The Beatles - Revolver

Released - August 1966

Genre - Psychedelic Rock

Producer - George Martin

Selected Personnel - John Lennon (Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards/Percussion); Paul McCartney (Vocals/Guitar/Bass/Keyboards/Percussion); George Harrison (Guitars/Sitar/Percussion); Ringo Starr (Drums/Percussion/Vocals); George Martin (Keyboards); Mal Evans (Bass); Marianne Faithfull (Vocals)

Standout Track - Eleanor Rigby

After 1965's Rubber Soul, the Beatles, already the biggest band in the world at the time, must have had the feeling they had hit upon a different way of doing things. The expansion of their musical palette and lyrical inspiration set them on a path that, over the following four years, would help them to create by far the most interesting and entertaining music of their careers, perhaps even of the 60s as a whole. So 1966's Revolver follows on from where Rubber Soul left off, although the mood in general is less of a Dylan-esque folk rock sound and more oritented around a rawer, electric guitar-based sound. George Harrison's opener, "Taxman," is one of the most blistering rock tracks the band had recorded yet, and is also perhaps the most conventional song on this strange record.

Everything about this album suggests a band who are trying to broaden their horizons in more or less every way (thanks in no small part to their increasing reliance on LSD and other psychedelic drugs for musical inspiration). Its sense of total license and freedom made it an important milestone in the development of psychedelic music, which would come to dominate much of what emerged for the rest of the decade. Lyrically, the Beatles go even further from their traditional love songs than they did on Rubber Soul, with not one of the songs being a truly conventional boy-meets-girl ditty, except perhaps the lovely "Here, There and Everywhere." There's the political and economic ire of "Taxman," the bizarre mysticism of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the heartbreaking tale of loneliness that is "Eleanor Rigby." To this day, I struggle to think of a song that can so succinctly and concisely sketch with utter completeness a life of quiet desperation as that song, perhaps the Beatles' finest.

Musically it reaches even further still - "Eleanor Rigby" itself heralds in the neo-classicism of the late 60s with its aggressive and plangent string arrangement, courtesy of producer George Martin. Then there's the incredible studio innovations applied to the sounds on the rest of the album - "I'm Only Sleeping" features a reversed guitar part, while album closer "Tomorrow Never Knows" is effectively a palette at which the band can throw the strangest and most unusual sounds they can concoct, from McCartney and Lennon's tape loops and Lennon's processed vocal to George Harrison's unusual guitar drone. Harrison also continues his forays into Indian and Eastern music, applying further experimental sitar playing to "Love You To." But this is a band that's always been able to keep half an eye on the mainstream market even when indulging their most experimental fantasies, and this album is more than just a collection of bizarre innovations. It's also a collection of genuinely classic tunes, from the brash Motown-inspired "Got to Get You Into My Life" to the jauntily simple "For No One."

This was the first Beatles album I ever heard, being one of a small handful of pop albums that my dad owned in the late 90s. It therefore became a more or less constant soundtrack to every time I went to see him at that time (because, being a difficult child, I was reluctant to dive too far into his vast collection of classical music). For me, it's a nostalgic relic of the time when I believed the Beatles had only ever released two albums, one entitled Revolver and the other entitled The Best of the Beatles 1962-1966. I know a lot more about the band themselves these days, where they came from and what they achieved, but this album is always able to encapsulate a sort of childish innocence that always moves me, nowhere more so than on the greatest children's song ever composed, the delightfully stupid "Yellow Submarine," performed with a non-committal nasal drone by Ringo Starr with a sincerity that nobody else could ever have mustered.

Track Listing:

All songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney except where noted.

1. Taxman (George Harrison)

2. Eleanor Rigby

3. I'm Only Sleeping

4. Love You To (George Harrison)

5. Here, There And Everywhere

6. Yellow Submarine

7. She Said, She Said

8. Good Day Sunshine

9. And Your Bird Can Sing

10. For No One

11. Doctor Robert

12. I Want to Tell You (George Harrison)

13. Got To Get You Into My Life

14. Tomorrow Never Knows