Talk:Rubber Soul

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Rubber Soul's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "DeRogatis":

• From Revolver (album): J. DeRogatis, Milk it!: collected musings on the alternative music explosion of the 90s, ISBN 0-306-81271-1
• From Strawberry Fields Forever: J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, Michigan: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, p. 160.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 11:15, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Today, I added a remark about that. We already have the comment (see the British Help! album) that "Act Naturally" was the last cover recorded by the Beatles until that "Maggie Mae" excerpt on the Let It Be album. There were a couple of later albums which had cover songs: 1966 Yesterday and Today (in the U.S.) had the already-mentioned "Act Naturally", and the British Oldies album (released later in 1966 when it was known the Beatles would not have a new album out then) had "Bad Boy", but both of those [songs] had been recorded before Rubber Soul.

There is a remark I cannot currently place. I don't know if it was by George Martin. It was that Rubber Soul was not that great a change in the Beatles' sound. (However, the Capitol packaging of the Beatles does make it appear as such. Remember that the U.S. is a big country, and that means many people were not familiar with the original British packaging of the Help! and Rubber Soul albums.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.45 (talk) 16:38, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

And continuing with "Rubber Soul not that great a change" remark: That's referring to the British version, and it is saying in the article that Brian Wilson (who would "answer" with the Pet Sounds album, for which he had already done some work when Rubber Soul became available) had the U.S. version. (By the way, there was a [TV?] movie about the Beach Boys which showed a living room with a Christmas tree, with Brian Wilson [as played by an actor] walking into the room carrying a Rubber Soul album cover.) <-- That might be "The Beach Boys: An American Family" in 2000.

So basically, you find that the American Rubber Soul made a stronger impact in the US than the British Rubber Soul did in the UK, and that this has remained largely unacknowledged for the last forty-nine years? I think the remark you're speaking of is George Harrison's comment about Rubber Soul and Revolver in The Beatles Anthology where he considers them "volume 1 and volume 2". Whether or not the US/UK Rubber Soul had a markedly different reception can probably never be determined, and I'm not sure anybody has ever weighed in on it.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 23:12, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

(My reply: OK, George Harrison referred to "volume 1 and volume 2", but I was writing about going from Help! album to Rubber Soul album. -- written Dec. 3, 2015) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.102.56.94 (talk) 01:41, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about "largely unacknowledged for the last forty-nine years", but notice this on Wikipedia about the preceding Beatles' album, Help!: "The record contained two cover versions and a few tracks more closely related to the group's previous pop output, yet still marked a decisive step forward." Remember that people in the United States didn't have that non-soundtrack side of the Help! album at the time of that album's release, except for 3 songs which had already been on Beatles VI; "Yesterday" b/w "Act Naturally" would soon be released in the U.S. as a single, and that left 2 songs which nobody in the U.S. knew about unless a British Help! album leaked into the U.S. (Those 2 songs would serve in the U.S. as the lead songs on sides 1 and 2 of Rubber Soul, where you had "Drive My Car" and "What Goes On" in the U.K.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.20 (talk) 16:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Also, both versions of Rubber Soul are using only original songs (no cover songs). Carlm0404 (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

One previous British Beatles album had originals only: A Hard Day's Night, which had 13 songs, all attributed to Lennon-McCartney.

Today, I didn't see running order for U.S. Rubber Soul, which per previous discussion is apparently the version Brian Wilson had when he was greatly influenced by Rubber Soul en route to Pet Sounds. Carlm0404 (talk) 01:15, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

As only hardcore Beatles fans know UK and US first vinyl releases differed markedly from 1964 thru Revolver album 1966, The track llstings were completely different even if some US albums had identical titles as their original UK counterparts. This was due to very different release and compilation strategy for the North American market. So for this reason it is required that alternate artwork and track listing are edited in for albums ONLY with IDENTICAL titles in UK (Parlophone) and US (Capitol) for releases from 1964 thru 1966. This way Wikipedia can keep single article for those albums, expanding only their contents where needed to show differences I mentioned.

There is already some job done in the descriptions of said albums, but nothing regarding the track listings and the artwork (where sleeve fronts may differ in colour and layout).

