Listen to the song "Michelle"
performed by Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals, and
watch original interview of Ben Harper, on
www.thisbirdhasflown.com
(Media section).
www.thisbirdhasflown.com — The Beatles’
Rubber Soul was a turning point in the history of popular
music. You could see that it was different even before you
slit the plastic wrap and put it on the turntable. Unlike
any record before, the cover did not display the band’s
name. An astigmatic image, shot in a Dutch angle, served
as the Beatles’ sole representation, while the malleable
pre-psychedelic lettering -- “Rubber Soul” --
hovered in a corner like a hip icon. Perhaps Capital Records
allowed this unprecedented design concept because the Beatles’
faces were so well known that spelling out the group’s
name was superfluous. But it could also be that Paul McCartney,
John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Star were just plain
tired of being called “The Beatles”.
In this picture a sense of weariness is apparent in their
faces. Still in their early twenties, they had already set
the world on fire with their buoyant pop tunes and the moptop
hair that was adored, disdained and endlessly discussed.
But in the Rubber Soul portrait the Beatles are no longer
smiling. They have lost their baby fat, and there is apprehension
in their eyes. John looks through us, and each of his three
colleagues gives a sideways glance.
The pressures upon them at this moment were immense. They
were the biggest recording act since Elvis Presley, with
ecstatic young fans screaming and fainting before them.
Coming to America, they’d experienced huge and unexpected
success. On February 9, 1964, seventy-three million people
-- forty-five percent of the country’s entire population
– sat glued to the TV, fascinated, watching them on
“The Ed Sullivan Show”. They had been awarded
the Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,
bestowed upon them in a formal ceremony by Queen Elizabeth
herself. And days later they had to endure the news that
many past recipients had turned their awards back in, protesting
that this ultimate honor had been cheapened.
At the time of Rubber Soul’s release in late 1965
the cultural ferment of the decade was well underway. Bob
Dylan had proved that a successful song could be more than
something that got you to dance. A song could change minds.
Maybe even the world. The Beatles got people up and dancing
(and screaming and crying and feeling good) and now they
wanted and needed to do more. Up until this time, fans knew
the Beatles as a group. With Rubber Soul they began to know
them as individual artists, as their songwriting took a
dramatic leap forward. For Rubber Soul their subject matter
expanded and became more mature.
Moving on from writing singles of giddy adolescent love
The Beatles focused on their real experiences. The tone
became bittersweet, sometimes even harsh. They turned their
creativity inward, emerging on the other side with “I’m
Looking Through You”, where cynicism sheds doubt on
a lover’s integrity, and “Norwegian Wood”,
in which John Lennon sifts through the ashes of a one-night
stand.
A shift of direction toward more confessional lyrics can
be seen in two songs written within a year of Rubber Soul:
“Help” -- John Lennon’s outreached-hand
plea from the whirlpool of fame -- and soul-baring “I’m
A Loser”. In Rubber Soul’s “Nowhere Man”
a loser is again granted a voice, but this time there is
a way out. In this revolutionary work Lennon attempts to
evict the outcast from his fearful shell, urging him to
take charge and live his life, issuing a universal challenge:
Why are we all so afraid to act out our destinies, live
out our dreams? It’s a far cry from “She Loves
You Yeah Yeah Yeah”.
Love is still on the Beatles' minds with Rubber Soul, but
the parameters of the subject have expanded. Amid the growing
sense of cultural possibility, a Motown-like “The
Word” asks “Have you heard? The word is love.
It’s so fine. It’s sunshine….” “You
Won’t See Me”, on the other hand, explores the
darker side of a romance, as Paul McCartney takes on the
role of a stalker-like ex-boyfriend who refuses to let go,
yet is uncertain that he truly wishes to be back in his
lover’s arms. “I won’t want to stay, I
don’t have much to say. But I can’t turn away
and you won’t see me.” The more the ex-lover
avoids him, the more tormented he becomes.
With Rubber Soul the Beatles also incorporated a number
of musical innovations. George introduced the sounds of
the east by way of the sitar, Paul the fuzz bass, and, on
“Michelle”, the bass as a lead instrument. And,
for the first time, instead of going in and cutting the
songs live, they experimented with studio effects and tinkered
with sounds.
Rubber Soul helped to usher in an era when pop song themes
became more complicated, relationships more mystifying and
lyrics more intelligent. Rubber Soul stands as a rock song
cycle like none before, one of the first albums in which
each member wrote and sang the songs. It has served as a
blueprint for young bands everywhere, ever since.
With This Bird Has Flown we’ve sought out some of
the most gifted and groundbreaking kindred spirits of this
era -- people whose own lyrics are grounded in the same
kind of realism. Each new track they have lovingly laid
down reveals these Beatles songs to be as meaningful, as
beautiful, as powerful as they were forty years ago. With
hindsight, it is clear that in bypassing the expected “cute
shot”, the cover of Rubber Soul perfectly captured
a remarkable moment in the unfolding of the Beatles’
wonderful body of work.
- Jim Sampas, Producer
August 17, 2005
Note : Jim Sampas also produced "Badlands : A Tribute
To Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska", that already
featured Ben Harper |
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