My thoughts on why 'Revolver' has eclipsed 'Pepper' as the Beatles' masterpiece

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by action pact, Sep 11, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. GuyDon

    GuyDon Senior Member

    Less McCartney? He has six of his songs on Revolver which is his most on any Beatles album up to this point.
     
  2. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    People always want to blame McCartney for whatever they don't like about the Beatles, it's kind of comical.
     
  3. Chris from Chicago

    Chris from Chicago Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes

    I don't know that I agree with the OP... but playing along... if I had to suggest a reason why. It'd be much simpler. Pepper sounds much more dated. It's more of its time. Whereas Revolver is not.
     
  4. vudicus

    vudicus Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    There's a few tracks on it that I absolutely love, but overall the album doesn't move me all that much.
     
    Zoot Marimba and dkmonroe like this.
  5. Not me, I blame Yoko.
     
  6. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Pepper is the more "progressive" album, but concept albums and progressive rock have been anathema, critically, for over thirty years now. I'm surprised it held it's position as long as it did.
     
    Paulwalrus and The Revealer like this.
  7. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    I think Revolver sounds more dated, personally.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2018
  8. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I think the Beatles have 5 albums in contention for their best: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road (My vote is The Beatles)

    An excellent case can be made for every one of these albums.

    I also prefer Revolver to Sgt. Pepper. And although I think John's songs are about equal (and amazing) on both, I prefer the following on Revolver:

    #1 - It does not sound as dated
    #2 - I think Paul's songs are better on Revolver
    #3 - I think George's Indian song on Revolver is better
    #4 - The balance of all three writers on the album is fantastic
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2018
  9. If I Can Dream_23

    If I Can Dream_23 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I always thought they were both masterpieces, one built on the blocks of the other by the very same band. It never occured to me that the albums were in a race or competition with each other in terms of acclaim or influence. Play them both back to back and simply marvel at the evolution of the 60's before your eyes! Or is it ears? :)
     
  10. GuyDon

    GuyDon Senior Member

    Exactly. The statement has no factual basis and in fact if any of the songwriting Beatles had less representation it's Lennon who had dominated the group's songwriting since A Hard Day's Night. It's McCartney bashing for the sake of McCartney bashing.
     
  11. correctodad

    correctodad Forum Resident

    Yellow Submarine ain't filler. It's an essential part of Revolver, the greatest album ever made.
     
  12. major_works

    major_works This is my Custom Title

    Location:
    Ramsey, NJ, USA
    For me, coming on the heels of Rubber Soul with all its acoustic guitars and "folky," quasi-Dynanesque sensibility, Revolver is an insanely ambitious record. Again--for me--it represents the greatest album-to-album quantum leap in the band's sound. SPLHCB is more akin to Revolver than Revolver is to Rubber Soul. This is not to say that SPLHCB is not an ambitious record by any means. But I've always felt that Revolver, more than any other LP in the catalog, says, "We are an artistic force to be reckoned with."

    Having said all that, my choice for "masterpiece" is the White Album.
     
  13. AnalogJ

    AnalogJ Hearing In Stereo Since 1959

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    So which ones do you play most?
     
  14. AnalogJ

    AnalogJ Hearing In Stereo Since 1959

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    Filler??

    The only albums of their's that have filler, in my opinion, are the White Album and Let It Be.
     
  15. Eh, in the context of the album I find it fairly entertaining. A little too composed to be pure filler, in any event.
     
  16. RogerB

    RogerB Forum Resident

    Location:
    Alabama
    I appreciate the significance of Pepper when it was released but for me Revolver is a much better album. I’ve always felt that way. Just better songs overall with only a few exceptions.

    And Revolver was the last album that feels to me that the boys were all on the same page and functioning as a working band.
     
    Solaris, greenoort, Jim N. and 3 others like this.
  17. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    Wait is filler by any definition; don’t mind the song but let’s call a spade a spade. They grabbed it from another album cycle to fill up RS.
     
  18. emkay

    emkay Senior Member

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    For starts, I'll just say that I like Revolver more than Pepper... I have since I first heard the US version when I was 9 or 10 years old. Got my copy at a Genovese drugs up the street from my house, an Tomorrow Never Knows scared the crap out of me... been hooked ever since.

