eek, late again! sadly, even late with an album i am so familiar with already....sheesh...
in the spirit of this project i had to listen to the album again. who knows, i may have heard something new that i hadn't discovered or perhaps something i had forgotten. both of which, wasn't really the case.
i'm starting this post with a wee bit of my introduction to the beatles music. i very obviously wasn't able to follow along or get excited about any newly released beatles' albums. i mean, i was born after john lennon died, the wings had already come and gone and the traveling wilbury's were probably in talks about how to make popular 80's music stop sucking. my dad was more of a stones/doors/the who fan and my mom, while a fan of the beatles usually gravitated to music of the current times. mine and my sister's first real introduction to the beatles was when the anthologies were released on disc and when a.b.c. aired a weeks worth of concerts, movies and interviews back in the mid 90's. i remembered that week so vividly though. i stayed up late with my mom and sister watching movies like a hard day's night and help! i saw the 1964 ed sullivan show appearance, screaming teens, and conspiracies about paul's death that coincided with the conspiracies around sgt peppers lonely hearts club band. basically, the gamut of their lives, career and influence in music in a week. that was the week i became so hypersensitive to all things beatles. i had to own all of their movies. i wanted to wear bell bottoms every day. i would stare at the whole green apple and half green applefrom the anthology set in awe. i remember the stack of beatles sheet music my aunt cindy had in her piano room and being so excited when my older cousins taught me how to play eleanor rigby that i memorized every word so i could sing along.
all of that to say, i was familiar with the beatles' music song by song rather then album by album. i had a basic understanding of their work but it wasn't until i got older and began collecting albums that i started to realize which song fell to which album and the importance of that album in the career and evolution of the their music.
so, here falls revolver. revolver and the white album were the first beatles albums i bought that didn't link themselves directly with a movie. gasp! i know but this is how i started collecting their music. we started with hard days night, then help!, then yellow submarine. once i knew where revolver fell in the line-up of albums i remember feeling dumbfounded more then anything. how did all of these songs that i love for totally different reasons like taxman, eleanor rigby, and your bird can sing, and the original release of yellow submarine all wind up on the same album? and seriously, yellow submarine was released before yellow submarine?
to quote another rewind button blogger, zachary stevenson perfectly:
"Some people simplify the Beatles stylistically in two eras – pre-drug and post-drug. If this is true, let’s say that Revolver is the gateway."
that is exactly how i felt about the beatles as i started to get more involved in knowing their music. sgt. pepper's is from a very obvious time. rubber soul you get a glimpse into where they are going but for the most part, it still relates to the pop/folk albums before it {outside of norwegian wood of course}. to me, revolver was that album that was the grey area right before the total departure. i adore every song on this album and contribute taxman to me taking a liking to george the most {yes, i'm a george harrison fan above all the rest}. I do still find myself wondering if they were unsure of how this album would have been received and then correct myself to thinking probably not. in all seriousness, could the beatles do any wrong in the 60's or ever for that matter? i like to think not.
my tip for you:
*just sing along, you know all of these songs already
*colour the album cover something funky
for other great blogger takes on this album you can go:
next up:
