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

I haven't got Dextermania if that's what you mean. "Please Me Dexter, can I suck your Rubber Soul?"

 

My Rubber Soul Redux is the first side of the US album and the second side of the UK.

Sorry purists...

 

It's an album by the Beatles, configured for the American market. Nothing to get hung up about.

 

Hermans Hermits were huge in the US though! Are you saying if they’d flopped in America in early 1964 they’d still have become huge in the US later that same year?

 

They would have continued their phenomenal success across the rest of the world and developed their music along the lines that they did, taking in musical influences from both sides of the pond. But there wouldn't then have been a US Rubber Soul.

 

Yeah, that's what I previously thought. But now I find that there are bizarre fanatics that repeat the same hyperbole for 40 pages.

 

Welcome to SHF. If you do a search (check your sanity at the door), you'll find that this UK/US Rubber Soul debate has been going on on the forum for years. It moves to different threads as needed. This one seems dedicated.

 

Yep, I saw them in the Shea movie, screaming, crying and being carried out.

 

Ok, so I pretend that the two rogue tracks weren't on the Help album, and that singles are allowed. Here goes........

Side One

1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood
3. You Won’t See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. I’ve Just Seen A Face
6. Think For Yourself
7. It’s Only Love

Side Two

1. We Can Work It Out
2. Girl
3. I’m Looking Through You
4. In My Life
5. Wait
6. If I Needed Someone
7. Day Tripper

 

Stick the words "and to increase Capitol's bottom line by shortchanging American record buyers" at the end of the first sentence, and I'd agree, completely.

 

This is the US album praise I can understand and respect. No need for eccentric theories about it being a concept album, or a specific genre album, or having one specific style. Just someone who prefers the song sequence and the flow, simple as that.

 

I consider the UK Rubber Soul a perfect album from start to finish.

It is as the Beatles intended.

 

Sorry buddy, but your are basically disparaging the whole Beatles career.
Silly lyrics for teens, dated choruses (bang bang, shoot shoot), filler songs.
Your point of view is utterly contradictory. This "masterpiece tracklist" has songs borrowed from other albums, plus, the songs you hate appears on other albums no one in the entire world (minus the US) cares.

 

UK consumers were paying for those extra songs on those UK albums; they weren't virtually 'free' (like they are these days). And those Capitol albums made the Beatles money. Their EMI contract was so awful, royalties-wise, the Beatles had to have been glad there was an American market (indeed, they had set their sights on making it in the US market as a career goal). They had received no advance against royalties from EMI. They were getting about half a cent per song sold on a single or album - to be split between them five ways (Epstein's cut). They did get a raise of 1/4 of a penny for each succeeding year through 1966. EMI would keep half the royalties from foreign (including Capitol) sales, however. And the income tax in the UK at the time was a whopping 95%. 'Taxman' indeed.

 

Agreed, though my point about Capitol's financial motivations---which, to be clear, I accept as being a matter of the way corporations behave---in providing fewer songs per album is still valid. You don't question that, do you?

 

We as consumers don't have to buy it if we don't like the terms of the sale (like signing contracts - don't like the terms?, don't sign it). And there are ways around paying full price. The best advice is usually to spend wisely.

 

This is the sort of response that someone whose purpose is to avoid saying something negative about Capitol would make, as opposed to actually addressing my point, but as I've made my point, I needn't pursue it further.

 

Any grievances you might harbor against Capitol Records or EMI are strictly between you and those corporations. Thank you.

 

Yes, and I also have Don Randi's Revolver Jazz, which was perpetually in my DJ crate because of "Love You To."

One of my favorite sub-genres of music was created by aging jazz and easily listening artists who were turning on and tuning in to the moods and vibrations of today, during the post-"Eight-Miles-High" eastern grooves explosion. These covers are infinitely more interesting - and more subversive - than the originals.

 

Shouldn't the thread title say, your preferred tracklist, rather than proper, which is the U.K. release?

 

If the Beatles flopped in America, the biggest thing would be that EMI would view them as a British-only act and would never have allowed them the autonomy and freedom to experiment in the studio as they did. Their whole recording process, writing process actually, would have been cut off as studio time would have been on a very tight budget. That's the big one right there. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

 

That's the teen Bug Music audience that Rubber Soul US was intended to distance the band from. And it did.

 

No doubt, but Parlophone was just as guilty. Maybe moreso since they withheld the best songs from each album for expensive singles, Martin & Epstein holding the kids purses hostage to get at the good stuff.

 

It was more than that in the United States. It wasn't just a subtle variation. It was a whole new album.

 

1. I am not disparaging their career. I love all their songs. I'm merely disparaging the track selections for their long players up to Revolver. They all could have been improved by veering away from the tired formula of Ringo duds, George ramblings, teen dance numbers, etc. Capitol did that for Rubber Soul. Made it into something closer to art than the teen sensation albums of the era.

2. "No one in the world cares minus the US" is quite a statement considering the US is the market. How many times do the Beatles themselves have to tell you this? That if they didn't make it in the US they weren't a success whatsoever? So if there is a superior version of a Beatles album that is beloved in their most massive market, it deserves recognition and respect no matter what foreign country one lives in.