    That said, I place next to no value in any of these lists, charts or communal acts of groupthink. If you want my thoughts on the "surge" in regard for Revolver, I think it's just a way of updating old "common sense." It's the same thing that has opinion about "Pet Sound" revised in the last couple of decades (leave me alone - I really like THAT album too). Civilization is a smarmy place, and revisionism is rampant. There's always somebody trying to push a new sensibility -- EVERYBODY says this thing is the best, but they're wrong. I am cooler and smarter than they are and I can tell you what the REAL GEM is.

    So I'm sure someday soon, we'll be hearing how the prequel Star Wars trilogy was better than the first three movies released, Godfather III is the true epic, Hudson Hawk deserved an Oscar, Salieri is better than Mozart, the Earth is flat, and on and on... I think a lot that stuff is more about the opinion holder than the art itself.

    It doesn't matter - they're both essental albums.

    BTW - Meddle is MUCH BETTER than Dark Side.... ;-)
     
  19. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    The Beatles went easy on the competition (for 'best' album) by not placing singles on (most) albums.
     
    onlyconnect and Crimson Witch like this.
  20. A well respected man

    A well respected man Some Mother's Son

    Location:
    Madrid, Spain
    This sums up my thoughts pretty much. To me, both Rubber Soul and Revolver are superior to Pepper in pure songwriting terms, song by song. But Pepper is more than the sum of its songs, it's an album experience (and the cover is part of this) and a cultural landmark.
     
  21. If I Can Dream_23

    If I Can Dream_23 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    A great post. And it's not that I disagree with the general thoughts, but personally I find the reverse to be true. I always felt that Revolver, while undeniably laying cutting edge blueprints for the typical pop band, still comes down to songs that technically are stand-alone gems and nothing too vastly different from the already progressive hints laid out by Rubber Soul.

    By contrast, Sgt Pepper is an astonishing leap forward. Not just for the Beatles but, as was shown, for popular music at large. It is literally more like a larger than life Play or production, where every track and every note is used and radically manipulated to make something beyond a mere 14 tracks (even if those 14 tracks were in themselves quite groundbreaking). Everything introduced on Revolver is just "so much more" on Pepper. For me, Revolver was like taking Rubber Soul's watercolors and introducing tubes of oil paint that could be used in more progressive ways. But Pepper is like finding cans of every vibrant pigment known to man and simply dumping it all over the room. Then you create the "art". Pun unintended with the images left by the video for Strawberry Fields Forever. :)

    Indeed, I always thought Pepper's most significant line (on an album with about 50 significant lines) came from McCartney on Fixing A Hole...

    "I'm painting the room in a colorful way".

    Which nicely reflects back on many of Lennon's colorful lyrics introduced earlier on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

    And all these views of mine are from someone who has indeed found Revolver to grow on him over time and who considers it one of the most significant pop albums ever recorded. Yet Pepper is simply a whole quantum leap forward in their catalogue / in any pop group's catalogue at the time relative to anything else. In my view.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2018
  22. beatleroadie

    beatleroadie Forum Resident

    Because it's a better record.

    Sgt. Pepper had better marketing and timing.

    But Revolver's songs are stronger.

    "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Love You To" and "Eleanor Rigby" were all several years ahead of their time to say the least, which may have confused people.
     
    Ettan, Jim N., tkl7 and 2 others like this.
  23. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    That said, if you release both albums as CD-era-length releases - sticking 'Paperback Writer'/'Rain' onto Revolver, and 'Strawberry Fields'/'Penny Lane' onto Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Sgt. Pepper suddenly looks like the greater, if not better, album - the full-flowering outgrowth of the previous album.
     
    Crimson Witch and sixtiesstereo like this.
  24. Colocally

    Colocally One Of The New Wave Boys

    Location:
    Surrey BC.
    Revolver is a black and white masterpiece, Pepper is a Technicolor dream.

    It seems to be in our nature to rank, rate, pit against each other, but why has there got to be a contest? Does it really matter?
     
  25. Diego Lucas

    Diego Lucas Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brazil
    Maybe Pepper it´s not the Best Beatles album.
    Even the best 1967 album.
    But is the most important record of the 60´s, and one the most important records of history of the music.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine