Revolver is the Beatles' most revolutionary album*

A very good theory indeed!

 

I disagree. Pepper's is more artistic and requires more patience than Revolver.

 

There are people in the mid 1960s who missed Revolver?

 

I disagree. I have to agree with George Harrison's comment that they could have both been Album A & B.

 

George Harrison had a hazy memory when he said that. Revolver represented a ridiculous jump in songwriting & production in just a few months. Even the singalong "Yellow Submarine" is almost a dry-run for Penny Lane.

 

"Sgt Pepper's" sold far more than Revolver back in the day IIRC.

So this, supports the theory mentioned by one of the first posts, that "Sgt. Pepper's" came at the right time.

The so-called revolution requires both the product and the audience ready to welcome the new developments.

 

No, not people in the 60s. The reference was to young people in the 1970s whose first exposure to the Beatles in that period was via the Red/Blue albums.

 

Very hazy, because I think Ringo said it I might be wrong though.

 

Yes, Revolver was released in August 1966 the same month the "Beatles are greater than Jesus" hit the US shores. That undoubtedly reduced sales. So the fact Beatles albums were on fire in August 1966 must be an indicator that the album was not that good (just joking!) But seriously, you can't use sales figures to judge an album's worth, only it's impact on the culture surrounding the album. From that standpoint Pepper is certainly the more influential of the two. It's like saying which is better Beethoven's 5th or 9th Symphonies. Probably more people know the 5th, but most critics will vote for the 9th.

 

I didn't make any judgement on the worth of the records, I just mentioned that for a record to be "revolutionary" it needs to get to an audience. There is no revolution if nobody's listening.

So, in that regard, selling more certainly helps.

"Pepper's" seemed to come at the right time. It was well received and sold massively and it made a major impact.

 

Rubber Soul is a departure from everything before, mainly because The Beatles were now questioning the recording rules. They made a very dry, low-reverb record that makes it sound very contemporary today. But the songs were all pretty-much performable on stage.

Revolver changes that. They were, for the first time, making studio music that could not be replicated live. This was the huge step forward. They were also making guitar and amp changes that completely altered the tone they produced.

With touring done, Sgt. Pepper to me was part 2 of Revolver, with the time and focus to take everything to the next level in terms of sonics.

So, that makes Revolver the launch of the revolution, and Pepper its full manifestation.

 

I agree that Revolver got lost in the shuffle with the "Beatles are bigger than God" controversy in August 1966. That's all the American media wanted to talk about instead of this revolutionary album. It didn't help that they were hounded out of the Philippines and were protested in Tokyo. It seems that the last Beatles tour was all about controversy and not music. No wonder they said f it.

 

It was a huger leap from Rubber Soul than Sgt. Pepper was from Revolver, IMO. Rubber Soul is an evolution from Beatles for Sale and Help!, but it's a gradual development of the sound and style of those albums. Revolver, while more a collection of songs than a cohesive album like Sgt Pepper, bounds miles ahead of Rubber Soul and really shows the studio emerging as an instrument equally important (perhaps moreso) than the drums, guitar and bass. Sgt. Pepper may have been more colorful and made a bigger cultural splash, but sonically, it doesn't jump all that far ahead of Revolver. At times, Revolver sounds more groundbreaking and less dated than Sgt Pepper (see "Tomorrow Never Knows"). That brings me to another good point: Revolver still sounds fresh to me, whereas Sgt Pepper hasn't aged as well and sounds immediately dated to 1967. Pepper also comes across as campier and sillier, and while I realize The Beatles were given to little jokes and never took themselves too seriously, Sgt Pepper feels a bit more "forced" to me in trying to establish the more whimsical side of The Beatles.

If you divide the Beatles UK albums into two eras, then Revolver sits as the perfect fulcrum point, containing the both the full realization of the band as expert pop songwriters and the emergence of the Beatles as a studio band, completely unshackled and unconcerned by the demands of the road and writing songs that would be easy to replicate in a live format.

Given that Revolver is still essentially a collection of random songs that happen to sound good sequenced that way (not to downplay the thought and hard work the band had been putting into sequencing their UK albums up to this point, but that's what it is, a sequence of unconnected songs) vs the more cohesive whole of Sgt Pepper, I think it was easy at the time (especially with the butchered US version of Revolver) to overlook how revolutionary and groundbreaking Revolver was. Also as others mentioned, it was overshadowed by a lot of other hype and events, including Lennon's infamous Jesus comment, which probably led a lot of people to overlook or ignore Revolver when it was released.

Personally I think it's better to look at both as part of the greater Beatles continuum and while I prefer revolver, both albums are equally important and revolutionary, albeit for different reasons. Revolver just tends to get more praise these days because more people are just now discovering it vs Sgt Pepper, which we've been hearing and reading is supposedly the greatest album almost since it's release. So that may at least partially explain why it sounds less dated and fresher than it's younger but more popular sibling.

 

Nicely argued. Making me think that The Beatles stopped touring in order to concentrate on making studio albums, not the other way around...

 

I mean, to me, Help! and Hard Day's Night are truer rock albums than Sgt Pepper ever was. I think it's easy to overlook how revolutionary their early albums were (With The Beatles may be the best of the early Beatles, IMO) as they tend to be overshadowed by the 67-70 period. Maybe that impression is especially strong in the US, as a lot of people grew up hearing the Capitol versions and had no idea how cohesive and brilliant the early UK albums actually were. It's pretty understandable why they were so frustrated by the American label butchering their early albums into what were basically a series of hit compilations. I wonder if the Stones and Who were equally irritated, given their early albums were often similarly butchered and rearranged for the American market.

 

For a more modern comparison going from Rubber Soul to Revolver would be like Radiohead going from Pablo Honey to Kid A in 6 months.

 

good analogy.

Or Blur going from Modern Life Is Rubbish to Think Tank in 6 months

 

Sgt. Pepper was more of a cohesive album than Revolver or Rubber Soul was.

 

This is why many people including myself consider The Beatles the GOAT.

 

Yellow Submarine sounds like a preview of the Sgt Pepper album.

 

Revolver is more like the Whiter Album except the songs are shorter.

 

For me The Beatles began with "Rubber Soul." Does that make me capricious?

 

I think Revolver is a better album than Pepper (which I also love!) but is let down by the stereo mix. The Pepper stereo is good (maybe not perfect ) but the Revolver stereo is horrible - and it is the one most people will know.

I think Revolver was the biggest step forward The Beatles ever made. The song writing has a maturity that they had only hinted at before. Both the cover and the title are almost aggressive when compared to their earlier albums - almost as if they wanted to challenge the fan base. Pepper is a great presentation but it is relatively safe. It feels more like The Beatles at first glance than Revolver does.

 

This pretty much says it. My first thought was the idea of SP being the first unified US-UK album, but the single and especially the Beatles being completely out of the public eye were huge factors.

I do agree with the OP's premise, and far prefer Revolver and RS as records, but it's pretty simple to see why Pepper got all the kudos.

 

That description applies equally to Rubber Soul.