Revolver is the Beatles' most revolutionary album*

But in this case it went beyond! Geoff Emerick literally had to invent ADT to satisfy John Lennon's laziness!

That's above and beyond a normal engineer!

 

I can think of one reason.

What is seldom pointed out is that Revolver is an amazing GUITAR album. Yes, there are some tracks that don't depend on the electric guitar...but those that do...man! What an amazing variety of sounds…and playing. There's plenty of guitar on Rubber Soul, too, but by and large it's much more conventional (and a lot of it is acoustic...not a bad thing by any means, but this doesn't leave much room for innovation).

The examples are legion: the funky rhythms of "Taxman" and Paul's raga-influenced solo; the backwards guitar of "I'm Only Sleeping"; the loud and in-your-face guitar in "She Said, She Said"; the dual leads in "And Your Bird Can Sing," the interplay of the two electrics on "Dr. Robert"; the riff that opens "I Want to Tell You"; the amazing break near the end of "Got to Get You Into My Life"; and the solo in the middle of "Tomorrow Never Knows" that I lack the words to describe. (And though it's not a guitar, you could count "Love You To" in this group, because it has a sitar that's actually played like a sitar — "Norwegian Wood" really just used the sitar as a funny-sounding guitar.)

I think this is one answer out of several that might speak to why Revolver sounds so different from Rubber Soul.

(And if you wanted to cheat, you could throw in "Paperback Writer" and "Rain," both of which had distinctive guitar sounds as a main element.)

 

In Australia , we got the UK Releases (Thankfully) and I have always considered that Revolver was more groundbreaking than Pepper. I love both albums but IMHO Pepper was a refinement of what was developed on Revolver.

 

Wasn't that Ken Townsend with ADT?

 

I’m gobstruck as to why people don’t mention in the first sentence of ANY Beatles album what countries pressings they are referring to . Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album that had the same songs and tracking Order of the UK pressings. There is in my opinion very little similarity between Capitol Records truncated junk, and the U.K. albums that carried fourteen sings, not twelve . I recently read how many American Beatles albums came out up to Pepper, I think it was Eleven in total ! Yep, you read that right. In the UK ,and for that matter the rest of the world had the same track sequencing ,and same number of albums . PPM,WTB,BFS,HDN,HELP,Rubber Soul,and Revolver . That’s a total of seven albums . This has to be mentioned, as most respondents are using the Capitol albums as a frame of reference , a very poor reference on so many levels . Not only would Capitol truncate the amount of songs, they also put out singles prior or apres any given album. I won’t even touch the sound quality ,and what a hatchet job Capitol did with the EMI masters . So assuming most people are using Capitols USA albums as a template when comparing Rubber Soul to Revolver, and then the leap to Pepper is totally unjustified. You never heard many of the songs on the albums ,unless you bought the singles . To say it’s disingenuous comparing Revolver USA to Pepper would be an understatement. I’ll let you read up on the songs that didn’t make the American cut. It respect to which album is better , that depends on how you’re listening to the music. Academically Revolver has it all over Pepper . Just imagine the chord changes,harmonies ,and the melodies sans lyrics. If you were to put scores in front of a small chamber orchestra as well as an entire symphony, Revolver would get the heads up. Pepper is the quintessential period sixties piece . It defines “that “period better than any other album imaginable. This whole thing with Pet Sounds is absurd. More like someone in The Beach Boys camp or the Beatles camp made a comment ( Paul - Brian ) and it took on a life of its own. It was I’m sure one step above an off the cuff comment . I know Paul loved God Only Knows immensely, who doesn’t ? But if you were to ask him today “ Paul, what where the names of the songs on Pet Sounds , and could you sing me the lyrics and melody to a few of them ? “He would be hard pressed to recall more than three songs , the three songs we all remember , what about the rest of the tracks ? Ask Brian the same question, and I would bet he would know the titles ( chorus for lack of better term ) ,melodies,and lyrics .
Oh, the question. Revolver hands down. As other have said. Pepper had a lot of auxiliary ammo that Revolver never had, and Peppers timing was exquisite...

 

Revolver's guitar(and bass) tracks are so hard hitting even 50+ years later. Rock musicians still use it as an inspiration.

 

Revolver is the better album IMO. Pepper isn't bad, but I don't like it as much as Revolver.

 

Oh geez, how cool it is to crap on Pepper these days.

For me, Revolver is a great album, seems like it would have been very trendy at the time, and that trendiness has aged pretty well. But Pepper is like a whole other world. I can't tell whether it's the really quite depressive themes or the wondrous color in which they are clothed that is the more striking about Pepper. It will always be magic to me.

It's OK to still like Pepper. It doesn't make you uncool. You can extol Revolver, Rubber Soul, or With The Beatles as well, It's all good.

