Having just returned from a North American tour, met Elvis Presley and the Byrds and smoked their first doobie with Bob Dylan, the Beatles had absorbed the folk-rock and psychedelia running wild in America in 1965 and and emulsified it with the chart-topping rock n’ roll that had brought them to the dance – the result was Rubber Soul, the beginning of the Beatles’ adolescence and shift away from albums driven by hit singles. That’s not to say there aren’t any toe-tapping hits here: Drive My Car, You Won’t See Me and Ringo’s token vocal turn What Goes on all brim with the Fab Four’s characteristic pep and enthusiasm. However for every “classic” Beatles tune there is an atypical counterpart – “Girl” is languid and sinister, John Lennon’s vocal punctuated by what sounds like long drags on a joint (Lennon described Rubber Soul as “the pot album”) while Norweigan Wood, famous for its use of the sitar, is a hypnotic folk song dealing in dense, abstract imagery. While Rubber Soul didn’t revolutionise the musical landscape in a way that Sgt Pepper or the White Album did, it certainly reflects the growing sophistication of the lads’ craft and is notably the first time since their gestation that pop culture started to influence the Beatles, rather than the other way around.
Pete Whelan 