"Baby You Can Take My Poll" - The "Rubber Soul" Poll

Have to say a tough choice. So many good ones to choose from here: "Michelle", "Girl", "Nowhere Man", "If I Needed Someone", "You Won't See Me".

But it has to be "In My Life" in the end.

POLL mccartney, amirite?

Well, I actually voted for a Lennon song here :)

Love the Lennon songs actually. Stuck between "Nowhere Man", "Wait" and "Run for Your Life".

Baby You Can Take My Poll

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/GeirPrem.jpg http://www.scienceinpublic.com/sciencenow/2004/2004_images/Graham%20images/Microwaved%20Wood.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g180/bencomar/busted01.jpg

Is this record really any good? Haven't heard it in years, but right now I'd say it's got a great pair of opening tracks but only a couple of others that really stand up. I'm thinking it's like the discarded demos for Revolver. Norwegian Wood.

PS you should be ashamed of yourself for that title, Geir

i like the american version of this album better. it drops a few songs, including "drive my car" which to me sounds better on (the american verion of) help!. and adds "i've just seen a face," which feels very rubber soul-y to me.

anyway. "norwegian wood." (here's where i revive my theory that he burns down her house at the end, which makes the song even better.)

runners-up would be "girl," "think for yourself," "in my life," "i'm looking through you" ... most of the album, really. (have never cared for "michelle.")

Is there *another* theory for the end of Norwegian Wood?

Rubber Poll

anyway. "norwegian wood." (here's where i revive my theory that he burns down her house at the end, which makes the song even better.)

I always thought "Norwegian Wood" was about Sasha Gabor? ;)

xpost: i don't know, every time i say that to a beatles fan -- "he burns down her house" -- they look at me like i'm crazy.

drive my car was on the US 'yesterday and today' TM. but I agree, i always thought the US tracklisting of this album was a bit better, it seems more acoustic and smokey or something. (the other theory on NW's ending was that it meant 'lighting a joint' but I think 'burning down the house' is the generally accepted reading).

anyway, 'in my life'

"If I Needed Someone", wherein George Harrison invents the Byrds.

I have actually thought about that burning down the house theory too.

"So I lit a fire. Isn't it good. Norwegian wood".

If not her house, at least the furniture.

"If I Needed Someone" actually got a bit better with The Hollies. Those vocal harmonies fit it perfectly.

xxxpost: you're right, i've got it mixed up with "ticket to ride."

on "norwegian wood," maybe it's just that i know a lot of beatles fans who have never particularly paid attention to the lyrics.

best Beatles album btw

goodness gracious, the bridge on "If I Needed Someone" is terrific.

actually this is one of my least favorite Beatles records, though. It's ahead of Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be, but otherwise it's the worse, because it has a lot of songs that are annoying (e.g. "Drive My Car", "Think For Yourself", "Girl", "Run for Your Life")

Always has been, always will be: Michelle

i love "girl." it's so wounded. "she's the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there..." i think it's maybe in the playboy interview where john said it was one of his few beatles songs that sounded honest to him.

yeah, but I can't abide the sighing.

Think For Yourself is overlooked I reckon - gotta love it for "rec-ti-fy all the things that you should". Not the best though, that will take pondering.

The burning-down-the-house theory is the standard reading; I'm pretty sure Lennon spoke on record to that effect, as well.

As far as Rubber Soul goes: great record. I do prefer the American version, maybe because it's the one I'm most familiar with, but I agree with tipsy and akm: it feels much more of-a-piece without "Drive My Car"; "Nowhere Man" is no big loss either.

"If I Needed Someone" is sorely missed, though. Funny how the other rock-ish songs don't seem like such sore thumbs - maybe it's the fuzz bass that makes them feel rough enough to go with all the acoustic numbers. Dunno.

So long as anything besides "Girl" wins this I'll be happy. My pick is one Paul's invisibility songs - "You Won't See Me" or "I'm Looking Through You." Can't decide just now.

