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

Not on this board...

 

The UK Rubber Soul is what it is. The US Rubber Soul is what it is. End of. I'm out of this thread.

 

Rubber Soul US presented the Beatles in a new, mature light to go up against Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and the rest of that sea change of pop music. "Beep beep, yeah!" is so 1963.

It doesn't matter what you'd miss; it's about doing what's right for the Beatles legacy. Don't be so selfish.

 

Hey, don't be so inflammatory. This is a Beatles discussion. Their legacy should be peace & love. To you brother!

 

I have never listened to those lesser bands. I just know that the pivot the Beatles pulled in late '65 with Rubber Soul in America was brilliant, as brilliant as the credit they'd get for Sgt. Pepper a few years later.

The reason there is such backlash on the subject is a) jealous UK fans who think they know best and b) jealous Beatles who were humiliated by Dave Dexter Jr. who got it so right and got all the credit.

 

Peace & Love? More like Business & Money.

And unlike that ******* Ringo Starr, I'd shake your hand and give you an autograph if you asked.

 

After getting the US version this year, I think I do prefer to the UK tracklisting. It's flows really nicely. I can't see "Day Tripper" on either version of this album, for some reason, though "We Can Work It Out" sounds like it would work on the UK version.

 

Stand-alone single:

A: Day Tripper
B: Drive My Car


R U B B E R S O U L (plastic soul edition)

1. The Word
2. I'm Looking Through You
3. Nowhere Man
4. Think For Yourself
5. Norwegian Wood
6. Michelle
7. Wait

8. We Can Work It Out
9. Run for Your Life
10. You Won't See Me
11. If I Needed Someone
12. Girl
13. What Goes On
14. In My Life

 

lol.

Btw, I've never heard the U.S. version of Rubber Soul, so I can't exactly be jealous.

Oh, and I tried to get Paul's autograph once and was summarily barged aside by a minder/bouncer. I'm glad though, 'cos I was a young pup and decided never to try to get anyone's autograph again. Saved me a lot of bother.

 

I agree with this but those of us who use the money argument are just pointing out that they were still compensated during their frustration. I mean they got screwed out of millions with their image being marketed thanks to bad negotiating by Epstein.
There have been artists who barely get paid by record companies too, even when it's their sole lable and they're the songwriters.
Billy Joel

 

a) I like the singles as singles. Part of what made that era so great were those spectacular standalone singles, especially the double A-sides.

b) I love the Ringo songs.

c) I don't know what 'bad filler' tracks you're speaking of, but the only song on RS or Revolver I don't much like is "Michelle".

Rubber Soul without "Nowhere Man" and especially "If I Needed Someone" is a non-starter for me.

 

That’s weak. They weren’t born in, nor were they formed or based in America. They’re British.

 

Plus they'd have to turn another direction at Greenland...

 

That should read, "do prefer *it* to the UK tracklisting," in case anyone read too fast and thought I preferred the UK album.

 

I know you make up these outlandish theories just to provoke (a behaviour bordering trolling, but to each his own). However, we went through this already:

-Neither version of Rubber Soul is a concept album

-1963 albums had 6 covers each. Rubber Soul is all Beatles originals, the first since AHDN, with a huge step forward in lyrics, music and variety. The comparison is moronic, no less than saying that by adding two old songs it became a 1967 concept album.

-The original Rubber Soul was a game changer, it made The Rolling Stones record Aftermath (their first album statement and first all-originals album), it inspired Brian Wilson to make Pet Sounds.

-Are you saying Capitol wanted to create a more mature album, targeting the college intellectuals, and their plan was cutting out the most dylanesque, lyrically sophisticated song (Nowhere Man) and replace it with a teenage love song (It's Only Love) which could have been released in Beatles For Sale? "I get high when I see you go by, my oh my" was to get those college crowds over "He's a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land"?

-They also cut out the song with the purest folk-rock sound (If I Needed Someone)

-Capitol didn't have any artistic intention. IOL and IJSAF were the only two songs from Help! that had not been released yet in the US. As for the four butchered songs, Nowhere Man and What Goes On were reserved for a single. So no, there was no intention to make a folk rock album (if there was, they would have never cut out IINS).

I can concede the placement of IJSAF as opening tracks sets a mood for the album, the rest of your theories are just intentionally crazy ramblings.

 

Sure it's your opinion. Cliche talk of "suits" simplifies things. People just cannot accept historical facts and signed contracts. I'm glad one of my majors was in Business.

 

Yes but it was business people not musicians that put the US track listing together was it not?
If so the post is accurate, as for the people that put the UK and original track list together well many are happy that their major was in Music.

 

The Beatles and George Martin signed a contract with Capitol. Nobody forced them to. A person shouldn't need a major in Business to understand this. Signed contracts have to be honored. Grownups take the good with the bad after they sign contracts. An American business has to be financially viable. Capitol was entrusted with the marketing and sales of Beatles products in America. Nobody forced The Beatles and team to do business with Capitol. There were business people with The Beatles team that understood this.

 

I was not disputing any of this and never was, it does not change the facts I stated.

