3)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-144-top-five.html

135) Lyric Competition (Answers)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-146-top.html http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-145-top-five.html

136) Bee Gees Songs/AAA Goes Disco!
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/news-views-and-music-issue-147-top-five.html

137) The Best AAA Sleevenotes (And Worst)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/news-views-and-music-issue-148-top-ten.html

138) A Short Precise Of The Years 1962-70
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/news-views-and-music-149-top-eight.html

139) More Wacky AAA-Related Films And Their Soundtracks
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/top-five-for-news-views-and-music-150.html

140) AAA Appearances On Desert Island Discs
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/top-eight-aaa-desert-island-discs.html

141) Songs Exclusive To Live Albums
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/news-views-and-music-issue-153-top-10.html

142) More AAA Songs About Armageddon
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/aaa-armageddon-songsalbums-top-5-for.html

What difference does a name make? Arguably not much if you’re already a collector of a certain group, for whom the names on the album sleeves just...

This week’s top ten honours the humble motor car. The death trap on wheels, the metaphor for freedom, the put-down of capitalism, a source of...

This week we’re going to have a look at the 10 AAA singles that spent the most weeks at number on the American chart ‘Billboard’ – and it makes for...

Following on from last issue’s study of the American Billboard charts, here’s a look at which AAA albums spent the most weeks on the chart. The...

There are many dying arts in our modern world: incorruptible politicians, faith that things are going to get better and the ability to make decent...

This week we’ve decided to dedicate our top ten to those unsung heroes of music, the session musicians, whose playing often brings AAA artists (and...

Naturally we hold our AAA bands in high esteem in these articles: after all, without their good taste, intelligence and humanity we’d have nothing to...

What do you do when you’ve left a multi-million selling band and yet you still feel the pull of the road and the tours and the playing to audiences...

‘The ATOS Song’ (You’re Not Fit To Live)’ (Mini-Review) Dear readers, we don’t often feature reviews of singles over albums or musicians who aren’t...

In honour of this week’s review of an album released to cash in on a movie soundtrack (only one of these songs actually appears in ‘Easy Rider’...and...

Hic! Everyone raise a glass to the rock stars of the past and to this week’s feature...songs about alcolholic beverages! Yes that’s right, everything...

154) The human singing voice carries with it a vast array of emotions, thoughts that cannot be expressed in any other way except opening the lungs and...

Everyone has a spiritual home, even if they don’t actually live there. Mine is in a windy, rainy city where the weather is always awful but the...

Having a family does funny things to some musicians, as we’ve already seen in this week’s review (surely the only AAA album actually written around...

Some artists just have no idea what their best work really is. One thing that amazes me as a collector is how consistently excellent many of the...

159) A (Not That) Short Guide To The 15 Best Non-AAA Bands http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/a-not-that-short-guide-to-15-of-best.html%20%0d160

160) The Greatest AAA Drum Solos (Or Near Solos!) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-greatest-aaa-drum-solos-or-near.html%20%0d161

161) AAA Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame Acceptance Speeches http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/aaa-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame.html%20%0d162

162) AAA Re-Recordings Of Past Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/aaa-re-recordings-of-past-songs-news.html%20%0d163

163) A Coalition Christmas (A Fairy Tale) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/a-coalition-christmas-news-views-and.html%20%0d164

164) AAA Songs About Islands http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/aaa-songs-about-islands-news-views-and.html%20%0d165

165) The AAA Review Of The Year 2012 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-aaa-review-of-year-2012-news-views.html



166) The Best AAA Concerts I Attended
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-best-aaa-concerts-i-attended-news.html

167) Tributes To The 10 AAA Stars Who Died The Youngest http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/tributes-to-10-aaa-stars-who-died.html



168) The First 10 AAA Songs Listed Alphabetically
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-first-10-aaa-songs-if-listed.html


171) The 10 Best Songs From The Psychedelia Box-Sets ‘Nuggets’ and ‘Nuggets Two’ http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-best-of-two-nuggets-psychedelia.html%20%0d172

172) The 20 Most Common Girl’s Names In AAA Song Titles (With Definitions) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/girls-names-in-aaa-song-titles-from.html 








180) First Recordings By Future AAA Stars http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/first-





185) A Tribute To Storm Thorgerson Via The Five AAA Bands He Worked With http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-tribute-to-hipgnosis-via-five-aaa.html



188) Surprise! Celebrating 300 Album Reviews With The Biggest 'Surprises' Of The Past Five Years Of Alan's Album Archives! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/celebrating-300-album-reviews-10.html