"Girl" is just so grossly wheezy.

i've read a lot (well a few) critical reviews of "girl" which make it sound like the background vocals are the most subversive thing ever (the "tut tut tut" and sighing, I assume) which I don't get at all (I think they're reading it as 'tit tit tit' but that just seams stupid and juvenile to me).

oh i guess this is on wiki: "Backing the bridges is a refrain sung by Lennon while McCartney and George Harrison repeatedly sing a syllable for vocal percussion ("tit-tit-tit-tit") as a joke.[4][2] The deep breaths in the chorus were rumoured to have symbolised taking a long inhalation (toke) off of a marijuana joint."

this just seems like overreaching to me.

anyway fwiw I always read that sighing bit as a sharp intake of breath that precedes a violent outburst

No love for "The Word" yet? Easily my pick.

here's where i revive my theory that he burns down her house at the end

I've always been content to think that he simply lights a fire waiting for her to get back from work so he could try again.

Anyway, if you haven't already, do check out the mad "Mission: Impossible Theme/Norwegian Wood" by Alan Copeland, sort of an early mashup. You can hear it on Rhino's Golden Throats 4: Celebrities Butcher the Beatles.

Also "You Won't See Me " sounds very good very fast. See Steve McLaughlin's
Run for Your Life: The Complete Beatles in One Hour here:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/10/the-complete-be.html

I have of course never known the American version, but I can understand where you are coming from. Those tracks (that were of course already released on the UK version of "Help!" and thus wouldn't be released on album once mpore) would have helped strengthen the "folk" feel of "Rubber Soul".

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Girl" is fantastic.

The Beatles' warmest, lovingest album. Picked "In My Life," which doesn't get enough love, in which Ringo mimics a drum machine, George Martin plays like Bach on speed, and John sounds truly ghostly.

"In My Life," which doesn't get enough love

??????

George Martin plays like Bach on speed

heard any, um, bach?

George Martin plays like George Martin sped up.

One of their weakest albums.

Isn't McCartney now claiming that the music for 'In My Life' was his? (and he could well be right - John's memory of song-writing seemed a bit erratic in the later interviews).

i think i remember from 'revolution in the head' that the music was a true john-paul collab.

"In My Life," which doesn't get enough love

??????

Eh. It's taken for granted.

http://www.muzieklijstjes.nl/Mojosong.htm

this is harder than i thought! it's not my favourite beatles album but there's still so much strong material - michelle, the word, in my life. i think i'm going to vote for nowhere man though - what a song. the bit where lennon sings "the wo-o-o-rld is at your command" is very imaginous.

There is some filler, but it's all good. The stand-out tracks for me are

"Drive My Car" -- Roll over, Chuck Berry
"Norwegian Wood" -- Mysterious and spooky, especially if you're six or seven years old
"Michelle" -- Tres overplayed
"Girl" -- Michelle's sexier sister
"In My Life" -- FTW

This is my favorite Beatles album and the one which converted me about six months ago to the cause, which i'm still kind of easing into (stones boy sorry). I pretty much love every song on this motherfucking thing, so i hope no one will begrudge a second or third 'drive my car' vote.

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yeah

It's not so much that this is the 'unfinished demos' for Revolver, more that Revolver was the first album where they stared piling on stuff.

This'd be the last 'performance friendly' album, until "Let it be"

Oh, and I'm sure the "Ringo Erratic Drummer" meme comes from this album.

Re. "Norwegian Wood": she says "it's time for bed" and makes him "sleep in the bath" so setting the gaff ablaze is presumably his disgruntled revenge.

It works better that way too because it brings that necessary air of disquiet and menace to the song.

But my vote goes to "The Word," their best attempt at the Mod thing.

This is finally making sense re: norwegian wood.

And I love The Word.

I dunno, I get the idea that "Norwegian Wood" is a double entendre for pine furniture and particularly fine grass. "Isn't it good" indeed.

They loved that marijuana on this marijuana album!

In all honesty, I can hear it reverberating through the whole thing (not the lyrics, but how it sounds maaaannnn), (and right now I'm just really drunk sorry), which is why i wholeheartedly disagree w/ Alfred, Lord Sotosyn's pronouncement above. It's gorgeous, but it's a little cold, especially wrt to absent women, and I think that's what I'm falling in love with, about it.

