The Beatles' "Rubber Soul" - Putting together the proper tracklist

Actually, kind of stunning. I know many of you favor the US version because you are more familiar with it, but come on. Capitol stripped the British one of four songs and sold them to you seven months later. That doesn't make them bad songs, or the two songs that it had withheld from Help and tacked on the start of each side transformative classics. It's business.
I'm out.

 

April 1st 1964

 

I'd like everyone to note the total dishonesty of this. This poster has deliberately misquoted the UK sales figures which in the graph he posted showed sales only from 1994. None of the sales from 1965 to 1993 are registered.

[If we level the playing field by subtracting all the US sales between 1965 and 1993, (this poster says RS sold 5 million up to the end of 1966) we see that in the years 1967 to date Rubber Soul sold maybe 1 million in the US. That's little more than three times the number sold in the UK between 1994 and now, a country who's population is six times smaller (and US sales since 1987 will mainly have been of the UK tracklist)] So the Wikipedia chart of sales is pretty much revealed as worthless. I'm sure RS sold more than 1 million in the US in that period, and I know RS sold more than a million here. I bought 5 between 1965 and 2009.

This posters blatant massaging of figures exposes him as a very odd fantasist (he has posted several conflicting anecdotes (all invented) about how he discovered The Beatles), who has a peculiar drama about the US Rubber Soul, which, being born in the spring of 1964 he has no knowledge of at the time it was released, despite lecturing us all about how it was seen in the US (or at least New Jersey). Goodbye, Troll.

 

That's a disingenuously cherry picked example of a Kinks hit used to make a bad faith argument. Apeman (which I do admit is in questionable racial sensitivity) is a second tier Kinks hit that only scraped into the US top 50 on the back of Lola's success. It wasn't conceived as The Kinks clumsy bid to appeal to the cosmopolitan world as they attempted to expand their horizons beyond writing about teacups, it was a catchy stereotype novelty song that at the time was considered to be the most accessible follow up hit for the pop market. It's close to the equivalent of singling out 'Ob La Di Ob La Da' as 'one of the few disastrous times The Beatles attempted a song with a non-English influence' or something.

The Kinks 3 largest worldwide hits (all big smashes in the US too) are almost inarguably 'You Really Got Me', 'Lola' and 'Come Dancing', three different styles of pop/rock hit in three different decades. Only the last has any identifiable 'Anglo' content, and that's only in the lyrics. The Kinks did have a few more 'Anglo' influenced hits in the US in the 60s with 'Well Respected Man' and Sunny Afternoon', but only after their reputation in the country had been built on half a dozen heavily US influenced riff rockers. Then you have their stadium rock era from 1977-83 where they landed several US hit albums again with the 'Anglo' influence very much taking a back seat.

Just like I've seen appreciation of the Kinks develop over the years, in tandem I've seen the ways used to denigrate them change. It used to be those people would say 'The Kinks just traded in meat and potatoes hit rockers, no way could they even approach the beauty of The Beach Boys or The Beatles' as they only knew the riffy and stadium stuff. Recently I've noticed the proliferation of the opposite trend: now that the focus is more on the (not so) 'lost classics' like VGPS, the argument used by those seeking to dismiss them was that they were a 'Cult Anglophile band'. The truth is they were BOTH at different times!

I agree the Velvet Underground are a better comparison to the US Rubber Soul that The Kinks to argue against the 'sale = influence' line though. The Kinks were actually a hit pop band across several decades which muddies the waters, The Velvet Underground had zero hits but their albums were hugely influential, (hence the famous Eno: 'not many people bought their stuff, but everyone who did went out and formed a band' quote). They are perhaps the ultimate example of maximised measurable artistic influence per unit sold.

 

Amen.

 

Wider and deeper? Well, the US could be the largest market, but the original album was released in most countries (all but three). I would call that wider influence.

In any case, I go back to my original point, that you and notesfrom seem to want to ignore: the original album had great impact and influence wherever it was released, just as the US version had in those three countries. So no, it's not because of the tracklist differences.

Based on what?

What does that have to do with the fact that the original album was influential everywhere else?

Call it Canadian, call it canon, call it folk, intimate, or whatever you like. It's not going to change the reality of facts.

 

We can’t change the original track list that got released in the different countries when the album was first released. That’s cultural history at this point. Undoubtedly the album was a big deal in whichever places people bought and heard it.

 

Bill Miller, Capitol Records, whatever.

