The Beatles - Revolver
Here we review one of the most influential albums of all time, and ask...is it actually any good?
In the 1990s, even pre-Noel Gallagher’s incessant advocacy, The Beatles were ever-present - part of the musical wall paper with ditties such as Yellow Submarine, ‘Help’ and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds sung at primary school*, while others like ‘Yesterday’, ‘Michelle’ and ‘Hey Jude’ were known without one ever actually having to actively choose to listen to them**. But there was a rumour that as well as these kid friendly bops***, there was also a serious side to the Beatles, where they had made actual masterpieces, and right atop mount masterpiece was ‘Revolver’. Or at least, Sgt Pepper was the ‘greatest album of all time’ but if you were actually in to music then it was acknowledged that Revolver was where it was at.
Here is my CD from the 90s, and LP from the 2010s, just to prove I’ve given it a fair shot. LP is scratched on side 1 thanks to my then 2 year old daughter trying to play the children’s song ‘Yellow Submarine’ by herself.
I think I first encountered the idea that Revolver was the ‘cool’ Beatles LP when the cover was declared the 10th greatest of all time in a 1992 issue of Vox. Which is fine, though the black and white sketch of Revolver always seemed somewhat meh, it seemed mature and maybe I should try to appreciate it, though as a child of the dayglo 80s I still think it looks like it needs colouring in. Still, Revolver remained a mythical but unheard artefact through to the summer of 1994 - there was no streaming, and my hard earned cash had to be conserved to buy 15 quid CDs by the likes of Carter USM, the Wonderstuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Summer 1994 I spent just outside Denver, staying with friends of my parents who were a little cooler than they were, musically speaking (a few years earlier my Dad had returned from a trip to visit them with a cassette of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ which went on heavy rotation on car trips, and had the end of the first side of the C90 filled with ‘Psycho Killer’ by Talking Heads from ‘Stop Making Sense’). They also had Revolver on CD, so I put it on my CD discman, expecting to be blown away. What I remember most, musically from that summer is the College radio station from Boulder playing ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ by the Orb and ‘Regulate’ by Warren G, and going to see the Lemonheads live in Denver.
So to the album. I can’t create that first listen, it wasn’t really that memorable. I was not blown away. But, you know what, the riff off of Taxman is good. Then it becomes a rant about taxation. Now I’ll give you that a 95% tax rate does seem a little high, but I’d hedge that 1) it wasn’t an issue faced by most Beatles fans back in 1966, 2) it was most certainly not the tax rate faced by 18 year olds in 1994, and 3) there is a good reason why there aren’t any other pop songs about tax rates. Still, it is a good enough riff and tune that it isn’t quite as charmless as it could have been in other hands. Track 2 however, is Eleanor Rigby. I hate Eleanor Rigby (the song, not the person). This is somehow depressing without being moving - there are songs that are sad, and speak to your heart and are beautiful. This is not one of them, it is a dirge. I would go as far as to say that the Beatles were completely incapable of writing the moving, sad song - an equivalent, say, of ‘Clocks’ by Coldplay, given here as an example of the form rather than the be all and end all. Anyway, two songs in, one is about tax policy, the second a dirge.
But wait, it’s about to get good (and Taxman isn’t a bad song at all, it’s just lyrically the equivalent of the modern day trend of lamenting in song form how hard it is to be famous; in that way I guess you could claim it is one of the Beatles most influential songs)
So yes, track 3 is ‘I’m only sleeping’, and you know what, it’s really quite lovely. Then George Harrison brings along his tabla for ‘Love You Too’ which just reeks of incense and could easily have been played in a chill out set in the early 90s. ‘Here there and Everywhere’ is a wistful gem, but then, THEN just as things are looking up, and you begin to believe revolver is a masterpiece, it’s ‘Yellow Submarine’, completely breaking the flow, a children’s song. WTF were they thinking?
Disclaimers: I loved ‘Yellow Submarine’ when I first heard it aged 5 or 6. My daughter loved it so much aged 2 that there is a scratch across my vinyl copy of Revolver from when she tried to play it herself. ‘Yellow Submarine’ is a song for kids that parents can enjoy, although by now I’d happily never hear it again. However, Revolver would be infinitely better without it, as it is not a kids record, it is an album for people smoking weed.
Past the horrors of Yellow Submarine, and then we’re back to something that can be enjoyed, back in the world of adults, with ‘She Said She Said’. Flipping over the disc, and ‘Good Day Sunshine’ brings a smile to the face; one thing the Beatles could do is write a happy pop song - this is no mean feat - see their failure to write a moving one in ‘Eleanor Rigby’. And this joy filled pop continues on side 2 in ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ and the magnificent, penultimate ‘Got to Get You Into My Life’ which is surely a top 5 Beatles song. But! it’s not all happy - For No One captures the slight melancholy the Beatles can do, while Dr Robert, despite being about buying drugs, is just the right side of irksome. ‘I want to tell you’ is so forgettable I’m playing it now and could swear I’ve never heard it before in my life. The aforementioned ‘Got to Get You Into My Life’ is terrific, and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was dropped in many a club set in the 90s, and is therefore extremely forward thinking and good; a really good album closer too.
So, side 2 is basically very good. The album itself? Is it the greatest of all time? Obviously not - no album with Yellow Submarine or Eleanor Rigby could be. To be honest, it’s not even the best Beatles album, or the best album featuring a member of the Beatles. It’s a solid 7/10
But I see from the latest reissue (which I am tempted to check out) that Paperback Writer and Rain are contemporaneous, and both also excellent. Imagine, Revolver with Rain replacing Eleanor Rigby and Paperback Writer replacing Yellow Submarine - that’s a 8 or 9/10 right there. What were they thinking?
In 2020 Rolling Stone voted ‘Revolver’ the 11th greatest album of all time. While it might be the 11th most important or influential album of all time, it obviously it isn’t the 11th greatest album OF ALL TIME because 1) Yellow Submarine and 2) it is absurd to claim that in the 54 years since it was released, only 8 artists who heard it (the Beach Boys and the Beatles are also in the top 10) took the inspiration and ran with it to produce something better.
Disagree? Fine, tell me why an album with Yellow Submarine stuck jarringly in the middle of it is a masterpiece. Revolver is fine, a 7/10. If it was released today, people would wonder why it had a kids song in the middle. Fine. 7/10. Not the best album of all time. Not the best Beatles album. Not the best album featuring a Beatle. Fine. 7/10. The best album released in 1966? Sure.
*either the teachers at my primary school were really cool, or so square they did not realise Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about acid; and acid trips are so like early 80s kids TV that it would never have occurred to us that this was anything other than a kids song.
**My parents owned only two albums - ‘The Beatles Oldies but Goldies!’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel. Ok, this isn’t quite true, they owned a whole load of classical music, but two albums of interest to a nascent pop music fan. Oldies but Goldies includes their early singles, and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’ off Revolver
***much as the Beatles are somewhat overrated by serious rock critics, they are perhaps the ne plus ultra of kids music, as shown by Paul McCartney’s embrace of Rupert Bear post-split.