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

If you're going to dismiss Dave Dexter Jr's contributions on the marketing/packaging of the Beatles in the US, then others are going to dismiss Epstein & Martin's contributions on the marketing/packaging of the Beatles in the UK, especially seeing that DDJ was a professional in the field and the producer and the manager were rank amateurs.

Mr. Dexter Jr. also was a pioneer who blazed a trail for DOZENS of UK and US groups in America that followed the Beatles, as well as those before them like Frank Sinatra and many others. Parlophone was a tiny comedy label in the UK, Capitol was the largest label in the United States therefore the entire world. Some of you act like it was the other way around.

 

Yes, we can - well put.

 

+1

 

When George had a great song, by all means, put it on the album. But on several occasions for George, and all but one occasion for Ringo, those songs were forced on there as a way to compensate the lesser Beatles or to appease fans of the lesser Beatles. Compensation and appeasement doesn't support "art". Doesn't make Beatles For Sale, Help, or Rubber Soul "great" albums. They compromised them. In the case of Rubber Soul, subtraction was the right approach, the approach Mr. Dexter Jr. took.

Go ahead and adore UK Rubber Soul, but don't denigrate US Rubber Soul as something lesser simply because it was greater than the version released in the band's home country. The US did a lot of things right. Credit is due.

 

... and What Goes On is a great song.

 

It's so silly to see people confuse causation and correlation in an attempt to justify their preferring a tracklist they grew up with.

 

We are sure it’s the American version. Mike Love says so in his autobiography.

 

... wow...

 

"I've Just Seen A Face" makes for an incredible opening song, I feel like it gets a little lost in the UK Help! sequence

 

Your wish, not reality based however.

 

Definitely.

Hey, Brian's first listen may very well have been the UK version. But the US version, the one that was stuck at the top of the charts for 6 weeks, the one setting his own record company on fire, most definitely was played countless times in his presence while he was writing and producing Pet Sounds which ran up until July of 1966.

And there's no way you can read this paragraph and imagine he's talking about a Rubber Soul LP that has What Goes On on it:

For Pet Sounds, Wilson desired to make "a complete statement", similar to what he believed the Beatles had done with their newest album Rubber Soul, released in December 1965.[33][nb 7] Wilson was impressed that the album appeared to lack filler tracks, a feature that was mostly unheard of at a time when 45 rpm singles were considered more noteworthy than full-length LPs.[38][39] Many albums up until the mid-1960s lacked a cohesive artistic goal and were largely used to sell singles at a higher price point.[38][nb 8] Wilson found that Rubber Soul subverted this by having a wholly consistent thread of music.[38][39][nb 9] Inspired, he rushed to his wife and proclaimed, "Marilyn, I'm gonna make the greatest album! The greatest rock album ever made!"[42] He would say of his reaction to Rubber Soul: "I liked the way it all went together, the way it was all one thing. It was a challenge to me ... It didn't make me want to copy them but to be as good as them. I didn't want to do the same kind of music, but on the same level."[43][nb 10]

 

What does that even mean?

 

... who cares what Brian Wilson thinks...

 

Side one
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Drive My Car" McCartney with Lennon 2:25
2. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" Lennon 2:01
3. "You Won't See Me" McCartney 3:18
4. "Nowhere Man" Lennon 2:40
5. "Think for Yourself" (George Harrison) Harrison 2:16
6. "The Word" Lennon 2:41
7. "Michelle" McCartney 2:40
Total length: 18:01
Side two
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "What Goes On" (Lennon–McCartney–Starkey) Starr 2:47
2. "Girl" Lennon 2:30
3. "I'm Looking Through You" McCartney 2:23
4. "In My Life" Lennon 2:24
5. "Wait" Lennon and McCartney 2:12
6. "If I Needed Someone" (Harrison) Harrison 2:20
7. "Run for Your Life" Lennon 2:18
Total length: 16:54

What a perfect track list!

 

... we know by now that you have learned to use GIF images...

 

I think it is perfectly put om Help, doesn't really fit as an opener.

 

She Loves You also was #1 and has the "yeah yeah yeah" all through the song. It's silly, has the choruses you dismiss and thanks to songs like this is why the Beatles were so successful.
If you are a fan of Capitol and/or Dexter and don't like Drive My Car it's ok. But it's in vain you try to impose your personal preferences as known facts.

 

Rubber Soul is definitely

Much bettter than "Drive My Car" in my opinion

 

If anyone cares, I grew up with the UK Beatles discography and think the US tracklisting is far superior. "I've Just Seen A Face" is a perfect mood-setting opener.

 

Gosh! Lennon ruined the White Album with frivolous rock'n'rollisms.........

Revolution - Shooby doo wop, Shooby doo wop
Happiness Is A Warm Gun - Do do do do do do, oh yeah. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot
Glass Onion - Oh, yeah, Oh, yeah, Oh, yeaahhh
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey - Come on come on come on come on

 

Wish? I was just elucubrating, and even I said "we will never know". And very conveniently, you just ignored what came before, which was the main point, and the reality on which I based my elucubration:

-Nobody denies the effect of the US Rubber Soul in the American musical scene. But the mistake is to attribute that to the specific tracklist differences, given that the original album had the same effect in the rest of the world (and the effect it has on the new US fans that discovered it from 1987). The US version just followed the original more than previous Capitol albums, so that some of its power remanied intact.
I still think the original would have been even more well-received, with fundamental tracks like Nowhere Man, but we will never know.

 

They both end in "life"? Now that you point that out I think it's cool.

The US RS had a great tone. You even said you respected that before. This thread has a lot of posts about the tone of the US RS vs UK, some by me. Take a jog down memory lane if you wish.

Nowhere man, IINS, and DMC are good songs, (The first two anyway) but overproduced tracks for the boys. They sound like paintings, like feats of recording, rather than what the US RS was about, which was what Brian Wison, and everyone else was talking about: freshness and sponteneity. You already know what's going to happen in those songs. The nowhere man is a holy fool or something and If george was up for it he would call. They would be appropriate on Help, and are more in the position of "outliers" on the LP than the Help songs drafted in.