The Beatles’ “Revolver”
By Neal Alpert

 Picture what would happen if a really big, bubble gum, teenybopper band, beloved by millions, moved away from singing about boy/girl relationships and started exploring serious issues such as isolation, relationships with the government, the existence of time, or even the inner workings of the consciousness. Would it be career suicide? Would the pretension of it all sink the music and laugh the band off the world stage? The Beatles have already answered this question, of course, with the album that was released 35 years ago this summer: Revolver. In the following paragraphs, the lasting impact of that
brilliant album is considered.
 From the opening count-in to George Harrison’s “Taxman,” to the melancholy French horn breaks on Paul McCartney’s “For No One,” to the proto-psychedelic noises on John Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver is a masterpiece of
song craftsmanship, musicianship, recording technology, and artistic vision. Poet Allen Ginsburg has praised it as a serious artistic work. 500 musicians and journalists have recently named it the greatest rock album of all time. It is not hard to figure out why; in Revolver, the Beatles were at the peak of their creative powers, as well as their career. Once they had become rich and famous, these four young men still found themselves lacking in spiritual fulfillment, and their subsequent search for some meaning in their own lives led them to lead their listeners into a similar realm of introspection, brought
about by some terrific musings on life and society masked in the form of brilliant rock songs.
 The growing social awareness of the individual members was reflected in the introspective lyrics of songs like “Love You To” and “I’m Only Sleeping.” With Revolver, The Beatles took a huge risk in taking the social criticism of folk and protest music, and inserting these into the rock genre, which was previously unthinkable. That risk, which only hindsight shows us paid off in the end, was something that only the Beatles could have pulled off. Indeed, they had slowly, almost unnoticeably been pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable content for rock songs for over a year. Nevertheless, that this advancing complexity of lyrical content, as well as musical structure, came about at the height of the Beatles’ popularity, just two years after they were singing innocent songs like “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” is astonishing.
 What is even more astonishing is how well Revolver has held up over the years. Like a stone cast into a still body of water, the ripple effects from the album continue to be felt today. No songs on the album sound like anything else the Beatles, or anyone else, had ever done before, and each song still holds up as a great rock performance. This is due as much to the great musical production from Producer George Martin and engineers Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush, as it is to the Beatles themselves. Every crisp drum fill, every stinging guitar lick, might well have been recorded in one of today’s highly advanced recording studios. Still, the songs themselves take center stage.
 The album begins with what George Harrison would later describe as his first major song, which is a stinging attack on the British government. “Taxman” criticized the way the government seemed to love dipping its hands in the coffers of the people, with such biting lines as: “If you get too cold/ I’ll tax the heat/ If you take a walk/ I’ll tax your feet.” No pop song had ever gone so sarcastically at the jugular of the government before, for pop songs were not supposed to deal with such issues. However, the Beatles were becoming influenced by Dylan, learning that they could begin to deal with issues of
substance if they were wrapped in well-crafted rock vehicles. Harrison would tackle another weighty issue--the ever elusive concept of time--in “Love You To,” his first Indian-flavored composition. “Each day moves so fast/ I turn around it’s passed/ You won’t get time to hang a sing on me” he sings, over a droning sitar background. On Revolver, Harrison was clearly becoming a rock composure of merit.

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