Examples:

Parlophone - A Hard Day's Night http://www.beatlesbible.com/wp/media/hard-days-night-200x200.jpg

Capitol - A Hard Day's Night [actually, the US album of this name was on the United Artists label] http://www.beatlesbible.com/wp/media/usa_hard-days-night-200x200.jpg

Parlophone - Help http://www.beatlesbible.com/gallery/releases/help-2/

Capitol - Help http://www.beatlesbible.com/gallery/releases/usa_help/

Parlophone - Rubber Soul http://www.beatlesbible.com/gallery/releases/rubber_soul/

Capitol - Rubber Soul http://www.beatlesbible.com/gallery/releases/usa_rubber_soul/

Parlophone - Revolver http://www.beatlesbible.com/gallery/releases/revolver-2/

Capitol - Revolver http://www.beatlesbible.com/gallery/releases/usa_revolver/

After the aforementioned revisions are implemented, all the other Beatles-related websites can rely on Wikipedia as their reference, as they do today mirroring Wikipedia's errors. I refer to BeatlesBible.com and AllRecords.com to name just the 2 I visited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mirek Goldberg (talk • contribs) 07:53, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

22 Jan. 2015: I made a couple of fixes above. Note in brackets about the U.S. "A Hard Day's Night" album actually being on United Artists label, and supply a missing "b" in the link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.47 (talk) 15:19, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I find: "Virtually all of the songs for this album were composed immediately after the band's return to London following their North American tour."

The Beatles Bible site says that John Lennon STARTED composing Norwegian Wood early in 1965; I don't know how far he got with it before that North American tour. Also, "Wait" was recorded in June 1965 as the Beatles were providing the rest of the songs for the British "Help!" album, but then was shelved (then, when the Beatles were a song short for "Rubber Soul" album, it was resurrected and, according to what I read, given some overdubs).

We're considering the UK (not US) version of "Rubber Soul". The U.S. version has "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love", which were also recorded in June 1965 and then saw their 1st release on the British "Help!" album. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.47 (talk) 19:11, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

I would like to add a sentence or two about the 2005 tribute album This Bird Has Flown – A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul, but the present article does not have a section along the lines of "Legacy," which is where I normally would place an item about tributes, later uses and references, monuments, and so on. Obviously, I'm not about to add such a section merely to place a single sentence! Do other editors see a place in the article where this item naturally fits? The album in question includes notables such as The Donnas, Sufjan Stevens, Ben Harper and Cowboy Junkies and it does have its own WP article. Lawikitejana (talk) 21:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

After this recent edit, I'd like to get consensus regarding genres based on Scott Plagenhoef's description in his Pitchfork Media review. Specifically: "To modern ears, Rubber Soul and its pre-psychedelic era mix of 1960s pop, soul, and folk could seem tame, even quaint on a cursory listen."

I read this as saying that the album is or contains pop, soul and folk music, as distinct from the album being a mixture or fusion of these genres into something else. (After all, there are songs that are clearly in one of the three genres, but nothing that combines all three.) On those grounds, I'd recently added "pop, soul, folk" to "folk rock" in the infobox. Apart from this being my interpretation of what Plagenhoef's saying, I'm mindful of statements we have in the main text, from Ian MacDonald, saying that the album's folk rock identity is somewhat inaccurate (it's very much a pop record in its full, UK format). What do others think?

