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

No time for joy.. just a snide grooviness perfectly summed up on the back cover photo... punctuated by Mccartney's commitments to love and reflections on its loss. Too bad they didn't push out another album that year end. They should have done their month in India in July 1966 ... cut some tracks in Bombay... finished the tour then gone over to Capitol Studios in LA in August and September... took their break... released in November THEN given Pepper till May to finish up!! Aaaaahh... NOBODY listens to me 50 years later.

 

Yes it is valued as a cultural touchstone in which the Beatles are plugged into the times...the cultural zeitgeist...art... fashion.. the scene(s) ... the leading edge of popular art ... but the hippies grooving on all this stuff didn't have a contract to produce records, movies, books, or work of any particular kind.. so for the Beatles as a group of musicians.. REVOLVER captures them as a band playing music not chess. It is a no frills black and white experience but it is the music not the message. I think rockists vastly underestimate ALL of the intangibles of art and performance culture so I don't want to do that. I love Pepper and the experience of it so I don't downgrade it. I feel the rise of Revolver as a truer touchstone of Beatle music is hard earned and is one of those things that privileges their band identity above all without diminishing the value of Pepper.

Love the Mystery Tour as well.. but side two is Pepper era stuff... Side One is some rather loose and poorly realized(but could have been stellar!) musical ideas that belong with an equally underachieving (should have been stellar) film project. We as Beatlenuts adore every note but if you had to sum up the Beatles to an alien species or a group of younguns vaping at bonnaroo ... REVOLVER is the gateway drug.

 

At the time its unlikely results would have been good. I dunno..Ken Scott? Alan Parsons... erm .. Geoff Emerick? I dunno ... somebody did this stuff well. Who did Joe Jackson's records?

 

The Beatles never rehashed anything. they always moved forward..

 

You sir got me thinking about the issue now

 

I believe an alien species would enjoy Magical Mystery Tour much more than Revolver. The title track would get their tentacles tapping and then the combo punch of I Am the Walrus and Strawberry Fields Forever would have them drooling for more.

 

It's Rock versus Pop.

 

In Lennon's description, Revolver was "the acid album" and Rubber Soul their "pot album".

I wasn't doing acid or pot in Elementary school, so I guess I couldn't/didn't relate to Revolver or Rubber Soul at the time. Just a "Jellybean" fan. But after I did pot in college, I'd say that I took to Abbey Road, far and above everything that came after Help!

 

One After 909.

 

My sheltered childhood...

I did not listen to the radio as a youngster. I depended on word of mouth for what was "good."

I satisfied my Beatlemania in the 3rd and 4th grade by enjoying their first two albums, and the film A Hard Day's Night. To be honest, when The Beatles never came back to my area after 1964, that was very disheartening that my loyalty to them would never be repaid as I would never get to see them live. I wasn't allowed to see them live as an 8 year old.

In December of 1965 I was in 5th grade and none of my friends talked up "Rubber Soul."

In August of 1966 I was about to start the 6th grade. None of my friends were talking about "Revolver."

In June of 1967 I had just finished the 6th grade. And none of my friends were talking about "Sgt. Pepper."

I had no older siblings, or, any cousins my age to influence my musical tastes. My 1st cousins were all much older than me, and what second cousins I had were babies, due to my parents being the youngest of their families, and me being born when they were around 35. My parents, and my aunts and uncles, for all I knew, had no interest in rock'n'roll. My parents "pop" music was Big Band music. The only radio station that was played by my parents was "The Beautiful Music" station. The wildest thing I think they listened to was Al Hirt.

I stopped "seeking" The Beatles after A Hard Days Night. They would have to come to me, by word of mouth. And that word never came from any of the friends I had. I guess we were just to busy being 10 and 11 year olds... riding our bikes, and watching the TV shows of the day.

I made up my mind, that if I ever gave my loyalty to another band like I had The Beatles, that it would be to a band that toured, actively.

And that happened in 1969, my Freshman year in HS, when at 14, I "discovered" Led Zeppelin by way of LZ II.

The only Beatle album that I have since gotten into, as an "album" is Abbey Road.

 

Amen...that to me is the sign of Lennon checking out..when he stopped singing with all that variety and energy. His singing on Rubber Soul is among his best as well subdued and quiet in places but clear as a bell throughout.. after that he had a strong voice or weak voice but he never did interpretive singing again like in the early days.

 

I think that side one really grabs you and doesn't let go.

But I do think that the whole album is an extension of Sgt. Pepper. I think the outfits in the movie do lend some credence to it.

 

I agree About the White Album it possibly could pass Sgt.Pepper as my favorite. Also The White album is their biggest seller.