Paul definitely give himself most of the credit - music and lyrics - for In My Life in the Barry Miles book.

Still the best song on this brilliant album, though.

I find it unlikely that Paul is mainly responsible for a song where John sang lead vocals as late as in late 1965. But it may well be a collaboration (and I nobody claims that Paul did the lyrics anyway then?)

It surprised me too, I always assumed that it was totally John. But that's the impression that Paul gives.

Quite a few of these songs outstay their welcome (You Won't See Me, Nowhere Man, I'm Looking Through You), while some are just dreary in the first place (Run For Your Life, What Goes On). I used to think this was a fantastic record. Now sometimes I wonder what people see in it.
Then I play "In My Life", and it all makes sense.

I prefer the version with the false start on "I'm Looking Through You."

John and Paul were always claiming credit for each others' shit in later years. John on lyrics and Paul on music makes perfect sense for In My Life.

"If I Needed Someone", wherein George Harrison invents the Byrds.

Um...via a time machine? "If I Needed Someone" was in fact George's "answer" to the Byrds' "The Bells of Rhymney," which was released 6 months before Rubber Soul.

I'm voting for "The Word," but "Think For Yourself" really needs some love here, especially for the fuzz-bass.

"Helios Daddy" and "Bakersfield Pot Field #7" along with the also discarded "I Smelled Bob Dylan's Feet and Did Not Like It" would've made a good record. "Cranshaw in Extremis" where Lennon sings every line in a different language also might have been good to hear but these sides are socked away at EMI. The record under discussion sounds quaint these days. Again, the outtake "Scrotus Reddening" their tribute to Stax would've been welcomed in late 1965 but McCartney nixed the title. They'd do better with Yellow Submarine later but this was just a warmup to great tracks like "Blue Jay Way" and "Old Brown Shoe" and "Don Rich," all country-rock at its best and all worthy of wider release.

what a gorgeous album. between norwegian wood and in my life for me.

What Miles Davis did with "Don Rich" with Tony Williams zonked out on morning glory seeds and Davis himself taking over the skin duties in '66 would have alone pushed the Beatles into the zone already inhabited by the Byrds but CBS wouldn't release it until Davis removed the cursing and he wouldn't do it. Harrison wanted to jam with Sun Ra in Chicago but Macca nixed that, too; in general the avant-garde elements that could've come to the fore with this one were squelched in favor of "Michelle" and all that other crap. Too bad. Had they gone that path they'd be remembered as the leaders they should've (could've) been and not as an ancillary act to Boyce and Hart, whose "Is She Really Going out with Him" Joe Jackson would later re-write in the style of Elvis Costello, whose biggest influence WAS "Scrotus Reddening" on Clap Your Hands (Flippers) (Paws)!!!! where he paid trib to Charles Stepney, whose Dells album of Bacharach and David songs were orig. going to be all Lennon/McCartney/Harrison tunes rejected during I'm for Sale and Rubber Soul sessions. Again, nixed by McCartney. So that's why us discerning pop fans still listen to Nino Tempo and April Stevens but not the Beatles. They'd do better with the long medley of "nothing" (as Lennon called it, "I take nothin' and put 'em in little bits and then record 'em and fook you if you can't hear the beauty init") or "random" as Starr dubbed it {"you're a fookin' random Ralph Cramden" he once jibed Lennon) on Crenshaw Blvd in '69 but by then Lee Eastman had killed the group with his maccanations.

Is that from Paperback Writer?

I'll vote for the sound of breath being sucked in during "Girl"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ILX in agreeing with the Canon shocka :)

I agree w/ finefinemusic

good top 2 :)

Pleasing result for Think For Yourself.

and right now I'm just really drunk sorry), which is why i wholeheartedly disagree w/ Alfred, Lord Sotosyn's pronouncement above.

Haha -- which one?

I don't really like In My Life, other than Nowhere Man it's the most draggy song on the LP and a little bit tiresome to sit through.

Wait is really under-appreciated. The Word, I love. I can't remember if I voted in this poll, but if I did it would've gone to Norwegian Wood.
Best album cover of theirs too. I remember wanting a jacket like Lennon's. In fact I did buy one similar, in the early '90s.