I'm inviting Dan56 here – and not because he and I have ever agreed on genres in the past, please note(!). But Dan: is this not the opposite of the situation we had at Led Zep IV or Physical Graffiti, a couple of years back? There, I seem to remember some toing-and-froing over a description in which a few genres were said to be mixed, and you maintained that the writer was saying they were merely ingredients (so to speak) that were fused together to create something new. So is Plagenhoef's statement the same as that, do you think, or is it a straight description that the music on Rubber Soul is pop, soul and folk? JG66 (talk) 06:54, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't remember those discussions and I didn't object to your addition here at first, but that's mostly because the article doesn't do an adequate job at summarizing all available perspectives on this album's music; the Pitchfork review discussing "soul" and "pop" is limited to that one line, and if the critic said more it would be more useful. This source that's citing "...influences drawn from African American soul music..." in the article mentions a review by Ink Blot, which writes, "though 'Drive My Car' and 'The Word' parade a fat, Stax-like bottom end, it wasn't really a soul album either", before describing the former song as "R&B". Take that for what it's worth. I don't see where McDonald says "folk rock" was inaccurate; both the AllMusic review of this album and the site's bio of the Beatles view otherwise in what they say. John Kruth, who wrote a book on the album, said that replacing "Drive My Car" with "I've Just Seen a Face" made the album's U.S. version "more of a folk-rock than a detour into soul music" (), so I guess take all that for what it's worth lol. I don't know what would be appropriate in this case. Multiple sources sharing a viewpoint would be helpful in determining what genres should be given what amount of weight (WP:3PARTY). Dan56 (talk) 07:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Well sure, the article's inadequate in that regard currently (in pretty much every regard, I'd say), but I'm talking about what that statement actually says. I believe it can and should be used to support the additional genres.

The MacDonald statement appears in the section "North American Capitol release", btw. He says that Capitol pulled "I've Just Seen a Face" off Help! "and turned it into the opening track of the American version of Rubber Soul, so conspiring to give the US public the impression that the latter was 'The Beatles' folk-rock album'". He also talks about Harrison bringing the soul/Otis Redding element to "Drive My Car" and how that song's omission from Rubber Soul US was also misleading. Other commentators echo this point: Kenneth Womack says Capitol's merging of acoustic tracks from Help! and Rubber Soul gave the album "a decidedly folk-ish orientation", and he describes the US LP as having "a folk-rock veneer".

Anyway, thanks for those links; I know the Kruth book, might just have to buy it. I've got a Mojo Beatles special edition covering 1965–67, with a Rubber Soul review/essay by Richard WIlliams – could be something in that. JG66 (talk) 09:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Would you really file Rubber Soul away with the folk rock albums? Does it sit with Dylan and the Byrds? Some tracks have a folk rock style, but equally some don't, eg Drive my Car which is more of an R&B track. The All Music source does NOT point blank say the album is folk rock. It lists several *styles*. But for *genre*, which is the word in our infobox, remember, is says *pop/rock*. See this link: A P Monblat (talk) 15:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't the article, as it is currently, mix up the terms "genre" and "style". Overall, it is an album in the pop rock genre. Folk rock is merely one of the styles deployed on the album. Unterberger in AllMusic did not in terms say the *genre* was folk rock. The Beatles were never part of the folk rock scene as, say, Dylan was. They merely did a few tracks on Rubber Soul in that approximate *style*. They did not operate within that *genre*. There will be plenty of sources to back up my point. Here is one - from Rolling Stone. This Guardian article does not use the word folk once. A P Monblat (talk) 17:23, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I really don't think it was appropriate for Norman Smith to insinuate that Paul was critical of George's playing, since I very much doubt that there was very serious band infighting at this stage in their careers and there was no real band discord until the recording of The White Album or Let it Be, as acknowledged by John, Paul, George and Ringo themselves. 203.221.138.95 (talk) 05:03, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Isn't it also a fact notable enough for the article lead that Rubber Soul pretty much kicked off their studio years, with the notable difference in level of sophistication in writing (both chords and lyrics), studio mastery where the studio first became pretty much a significant instrument in its own right for pretty much every single song of the album, drug influences, and overall psychedelic sound, compared to Help!? Before Rubber Soul, The Beatles were only the most popular band in the world, but with Rubber Soul, they became renowned "higher" artists and started using the studio like no-one had ever before, for a much higher level of sophistication in studio production, where pretty much everybody else, be they bands or record producers, in the fields of rock and pop music went, "Woah, how are they *DOING* this? How do they create all those many new, otherworldly [soon to be called psychedelic] sounds on pretty much every single song?", beyond only writing chords or performing so much better than most other popular acts as they had on their previous albums already. Rubber Soul was their first album to be definitely not a collection of simple(r) songs written mainly for live performances anymore, as much as this first, early, most light-heartedly innocently-sounding phase of their psychedelia (that mainly encompasses Rubber Soul and Revolver) still owed a lot to the folksy Jangle pop they themselves had been doing since their 1964 soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night (of which The Bryds's 1965 Hey Mr. Tambourine Man was only an offshoot).

