When I were a lad, growing up in the 90s, Revolver was routinely picked by music critics as “the greatest album of all time”. Presumably, these were critics who’d grown up in the 60s and 70s, and who were commenting more on their own formative influences than on what might ‘objectively’ be considered the greatest album in the history of rock. After all, that’s near-impossible to define. In any case, from my point of view, there is little justification for applying this ridiculous and grandiose appellation to Revolver. Maybe it seemed revolutionary and groundbreaking in 1966, and it still stands up today, which is astonishing in itself, considering when it was made. But, quite frankly, there are at least twenty albums I’d rather listen to than this, and one of them is by Erasure.
That said, even from my jaded contemporary perspective, the first three songs on this album vividly illustrate the unmistakable genius of the Beatles (with the obvious and notable exception of Ringo, who was a minor genius, at least in his guise as a narrator of seminal and soothing children’s television). The opener, “Taxman”, was written by Harrison, and it’s simply brilliant – a witty, acerbic, punchy, actually rather right-wing and libertarian meditation on the evils of the state and ‘big government’. A total punk song, though I don’t agree with the politics, necessarily, tax being the basis of civilization and all. On that note, it’s interesting and ironic how the liberating, LSD-fuelled, anti-establishment impulses of the 1960s fed into the hyper-individualism of Thatcherite neo-liberalism, but restrictions of time and space preclude the full elaboration of this argument here, regrettably.
“Eleanor Rigby” is McCartney, and it is, of course, pioneering, heartbreaking, disquieting, appalling, all those other adjectives people have applied to it for over half a century. Come to think of it, my second-year music teacher played this song to us at school, to make some kind of pedagogical point about musical theory – though at the time, I was relatively unmoved, being more interested in Mortal Kombat. I remember he asked us about the meaning of the term “no one was saved” – and even now, I’m not sure. Does he mean that the funeral of this insignificant woman failed to convert anyone among the very small number of people in attendance to the faith – that they remained atomised individuals, ‘all the lonely people’? Anyway, it’s the most distressing image in this thoroughly distressing song.
After the vindictive and devastating one-two punch of “Taxman” and “Eleanor Rigby” comes Lennon with the equally brilliant “I’m Only Sleeping”. I don’t know who it was that called him “the laziest man in England”, but I’m intrigued by the contrast between the level of bone idleness depicted in this song, and the manic, murderous intensity of some of his contributions to Rubber Soul. Was he bipolar, swinging between extremes of indolence, and intense, perhaps violent creativity? I’ve no idea, but needless to say, the song is great.
So each member of the holy trinity sticks their ore in early. At which point, given the album’s reputation, I was expecting a succession of sitar-based, LSD-fuelled, Hinduist meditations on the seven heavens. These do indeed punctuate Revolver. Yet the majority of songs are about the old chestnut of romantic relationships, and for my money, they are a rather mixed bag. In fact, most of them are a bit forgettable, considering that this is supposed to be the ‘greatest album in the history of rock music’.
Lennon is responsible for “She Said She Said” and “Your Bird Can Sing”. I assume that the former narrates a conversation with a chronically depressed love interest who brings John down with her Sylvia Plathian chat. Interestingly, Lennon defends himself and his grip on reality by referring to his childhood, when “everything was right”. How typical of the romantic mindset. Meanwhile, “And Your Bird Can Sing” combines affairs of the heart with the perils of materialism, a full forty years before Papa Roach wrote “Between Angels and Insects”, surely the defining example of this unfortunate genre.
They’re decent songs but nothing more. The same might be said of McCartney’s contributions. When dear old Paul sings that he wants her everywhere, is he saying he wants to shag her in every room in the house, in the car, in the park, in the carpark? Is this song about dogging? It’s all a bit too soppy and tender for my tastes, though as a newly smitten teenager, I can imagine this being very meaningful and describing my experience perfectly. On the other hand, “Good Day Sunshine” is simply annoying and irritatingly chirpy, McCartney at his insipid, granny music-contriving worst.