 

Erm... David Kershenbaum ..hey this google contraption is awesome. LOL... he's the one who did the 1990 Layla remix.. OK now THAT would have been trouble if this poor guy had to take a beating for BOTH Layla AND Revolver!!!

 

Revolver has better and more timeless music than Sgt. Pepper.

Sgt. Pepper was hugely infuential in its time, but has not worn as well as some other Beatles albums, including Revolver, Rubber Soul, White Album and Abbey Road.

 

For the first three years of my life ... and I'm an open admirer of Blue Jay Way ..I embraced the scousian dawknuss early.

 

I hate to use one to knock the other. Though Id rather say it positively... Revolver is home to the popular and beloved single Eleanor Rigby/ Yellow Submarine... 4 of their most popular album tracks Taxman, Good Day Sunshine, Here There and Everywhe, Got to Get You Into My Life ...several cult favorites And Your Bird Can Sing, She Said She Said, Dr. Robert, I Want to Tell You, Tomorrow Never Knows. Pepper is Christmas but Revolver is daddy bringing home a PS 4 on a nice weekday in July!

 

Could the White Album be their biggest seller because people might think it’s a compilation from the title? I’ve always wondered that.

 

The songs on Pepper are not “same-sounding”..
Thinking this may be a joke here maybe?? Maybe not?

 

Nope.
Great album all the way around.
Classic.
Never gets old.

 

as far as studio albums go it is.

 

While there may be "some people" who might mistakenly think that, no one that know thinks that.

It has never been marketed as a greatest hits album.

 

I did not mean to knock Sgt. Pepper, just adding my thoughts relative to the thread title. That said, I've never warmed to Sgt. Pepper. I first heard the album in 1977, I was 15 and my buddy bought the album. I was really excited to have my mind blown listening to it, but that did not happen. At the time I had the Hey Jude compilation album and I liked that one better.

When I got to college, the library had tapes of all the Beatles albums, which I copied and listened to a lot on my walkman. I had a lot of time to listen to Beatles albums walking to classes, and over time, I became most fond of the middle-period albums...Help through Revolver. That is still mostly true for me.

Over the years I've given Sgt. Pepper a chance. Fifteen years ago I even acquired the rare and expensive MFSL UHQR of Sgt Pepper.

I imagine at the time it was released, Sgt. Pepper was very influential...right in the midst of the psychedelic era. I was 4 or 5 at the time, and was listening to different music (I did have my own little child's record player). Sgt. Pepper is easy for me to respect, and earned that respect.

 

That’s true. I just figured that some people might see a double album with a white cover and no title except THE BEATLES and assume it’s some kind of overview....which in many ways it IS, just not in the way that a new fan would want.

 

That's a point. But the majority of people buying the white album are already Beatles fans.

Back then, radio was mostly AM top 40's single's play, no albums.

Back then. we used to go over to each other's houses to listen to records. When we heard a record that we really liked, we went and purchased the album, so most of us already knew what was on the album, before we bought it.

Also, popular groups would put out greatest hit's album's, so we did understand what a greatest hit's record was and did not assume automatically that something was a greatest hits record, if it was not advertised as such.

But most of any album's sales are to it's fans, who are going to have some knowledge of their groups and their albums. Something does not get to be a number one selling album, because people happened to buy it with the assumption that it was a greatest hits album.

Something get to be that popular because informed fans are buying it.

But, along those lines that you mentioned and having nothing to do with the Beatles, there was a record, back in the same time period, released in 1978, that people bought, thinking that it was something else.

As I mentioned, these were the years of AM radio, top forty hits. Back in 1969, there were these highly popular song's.

Aquarius/Let the sunshine In, by the 5th Dimension.
Easy to Be Hard, by the Three Dog Night.
Hair, by the Cowsills.
Good Morning Starshine, by Oliver

These songs were on the original cast album from the Broadway play Hair, but not by the artist's mentioned above.

The top 40 versions were cover's by these bands, not the original version's as performed in the Broadway play.

So, the play hit the Broadway stage in the spring of 1968 and the original cast album soon followed. It was typically purchased by people who were fond of the play and its music and other's who would typically purchase show music. Other's took little notice.



Once these "Hair" songs became popular, they began to place labels on the album and began a marketing campaign, that the above mentioned hit songs were on the record.

Once the general public were made aware of this, record sales tool off.

Of course, buyer's soon realized that the songs on the album were not the songs that they were expecting to hear. They were expecting to hear the top forty versions.

As these were not the versions they were expecting and did not care for, the album's were put away and never played.