 

America is the Beatles biggest market. What they chose to release in the UK is immaterial to us outside of the fact that those niche British versions have been shoved down American throats for too long.

As an Apple Music subscriber, I am grateful that our Capitol versions are available in mono and stereo, in the correct sequencing, with the correct album art, and with the unique mixes that we're used to. I wouldn't trade those for your 50 years of suffering through What Goes On on Rubber Soul for anything.

 

It's more than business. Put What Goes On on Dark Side Of The Moon and it ruins the entire album. That's what's wrong with UK Rubber Soul. It wasn't designed to be special. It was just another formulaic Beatles Christmas album from Martin & Epstein. It had the potential to be so much more. Thankfully, Capitol Records recognized this and made the necessary adjustments.

You keep saying that. Can you mean it this time?

 

Yes, America is the biggest market, for almost everything. You're right, but this doesn't imply that the US Rubber Soul is the standard one.

What Goes On is a crappy song, but that's what the Beatles wrote for Rubber Soul.

 

The new Beatles Christmas '65 release was a "big deal" in Europe because it was the next long player from the most popular producer of Bug Music in the Kingdom.

Rubber Soul US was an "all time classic" in America because it represented a shocking sea change in style, artistry, and tone from a band whose over-saturated Moptop reputation was quite different.

Dave Dexter Jr. and the Capitol Records team taught the Beatles that song selection could make a very big difference in how the band was perceived, and from that point forward their albums moved very clearly and deliberately into this American way of theming that they hadn't before considered. They didn't just cut their hair, stop touring, put on glasses, and make Sgt. Pepper. They were taught how to do so.

 

Says the most ignorant poster on these forums, who, let's remember, was eighteen months old when he saw all this happening (though let's also remember he's made up so many stories about how he got into The Beatles in 1968, I mean 1970, I mean the 70s that he's forgotten which lie got him the most likes).

 

Rubber Soul, US, UK, whatever.

 

Joni who? Neil who? Leonard who? I'm glad these people with no surnames liked their local truncated Rubber Soul LP, (if you say so) whoever they are. That's three copies sold, right there. Good for you. The Beatles, I've heard of.

 

I challenge that. The 'standard' should be the one that the most people listened to when it first made an impression on them. If only 10% of all 1965-1975 Rubber Soul listeners were in the UK and 90% listened to the US version, then it's the US version that is actually the standard, it's the US version that affected the most people, it's the US version that became a legendary influence on an entire industry. Same for Meet The Beatles, an album that is probably the single most important long player ever released in the USA.

Even worse, not only do Americans have to suffer with the inferior UK versions of albums they loved since childhood, but once again that greedy EMI decision to make people buy the albums and pay for the singles too on that travesty of a compilation called Past Masters rears its ugly head. It's awful. Thank God for streaming, thank God for the US Albums on Apple Music. We can all put that greedy CD nightmare behind us.

 

Exactly. And it had the same effect with both tracklists, so we have to conclude it's not a particular effect of the "magical" US tracklist.

 

You were about minus 3 months old when you "witnessed" that, weren't you?

 

How the heck are you still an active member on this forum?? Staff???

 

More fiction from the Toddler.

 

And if not, then someone is typing arrant nonsense. Mmmh. I wonder which it is.

 

We can’t change it or know, really, what would happen where with what track list. The effect would probably differ slightly due to the difference in the track list, just as people have been saying for years that the albums have a different ‘feel’ to them overall. We can make guesses, but we can’t know for sure. If the track lists were equal in the albums’ effects on people, this thread wouldn’t be going. Heck, the mixes of the same songs aren’t even the same in some cases, and those classic mixes of the ‘65 releases aren’t on the standard CD representing the album today.

 

Correct me if I am mistaken. But the Beatles themselves did not like Capitol changing their albums. They had enough power by Sgt. Pepper's to insist that the US version match what they wanted.

1. The UK Rubber Soul is the tracklist the Beatles wanted released
2. The UK album is universally regarded as the beginning of their "great" albums
3. The Beatles did not approve of Capitol changing their releases, but could do nothing about it until 1967

That really settles it for me.

 

10 songs being the same, adding great ones like Nowhere Man... Yes, I think it's safe to assume the original album would have had the same effect on the US as it had on the rest of the world.

After all, US fans have been growing up with the original tracklist for over 30 years now, and it remains one of the most beloved Beatles albums.