Revolver, Part I

After Pet Sounds, the Beatles felt that they had quite a bit to measure up to. The Beach Boys' newest album was recieving enormous acclaim from both critics and musicians. The fact that it was selling poorly only added to its mystique, and made the Beatles realize that music, or at least rock, had evolved to such a state that commercial success was no longer a priotity. On the West Coast, free concerts and benefits were frequently being held, with artists just happy to have "a chance to express themselves". This new lifestyle or sharing and compassion conflicted with the earlier Beatles image and their mthod of churning out simple, money-making pop songs. John Lennon had already hit on the idea of making songs to please the people and not the label, but McCartney, who was the main force behind Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was still stuck. Indeed, it was Lennon who put the most into Revolver, the first record of the Beatles' that could actually be called an album. Revolver was his essence, and expression of all the thoughts roaming through his mind as he adapted to a new way of life.

Although Revolver is a Lennon album , the first and arguably most influential song was a McCartney composition. Riding on the tails of his success with adults through "Yesterday", McCartney again focused his songwriting skills to a more classical side with "Eleanor Rigby". A bittersweet tale of a women lived an isolated life, seeing all that went around her but noticed by no one (eleanor rigby/died in the church and was buried along with her name/nobody came). An entire strings ensemble is the most notable part of the song, and is what raised it above most previous McCartney compositions. Eleanor Rigby reveals the influence of Pet Sounds on the Beatles, as most parts of the song can be traced back to a song on the album (the strings - "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)"; the backing vocals - "Here Today"; the complaint about the alienation from society that comes with fame - "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times").

The next song is a Harrison composition, "Taxman", a fairly humourous attempt at social commentary. Generally, songs of that era that were critisizing society were about war, poverty, civil rights and other important unavoidable subjects. To complain about the cut that the taxman makes from their pay seems a bit hypocritical for a group who claimed to have always been proud of their working-class origins. It was a good compsition, though, especially for Harrison, who hadn't nearly as much practise at writing songs as Lennon and McCartney. The song has many important features, though, most notably a fairly distorted guitar track that, along with other songs on this album, revealed the beginnings of Acid Rock.

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