Of course, there's a notable step-up in this direction of studio sophistication with Pepper, where the most innovative height of their psychedelic phase pretty much lasted for the two albums of Pepper and MMT, with the A side of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack being a lesser, but still overall psychedelic album in overall concept, and only minor traces of psychedelia showing in their songs from the White Album onwards as they're getting back to more "realistic", "earthier" roots pretty much as "The Beatles as nature intended", with a now heavily matured version of down-to-earth rock and pop compared to their moptop days, now produced with an absolute mastery in technical craftmanship and creative freedom over the use of the studio in recording, arrangements, production, mixing, and mastering which they first to began dabbling in on a studio technical level in earnest with Rubber Soul. --46.93.154.151 (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I am surprised to see this interpretation offered here without any qualification. It is not a literal meaning I've ever taken from the last line in the song, nor have I ever heard anyone suggest it was the meaning. Indeed, the song's dedicated page does not mention this analysis. Why would a listener assume this line is literal when so much of the song is clearly not? DulcetTone (talk) 22:31, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

This can stay on talk page if it would burden the article: Drive My Car and What Goes On are replaced respectively by I`ve Just Seen A Face and It's Only Love, iwith those 2 songs from the British "Help!" album setting the folk-music feel of the American "Rubber Soul" album. Other songs stay in the same place in the same order, except for skipping over Nowhere Man and If I Needed Someone.

"Revolver" album was also affected by American repackaging. That article already states, not in these exact words, that the American version uses the British playing order EXCEPT that if we reach one of the 3 omitted songs, we skip to the next song. Carlm0404 (talk) 20:20, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, but I do think your addition to the article is a bit clumsy. I'll have a go at incorporating part of it in the text we already had there, but not so detailed. I just don't believe it's necessary to mention, eg, that ten (or whatever it is) songs stay in the same place on the Capitol LP – readers can jump to the Track listing section for that. JG66 (talk) 05:23, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I think the fact that this album and the 'We Can Work It Out' single released at the same time were the first to achieve the very rare feat of topping both the singles and albums chart simultaneously in the United States and the United Kingdom should be included in this article. Only Simon & Garfunkel, Rod Stewart, Men at Work and Beyonce have repeated this since. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phil6875 (talk • contribs) 15:28, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

So do I – if there's a source to support it. I've read up about this album no end but can't recall ever reading anyone state this "first". JG66 (talk) 15:34, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

JG66 How close do you think this is before possibly GA? – zmbro _(talk) 16:04, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Blimey, you're so darn keen! ... No, it's top of my list. There's a few things I need to fix – eg, I've got a note somewhere with a better source to tie some of the early points together and improve the focus. Just waiting for RL to be a little less crazy in my world – a couple of weeks, I hope – then there are 10 or more articles I plan to nominate. JG66 (talk) 16:44, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

JG66, Haha you got me xD. Likewise, I'm almost done with all of Bowie's 70s records, Just nominated Pin Ups now I just need to get my mind set on finishing Young Americans since I've neglected that for almost a year it seems. After Low is copy-edited that'll be ready. But then there's Ziggy... – zmbro _(talk) 16:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

So have you done what you needed to do? Because I think this is pretty much ready for a GA nomination. Speatle (talk) 11:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Speatle, you might like to ping editors if you want their attention. I'll give the article a thorough read through over the next day or two, make any additions/changes I was planning to do, and then nominate. I'm currently separated from all my books and magazines – they're being shipped back to the UK – but perhaps that's not such a bad thing. If you could close the peer review, that would be great, because it seems a bit redundant (and in my experience, it's unusual approach to take before GAN). JG66 (talk) 15:35, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

How do you close them? Speatle (talk) 16:30, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Speatle Install this script – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 16:39, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok. It’s closed. Speatle (talk) 16:51, 10 April 2022 (UTC)