“This was the departure record.”
As ever, Ringo sums up the situation with commendable economy. Rubber Soul does indeed mark a watershed in the recordings of the Beatles, albeit the beginnings of a watershed, if such a thing exists. ‘Girl’, the last track to be recorded for the album, was the 100th recording, out of some 208, that the group released. For the last time, the Beatles released two albums of new material in a year. At this half-way stage we can get a good idea of the broad sweep of the group’s output, of how things have developed, and where they are heading.
If we think in pure Beatle terms, and forget for a moment the exceptional quality of the output, we’ve had a couple of albums that have broadly documented the group’s live sound, followed by an album of original compositions that showed the range of their influences. These early recordings were almost exclusively love songs of one form or another, and even in rejection were largely upbeat. The following two albums began to explore darker emotions, and a more experimental, less mainstream musical side. Nevertheless, statements of personal failure and outright cries for help were couched in upbeat musical settings. With Rubber Soul, while the songs did not show a quantum leap in terms of subject matter, composition or recording techniques, things were definitely beginning to accelerate. Although there are clearly areas of overlap between Rubber Soul and Help!, there are also clear points of departure. So while ‘Run For Your Life’ could have been on the previous album, and in fact ‘Wait’ nearly was, and although ‘What Goes On’ sounds rather like a Carl Perkins cover, it’s hard to imagine ‘Norwegian Wood’, ‘Nowhere Man’ or ‘In My Life’ being recorded even six months earlier.
And again, thinking in pure Beatle terms, the extraordinary quality of this phase of recording is evidenced by the fact that no less than half of the 16 songs released by the Beatles in December 1965 would feature on the 1962–1966 “Red” album.
The Rubber Soul LP was, for the first time, recorded without the distraction of concert or radio appearances to disrupt the recording schedule. The songs were completed during 15 sessions that took place over the period of exactly one month. In fact, during this time the group had only two other commitments – to record the 50-minute TV special The Music Of Lennon & McCartney and to nip round to Buckingham Palace to collect their MBEs. (“A former RAF squadron-leader, Mr Paul Pearson, has posted his MBE back to the Queen as a protest against The Beatles and Ena Sharples getting awards in the Birthday Honours List” – The Times, 15 June 1965.)
This meant that although most tracks on the album were completed in a single session, there was continuity to the recording of the album as a whole. And it seems that the composition and recording processes proceeded in parallel, with John and Paul writing new material in the days between recording sessions. At any rate, in September, on the plane back from the US tour, Paul had commented, “We have nothing up our sleeves at the moment, the cupboard is definitely bare.”
The album’s title comes from Paul’s corruption of the term “plastic soul”. He’d read a comment by an unnamed blues player on Mick Jagger’s music: “Well you know they’re good – but it’s plastic soul”. Paul himself repeated the phrase after completing the first take of ‘I’m Down’ back in June, as can be heard on Anthology 2. The phrase has echoed through the years, including David Bowie’s comment on his own Young Americans LP: “the definitive plastic soul record. It’s the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey.”
Rubber Soul had its run at the top of the UK charts amid almost a year of domination by the combined might of the Beatles and The Sound Of Music. Three ten-week spells at number one by the Julie Andrews soundtrack album were interspersed with nine-week runs, first by Help! and then by Rubber Soul. (Bizarrely, while The Sound Of Music spent a total of 70 weeks at number one in the UK album charts – and in fact was replaced at number one by Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver and finally (four times!) by Sgt Pepper – it managed a mere fortnight atop the US charts.)
The US version of Rubber Soul was of course rather different to the official Parlophone version. Capitol had a couple of tracks left over from their dismemberment of the Help! LP. They used these to replace the first track on each side of the album, and removed an additional track from each side, otherwise maintaining the running order of the UK release. So side one kicked off with ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ and omitted ‘Nowhere Man’, and side two opened with ‘It’s Only Love’ and left out George’s ‘If I Needed Someone’. For the first time since the debut Meet The Beatles!, Capitol’s eighth release treated their customers to a generous twelve tracks instead of the customary eleven (or, in the case of Help!, seven).
As with Help!, George Martin was unhappy with the stereo mix of Rubber Soul produced by EMI in 1987 for the CD release, and created a new stereo mix. This later mix was used for the 2009 stereo reissues, although the Help! and Rubber Soul CDs in The Beatles In Mono box set each included the original 1965 stereo mix.
The album cover was the fifth and last Robert Freeman creation. Freeman wanted an almost monochrome look, and found the right location for the shot in John’s Kenwood garden (although the group’s driver, Alf Bicknell, remembers it being taken in woods near Hatchford End, a few miles away). In the event, Freeman claims he was unable to reproduce the monochrome effect due to budgetary restrictions, although the predominantly green/brown hue comes close to his vision.
The distorted image wasn’t planned, however, and was the result of a happy accident. He was demonstrating the choice of shots to the group, projecting them onto an LP-sized square of card. At one point, the card tilted slightly, producing an elongated image. The group leapt at idea of using the distortion, and the cover was made from an image produced by titling the enlarger to create the print.
For the first time, the group’s name does not appear on the front sleeve. The lettering was created by a little-known – then as now – art director called Charles Front. His idea was to replicate rubber produced at source: “If you tap into a rubber tree then you get a sort of globule, so I started thinking of creating a shape that represented that, starting narrow and filling out”.
Rubber Soul was the last Parlophone LP with separate mono and stereo catalogue numbers (1000 series and 3000 series respectively). From January 1966, both formats were given a 7000 series number, starting with the eponymous LP by Chris Rayburn, Parlophone PMC/PCS 7001.