But then he goes and saves his reputation with “For No One”. I wish I’d known about the existence of this song in my younger years, when I too was madly in love with women who had worshipped the ground I walked on, before suddenly losing interest. Back then, I would have been able to relate to every line of this song; it would have brought meaning and consolation to my benighted existence. Most devastating of all is the abrupt way that the song ends, with no resolution, indicating to the listener that they just have to grin, bear it, and wait for the primal pain of separation to abate. Christ.
There are vestiges of the ‘old’ Beatles in these poppy odes to romantic love. But the ‘new’ Beatles of world music and orientalist spirituality are also unmistakeably present. “Love You To” is where it all begins, and of course, it is the work of Harrison, the most fervent and enduring of the Fab Four with respect to the purveyance of timeless Hinduist wisdom. Surely some scholar in some godforsaken provincial university has scrupulously analysed the impact of Britain’s postcolonial legacy on the music of the Beatles. It’s obviously not a coincidence that they were British and drawn to India. Having said that, “I Want To Tell You” is pure gibberish, isn’t it? At the very least, it’s conceptually flawed, because George attributes his unkindness to himself, not to his mind. I’m no expert on eastern spiritualism, but surely it’s the mind that George should be impugning and rejecting, not ‘me’, because ‘the mind’ is the artificial, egoic part of the self, whereas the aim is to dissolve this ‘self’ into the eternal truth of universal love. Fuck knows. Anyway, this was the first time that Harrison was allowed to contribute more than two songs to a Beatles album and, in retrospect, maybe they should’ve told him to get knotted.
But as tempting as it is to take the piss out of the Fab Four’s earnest flirtations with Eastern mysticism, “Tomorrow Never Knows” is great, one of my favourite Beatles’ songs, and a very emphatic articulation of their allegiance to divine collectivism over individualist separation and egoism, the soppy hippie toerags. I love that unsettling, droning single note (from a Mellotron?) that plays in the background, but where does the title come from? Does tomorrow never know because only the present is real, and ‘the future’ is mere fantasy, the stuff of egoistic thinking and dreaming, a trick of the mind?
We need to take psychedelic drugs to answer such questions, which brings us to the next notable theme of Revolver: getting off your tits. Apparently Ringo wrote “Yellow Submarine”, and if we didn’t already know that he’s a genius from Thomas the Tank Engine, we’d know it within the first five seconds of this absolute classic. It’s a song for kids, surely, and indeed, they played this to us in Year 5 at Primary School, perhaps in order to corrupt us. They were successful. But what’s it about? Post-apocalyptic life on a submarine after the Cold War turns hot and drives humanity into the boiling seas? Was Ringo even aware of the superpower rivalry?
Speaking of the superpower rivalry, John and Paul each contribute narcotic anthems to the second half of Revolver. “Dr Robert” is most amusing. I like the contrast between the frantic verses and the blissed-out choruses, but what is the significance of Dr Robert “working for the National Health”? Did NHS psychiatrists prescribe LSD in the 60s and, if so, why did they stop? The boring bastards. Lyrically, the exultant and very singable “Got to Get You Into My Life” is a bit more ambiguous, but I assume it’s about Paul going to a trendy party of the Bohemian London middle classes to meet people who drop LSD, or smoke grass, or whatever.
Anyway, between the sitar-plucking meditations on reincarnation, and the odes to drug-administering taxpayer-funded quacks, it’s hard to imagine that much of Revolver was written without the prior imbibing of various mind and mood-altering substances. It is, in the end, an album about getting mashed. The few moments of cold sobriety – “Taxman”, “For No One” – are either witheringly cynical or complete and utter bummers, so to speak, and rather raise the question of why anyone would bother going through life sober. If that’s what they were trying to say on this album, then they certainly pulled it off with a lot more wit than the average rock band. But the best album of all time?
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Highlights: “Taxman”, “For No One”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”