 

All I know is my older sister bought the stereo version when it came out, as did all her friends. She had her own little stereo player and the big family Magnavox console we had was stereo as well. So, as a kid I heard the stereo mix first. Frankly, I don't think I was even aware there was a mono version until decades later, when I heard a mono boot in the early 1990s.

Everyone's experience was different, and what I do remember if a lot of tripped out "wow's" about the stereo mix, especially on headphones.

Here's a snippet from Popular Music Studies Today (apologies for the yellow highlights):

 

I've probably listened to Revolver 50 times in my life, and Sgt Pepper 5 times. Essentially I like all the songs on all the Beatles albums, but the albums I enjoy most as albums are Revolver and Abbey Road.

 

The obsession on this forum about Revolver is ridiculous, in fact it's a rather boring album and the worst Beatles album after Beatles For Sale - get over it.

 

And yet Pepper was considered groundbreaking regardless of which albums led up to it in the U.S. and UK.
So what difference do the Capitol albums make if Pepper was unique for the UK as well?
And you can bash the pre Pepper Capitol albums all you want but they represent the largest combined totals of sales during the 60s and they continued to sell in the 70s and well into the 80s because they included the singles which by that time you couldn't easily locate.

 

I would hazard a guess and say that all respondents in this thread are well aware of what Capitol did to their early catalog. There are many threads on the subject.

 

I would suggest instead that you get over yourself.

It's fine to have a personal opinion about music, but to state that opinion as a "fact" only makes you look ridiculous.

 

To be fair, in the States at least the release of Revolver was sort of overshadowed by the "bigger than Jesus" hulabaloo.

You got that right. The Beatles never could have done Pepper if they hadn't done Revolver first.

Absolutely, bringing Geoff Emerick on board -a nineteen year old novice engineer who wasn't afraid to experiment- made all the difference. If you really want to hear the difference between Norman Smith and Geoff Emerick's recording methods, look no further than Yesterday And Today.

Revolver is the album that launched a million BritPop bands, no question about it...

And another anti-Beatles troll heard from, ladies and gentlemen! You should be so proud of yerself, abzach. And before you deny that yer trolling, this is probably the third discussion I've read this evening where you've barged in and threadcrapped all over Revolver...surely you must have something better to do with yer time, no? Quit wasting ours. Go find a Uriah Heep discussion to post in...

 

True as far as it goes. The engineer is responsible for giving the producer, and in this case the band as well, the sounds they want. Emerick was a very talented and creative engineer who was indeed the vital ingredient in getting Revolver to sound the way it does, but he was the translator, not the decision-maker.

 

I know from experience that Paul can sing every song from Pet Sounds at the drop of a hat.

 

Step away from the crack pipe!

 

I am quite sure you have succeeded in your quest and have forum vigilantes reaching for their revolvers.

 

I love both albums, both are groundbreaking but only one has a day in the life...

For that reason I choose pepper.

A day in the life is in the top 5 most groundbreaking songs in history for me...

 

Pepper being seen as the No.1 album of all time -for decades- always got a quizzical look from me. I think it's ok but far from their best.
Revolver was more of a concept album to me than Pepper!
Revolver has a main concept IMO that deals with death in nearly every song!
With Pepper it's the 'concept' in presentation, the songs bear no relationship to each other outside the reprise.

 

Revolver was more revoltuionary because of

Tomorrow Never Knows... the most revolutionary song up to that point (that had an actual melody) by any pop / rocker, IMO

 

Almost all of the developments spoken of in the first paragraph of your cite post-dated the release of Sgt. Pepper — most certainly the ones concerning recording technology (with regard to The Beatles, anyway). It took time for these to filter down to the mass youth listening audience. That process had barely begun as of June 2, 1967.

Also, I worked in radio, and I can tell you for sure that except for a very small number of stations that were playing "underground" rock on the east and west coasts, there were otherwise almost zero FM stations broadcasting in stereo that were playing rock of any kind in 1967. That didn't start to change on a large scale until closer to 68-69.

And I wouldn't use Paul Simon as an example of typical listening habits of the time. He certainly would have had the finances and the access to obtain higher-quality listening apparatus ahead of the curve.

So the developments cited in the article definitely began to unfold in 1968 and 1969, but they were in their infancy at the time of Sgt. Pepper's release.

But you're right that everyone's experience was different. What would be fascinating to see would be a sales breakdown of mono Sgt. Pepper LPs vs. stereo ones in the first year or more after its release. But I don't know if sales were tracked in this way. Anyone know a source for this?

 

My first copy was on cassette and of course was the American version and even then I preferred it to Sergeant Pepper. Nowadays I have the American version in mono on LP and the 1987 CD version. I honestly like both versions a lot. One of my top 3 Beatles albums along with Rubber Soul and Hard Day's Night

 

Good Morning to you