Although most critics consider Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the Fab Four’s zenith, I maintain that song for song, Rubber Soul has it beat. It is less ambitious — it’s not a concept album and the band does not take on an alternate persona. There are no long, arty songs, just tightly constructed short tunes with great melodies, crisp production and lyrics that are straightforward. The harmonies are sweet, the love songs plainly stated. It’s fun, there’s no pretense.
But it’s not a simple monolithic work. Take McCartney’s I’ve just seen a Face, celebrating the joys of love at first sight versus Lennon’s Norwegian Wood, mourning a sexless one-nighter. The songs couldn’t be more divergent in their examination of newfound relationships. The album veers from Paul’s sunny view of life to John’s cynicism regarding its darker aspects, as expressed in songs like Girl. Michelle will live forever as a quintessential love song; it injects a bit of French for a continental flavor. John, although he was still well under thirty, is so nostalgic on In My Life that he approaches the threshold of an aging Sinatra’s It Was a Very Good Year. Even the fluffier entries like Wait and You Won’t See Me hold up well. The rockers kick, the ballads are tender and bittersweet.
Rubber Soul is my favorite Beatles album. It could be because it was the first LP I ever bought, at EJ Korvette on Route 4 in Paramus, NJ. I wore it out on my old Garrard turntable. Rubber Soul represents the bridge from the band’s mop-top, innocent hand-holding youth to their mature, more jaded psychedelic days. It deftly spans the two eras while standing on its own as a masterful piece of pop confection, with a zest unrivaled by their contemporaries.
