Revolver (The Beatles, 1966)

While it doesn't get nearly the exposure of Sgt. Pepper or the White Album, Revolver is a fantastic album, one of the Beatles' best. You don't need me to tell you that! It's the quintessential bridge album from the earlier albums to the later ones and sports elements harking back to its predecessor ,the mod-folk-infused Rubber Soul, as well as looking ahead to the more bombastic future albums.

The very name of the album had a tortured history, with a whole litany of rejected names. "Revolver" has multiple meanings, from a gun to something that spins, like record. Listening to this album as a kid, I noticed that the liner notes were very clear about who the lead singer was on each track and it "revolved" among the four Beatles. In fact, no two consecutive songs sport the same singer and all four are represented (Ringo singing the Lennon/McCartney classic "Yellow Submarine" and George singing all of his unprecedented three tracks).

Revolver was released turning a tumultuous chapter in the Beatles story. On one hand, the spry "Beatlemania" was losing its edge, especially in the USA, where a couple offhand remarks by John Lennon were completely misinterpreted and resulted in the burning of lots of Beatles memorabilia (probably worth thousands of dollars today - idiots!). Tours were becoming increasing obnoxious and dangerous for the band, resulting in the total cessation of touring in August 1966 (no songs from Revolver were ever performed live). Musically they were being aggressively challenged by a crop of new bands out of Britain (in particular the Rolling Stones and the Who) that were simultaneous borrowing much from the Beatles and posing as an alternative image. More than any other album, Revolver shows heavy absorption of the booming Mod culture of the mid-1960's and putting the Beatles in the weird position of following a trend rather than setting one. However, Revolver benefited tremendously from the first real vacation the band ever took in their career. Although the tours had not ceased yet, they finally took a well deserved break and returned musically re-energized (check out Anthology 2 and the immediate transformation from "12-Bar Original" to an early version of "Tomorrow Never Knows"). Additionally, engineer Geoff Emerick was fully on-board for the first time, introducing new recording techniques giving this album a distinctly more "modern" sound than anything up through Rubber Soul. In his memoirs, Emerick also made no mystery about his belief that Paul was a genius, John was a doof, George was overrated, and Ringo was optional. That's another topic altogether, though.

As a postscript to pretty much any Beatles album posted here, this review is from the Mono versions box set. Casual listeners won't notice a whole lot of difference, but keen listeners will pick up on things like longer and shorter fadeouts on many of the songs and distinctly different placement of "fly-in" elements (e.g. guitar solos, sound effects), particularly on "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Tomorrow Never Knows". Worth owning alongside the stereo version? I'll let you decide!