Revolver
The Beatles
1966: Parlophone/Apple CDP7 46441 2
I have a really tough time with the Beatles. On the one hand, they were revolutionary and prolific songwriters. On the other hand, they often sang so badly off-key it brings tears of pain to my eyes, and they wrote some appallingly fluff pop. So even though it’s blasphemous as well as tacky to say, I confess the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton did a better job with some of their songs for that ghastly movie of “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in the late ’70s. (And I hasten to emphasize the word “some,” there, although Mrs Miller’s unforgettable rendition of “Hard Day’s Night” stands in a category of its own [thankfully].)
This album is a good example of what drives me batshit about them: some great great songs dimished by imperfect pitch and lazy “stylized” singing, some possibly-great songs putting ideas into tantalizingly brief forms, and some complete crap. And then there’s “Yellow Submarine” in the next category down.
But “Taxman,” “Doctor Robert,” “She Said She Said,” and “Love You To” are so close to the genius level of pop it’s aggravating. I suppose if I’d heard them at the time, on the equipment of the time, I might have a higher opinion of them. Then again I might just be pissed off at The Beatles for so nearly killing the U.S. folk scene. In the meantime I find myself in the embarrassed position of having to prefer other peoples’ cover versions of some of their songs, versions which bring out the quality that was written in and never achieved in the original recordings—Phil Collins made “Tomorrow Never Knows” a work of art on Face Value, for example.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.