Rubber Soul – The Beatles (Full Album) – Ukulele Chords

February 16, 2018 by Ian 8 Comments

I mentioned in the previous post about doing a full album night with Blondie’s Parallel Lines. Well here is the second classic album to get that treatment. And records don’t get much more classic than this one.

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Those arguments about what is the best Beatles’ album will doubtless run and run. For a long time it was apocryphal to consider it to be anything other than Sergeant Pepper. Then during the Britpop era Revolver seemed to pick up that baton, with occasionally The White Album pipping them both to the post. In all that time Rubber Soul has been something of an underdog, but there’s definitely a strand of opinion and an argument for this being the toppermost of the toppermost.

After all, this was the album that drove Brian Wilson to write God Only Knows, and whose existence was a massive inspiration for Pet Sounds, an album which in turn laid down the gauntlet that was taken back up by The Beatles in the aforementioned Sergeant Pepper (Wilson has been quoted as saying that Rubber Soul is better than Pet Sounds, citing it as “still the best album of all time”). And Rubber Soul is arguably the first album of the pop era that was more than just a collection of somewhat random songs – a coherent, paced collection that works as a whole, start-to-finish, experience.

Rubber Soul was effectively the last album The Beatles toured. Marked by a more sophisticated production, and a wider variety of styles, Rubber Soul was laying the ground work for the more adventurous and experimental approaches that were such a big part of the band’s later albums. Rubber Soul feels like it is on the cusp – one foot in the classic pop songs that established them, one foot striding into new and uncharted territory. Personally this era (with Revolver) is my favourite of the bands, precisely because it crystallises the best of those dynamics. And whilst other Beatles albums, being admittedly being full  of fine songs, suffer from one or two bum tracks (the Fab Four certainly weren’t flawless), Rubber Soul has no bad tracks. Not one. OK, Run For Your Life may be a little dodgy lyrically, especially in these #metoo days. But I’m prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Concise – 14 songs in 35 minutes, so much depth and variety in such a short period – and perfectly formed, here is a band at the height of their powers, yet at the same time stretching and growing. From the raw throwback that is “Drive My Car”, the folk-rock inspired-by-yet-outdoing-the-Byrds “If I Needed Someone”, the early Indian influences that come through “Norwegian Wood”, the folk stylings of “In My Life”, and the chanson leanings of “Michelle”, this is an album rich in variety yet still hanging together as a perfectly paced exemplar.

 

Individual songsheets

• Drive My Car
• Norwegian Wood
• You Won’t See Me
• Nowhere Man
• Think For Yourself
• The Word
• Michelle
• What Goes On
• Girl
• I’m Looking Through You
• In My Life
• Wait
• If I Needed Someone
• Run For Your Life

Rubber SoulDownload