 

I'd remove 'What Goes On', but keep 'Run For Your Life', that's one of the best tracks on the album! Maybe put We Can Work It Out in place of WGO. I don't think Day Tripper would fit, as the album already has Drive My Car which is the upbeat tune for the album.

 

These theories are not outlandish nor are they intended to provoke. Sometimes someone has a different take on a subject, it's part of what discussion forums are for.

The US version is. It was not intended as such by the Beatles or George Martin, but what was released on Capitol Records has been interpreted as a concept album by millions of fans and has been embraced that way for 53 years. Call it "folk" call it "acoustic", it's got a vibe to it where all the songs work brilliantly, not a dud in the bunch, not a big hit in the bunch, it just flows.

The UK Rubber Soul has moptop "beep! beep! yeah!" teen dance party number and a humiliating Ringo country song. Those conventions are straight out of their early years where "art" didn't matter, just quotas and Christmas cash-outs.

Sure, there is enough of the Capitol masterwork that still remains to have inspired the Stones. Leaving What Goes On on there to be painfully tolerated by listeners is no different than Yellow Submarine's role on Revolver. Norwegian Wood and Eleanor Rigby could inspire UK bands but neither LP could be considered "perfect" because of certain sequencing decisions that never should have been made by Parlophone.

I dispute that Brian Wilson didn't hear a Capitol US version as it was his record company and they easily could have given him an acetate. I'm happy to retract this belief if there is some evidence that Brian Wilson locked himself in his room for a month with only the UK version as his inspiration.

And even if he did, so what? 80% of Rubber Soul is the same in both versions, there's enough meat on the bone to give an impression of the type of direction the band were taking in the common tracks. The difference is that the UK version blew it on the "perfect album" hierarchy. The beep-beep and the Ringo ruined perfection for the UK. The US smartly cut them off. US score is a 100; UK score is an 80.

In late 1965 the Beatles were stereotyped as a yeah-yeah moptop act with a ton of hit songs flooding AM radio. And while that certainly was the goal, the unfortunate consequence of that success meant that they faced over-saturation and new competition from artists who were less commercial and appeared to have a more 'honest' approach. So...

Perhaps Nowhere Man was left off the LP to make the disc feel less commercial, less Beatle-like, and thus more mature, sending a message to college-aged fans that it was cool to like the Beatles because they weren't that moptop boy band anymore. Or, perhaps Nowhere Man was left off the LP because Capitol wanted to try it the Parolophone way and force the kiddies to buy both the single and the long player and get as much cash as possible before 1965 ended and the feared novelty blowback along with the crash and burn of the band. I don't know. But both answers seem very plausible.

No matter what genre it was trying to cop, it's a boring George song. Up against the other tracks on the US Rubber Soul, I wouldn't swap a single song for it. I think Dexter made a wise decision here.

Could have been dumb luck that the two leftovers from Help were sitting there and perfectly masked What Goes On and Drive My Car for the '63 formulaic misfits that they were. Or, could have been that Dexter was collecting as many acoustic-sounding nomads for an acoustic-sounding LP as he could and the direction the band took for Rubber Soul worked out better than he hoped. Who knows. And who cares? What he built was brilliant.

Your If I Needed Someone theory is bad. It's just a weak George song. It makes perfect sense why it was excised.

I don't appreciate being characterized as 'crazy'. There is no right or wrong answer. It is up for interpretation.

 

It wasn’t until I joined this forum that I became aware that ‘Drive My Car’ wasn’t a close to universally loved song amongst Beatles fans, regarded as the close cousin to ‘Day Tripper’ it should be and indeed is. For some reason, it turns out a significant number of fans think of it (very erroneously in my opinion) as a joke or novelty song. In actual fact it’s much more like their (pretty successful imo) attempt at writing a sassy, contemporary to 1965 soul song. (And this one of the key songs on the album for the Beatles with regards to its titular concept). There are many reasons why they wouldn’t have written it in 1963, not least of which is the lyric tells a story that resolves. You’re taking the ‘Beep Beep Yeah’ refrain/punchline as the whole song, as if the (very much intentional and knowing) corniness of that phrase is embarrassing you away from appreciating how contemporary the track was for late ‘65.

‘What Goes On’ is literally a 1963 song, having been first demoed then (and perhaps written even earlier) although as we heard recently the 1963 demo is fairly different, with a melodic bit that didn’t make it into the final version.

 

Wilson has called Rubber Soul a 'folk album by the Beatles'.

‘We recognized that the Beatles had cut Rubber Soul, and I really wasn’t quite ready for its unity - it felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was like a folk album by the Beatles that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I had to go in there and experiment with sounds. I really felt challenged to do it - and I followed through with it.’ - Brian Wilson, from Wouldn't It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds

Wouldn't It Be Nice

 

I am one of those that greatly prefers the American version, no trolling involved. I have always thought the UK album sounds like the next good Beatles album while the US version sounds like a revolutionary change. As far as the tracklist goes, the only change I have ever made was putting "We Can Work it Out " in place of "Michelle". I Don't like "Day Tripper" on either version, it makes a great single.

 

You may have a point about Day Tripper being too rocky ,We Can Work It Out is a better fit

So the single could have been Day Tripper / What Goes On