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Rubber Soul

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Rubber Soul
Studio album by The Beatles
Released 3 December 1965
Recorded 17 June, 12 October —
11 November 1965
Abbey Road Studios, London
Genre Rock
Length 35:50
Label Parlophone
Producer George Martin
The Beatles chronology
Help!
(1965)
Rubber Soul
(1965)
Revolver
(1966)
The Beatles American chronology
Help!
(1965)
Rubber Soul
(1965)
Yesterday and Today
(1966)
Singles from Rubber Soul
  1. "Nowhere Man"
    Released: 21 February 1966
I think Rubber Soul was the first of the albums that presented a new Beatles to the world. Up to this point, we had been making albums that were rather like a collection of their singles and now we really were beginning to think about albums as a bit of art in their own right. We were thinking about the album as an entity of its own and Rubber Soul was the first one to emerge in this way.

—George Martin, 19__

Rubber Soul was the pot album, and Revolver was acid. I mean, we weren't all stoned making Rubber Soul, because in those days we couldn't work on pot.

—John Lennon, 1966

I’d never heard a collection of songs that were all that good before. It’s like a collection of folk songs, and they’re all just really, really great songs. And not just about love. They’re about a lot of different things, but they all go together, somehow. Listening to Rubber Soul didn’t clarify my ideas for Pet Sounds, exactly. But it inspired me. When we were listening to it that night I said to myself, 'Now I’m gonna make an album just as good as Rubber Soul.' Not the same album. Obviously there can only be one album that’s Rubber Soul, just like there can only be one Pet Sounds. But it inspired me to do my own thing, and so the next morning I went to the piano and wrote "God Only Knows" with Tony Asher.

—Brian Wilson, ... on the Beatles' Rubber Soul by Peter Aims Carlin, 2009

We were getting better, technically and musically. Finally, we took over the studio. In the early days, we had to take what we were given; we didn't know how to get more bass. We were still learning. We were more precise about making this album, and we took over the cover and everything.

—John Lennon, 19__

We were very pleased with the way everything's turned out. We all think it's just about our best LP. I can't wait for it to come out. The sleeve's finished too, and the picture on the front is pretty good!

—George Harrison, 1965

When we came to choose which of Bob's (Robert Freeman) photos we should use for the cover of Rubber Soul, he visited us at a friend's flat one evening. Whilst projecting the slides on to an album-sized piece of white cardboard, Bob inadvertently tilted the card backwards. The effect was to stretch the perspective and elongate the faces. We excitedly asked him if it was possible to print the photo this way. Being Bob, he said, 'Yes,' and the cover to our album Rubber Soul was decided.

—Paul McCartney, 1965

It was becoming very difficult to get the four together for a photo session. The photograph for Rubber Soul, the last album cover in which I was involved, was taken in the garden of John's house in Weybridge, the central point for three of them. The distorted effect in the photo was a reflection of the changing shape of their lives.

—Robert Freeman, The Beatles: A Private View, 2003

That was Paul's title. It was like 'Yer Blues,' I suppose, meaning English soul.

—John Lennon, 1980

The title was the cause of much speculation at the time, and its origin has never been properly revealed. This author received an unexpected insight into this very subject when listening to the archive tape of the Beatles recording 'I'm Down', 14 June 1965. In between takes, particularly one and two, Paul frequently repeated the words 'Plastic soul, man, plastic soul' and then, for the benefit of the other Beatles, and now history, he went on to explain that it was a phrase coined by black musicians to describe Mick Jagger.

—Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, p.69, 1988

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