Was 1966 pop music’s greatest year?
On 10 June, 1966, The Beatles released their 12th single, Paperback Writer. Relegated to the B-side was Rain, an altogether stranger song that signalled a sea-change in the Beatles music and in their collective consciousness. Written in the wake of John Lennon’s first encounters with LSD, its metaphorical language and richly textured musical backdrop – the basic track recorded, then slowed down, the vocals multi-tracked and set against a droning guitar and pulsing bass – was an evocation of the hallucinogenic experience.
Rain was a signal of what was to come: Revolver. Released on 5 August, 1966, it changed everything, shifting the locus of pop from the single to the album, and announcing a period of intense creative momentum that arguably has not been equalled since.
Alongside the more meanderingly brilliant White Album from 1968, Revolver is The Beatles’ album I return to most. Listening to it 50 years on, there is a freshness to it that is remarkable, but it also speaks about another time, and another pop culture, that was more idealistic, adventurous and altogether less narcissistic than today’s. As Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald notes inhis illuminating close-reading of their songs, Revolution in the Head: “Though ultimately the product of influences deeper than pop, the 60s’ soaring optimism was ideally expressed by it, and nowhere more perfectly than in the music of the Beatles.”
By: Sean O'Hagan
Source: The Guardian