190) Comparatively Obscure First Compositions By AAA Stars http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/comparatively-obscure-debut.html



193) Evolution Of A Band: Comparing First Lyric With Last Lyric: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/evolution-of-band-comparing-1st-lyric.html







200) The Monkees In Relation To Postmodernism (University Dissertation) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/university-dissertation-monkees-in.html


202) Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain': Was It About One Of The AAA Crew? http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/carly-simons-youre-so-vain-was-it-about.html















217) AAA 'Christmas Presents' we'd most like to have next year http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/aaa-christmas-presents-wed-most-like-to.html




221) Dr Who and the AAA (Five Musical Links) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/dr-who-and-five-musical-links-to-alans.html

222) Five Random Recent Purchases http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/five-random-recent-purchases-news-views.html

223) AAA Grammy Nominees http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/aaa-grammy-nominees-top-twelve-news.html

224) Ten AAA songs that are better heard unedited and in full http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/ten-aaa-songs-that-are-better-unedited.html

225) The shortest gaps between AAA albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-shortest-gaps-between-aaa-albums.html

226) The longest gaps between AAA albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-longest-gaps-between-aaa-albums.html

227) Top ten AAA drummers http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/03/top-ten-aaa-drummers-news-views-and.html

228) Top Ten AAA Singles (In Terms of 'A' and 'B' Sides) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/top-ten-aaa-singles-and-b-sides-news.html

229) The Stories Behind Six AAA Logos http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-stories-behind-six-aaa-logos.html

230) AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! The Best Ten AAA Screams http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-best-aaa-screams-top-ten-news-views.html

231) An AAA Pack Of Horses http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aaa-songs-about-horses-top-ten-news.html

232) AAA Granamas - Sorry, Anagrams! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aaa-anagrams-news-views-and-music-issue.html

233) AAA Surnames and Their Meanings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aaa-surnames-and-their-meanings-news.html

234) 20 Erroneous AAA Album Titles http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/twenty-erroneous-aaa-album-titles-news.html

235) The Best AAA Orchestral Arrangements http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/fifteen-great-aaa-string-parts-news.html

236) Top 30 Hilariously Misheard Album Titles/Lyrics http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/top-thirty-hilariously-misheard-aaa.html

237) Ten controversial AAA sackings - and whether they were right http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/ten-controversial-aaa-sackings-news.html

238) A Critique On Critiquing - In Response To Brian Wilson http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/a-critique-on-critiquing-in-response-to.html

239) The Ten MusicianS Who've Played On The Most AAA Albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-ten-musicians-whove-played-on-most.html

240) Thoughts on #CameronMustGo http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/thoughts-on-cameronmustgo.html

241) Random Recent Purchases (Kinks/Grateful Dead/Nils Lofgren/Rolling Stones/Hollies) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/six-random-recent-purchases-kinksg.html 

242) AAA Christmas Number Ones http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/aaa-christmas-number-ones.html 

243) AAA Review Of The Year 2014 (Top Releases/Re-issues/Documentaries/DVDs/Books/Songs/ Articles  plus worst releases of the year) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/aaa-review-of-year-2014.html

244) Me/CFS Awareness Week 2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/mecfs-awareness-week-at-alans-album.html

245) Why The Tory 2015 Victory Seems A Little...Suspicious http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/why-tory-victory-seems-deeply.html

246) A Plea For Peace and Tolerance After The Attacks on Paris - and Syria http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/a-plea-for-peace-and-toleration.html

247) AAA Review Of The Year 2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-aaa-review-of-year-2015.html

248) The Fifty Most Read AAA Articles (as of December 31st 2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-fifty-most-read-aaa-posts-2008-2015.html

249) The Revised AAA Crossword! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016_07_10_archive.html


251) Half-A-Dozen Berries Plus One (An AAA Tribute To Chuck Berry) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/an-aaa-covers-tribute-to-chuck-berry.html

252) Guest Post: ‘The Skids – Joy’ (1981) by Kenny Brown  https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/guest-post-skids-joy-1981.html


254) Guest Post: ‘Supertramp – Some Things Never Change’ by Kenny Brown https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/guest-review-supertramp-some-things.html

255) AAA Review Of The Year 2018 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-aaa-review-of-year-2018.html

256) AAA Review Of The Year 2019 plus Review Of The Decade 2010-2019 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-alans-album-archives-review-of-year.html



257) Tiermaker https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/06/alans-album-archives-on-tiermaker.html

258) #Coronastock https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2020/04/coronastock.html

259) #Coronadocstock https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2020/05/coronadocstock.html