On 12 October, 1965, the four members of The Beatles arrived at EMI Recording Studios in Abbey Road, London to begin work on their sixth album, which would become Rubber Soul. This was the first time that they had been able to record an album free of concert, radio or film commitments and they seized the opportunity. Over the next four weeks, Studio Two, they pushed sonic boundaries and unveiled a set of songs that was unlike anything they had written or recorded before.
The album that emerged would signal a gigantic shift from their previous release Help! and would have a huge impact on their peers. Almost six decades on from its release, Rubber Soul remains one of the most influential albums of all time.
For The Beatles, the sounds and social upheavals of America had a galvanising impact. In August 1965 they had undertaken a 16-date tour of the US, where they were exposed to the rousing soul of Motown and Stax as well as the raw, politicised folk-rock of Bob Dylan and The Byrds. By the time they returned to Abbey Road their musical horizons had been significantly broadened.
On this album the band blended folk, rock and soul, and explored mature themes, with socially conscious lyrics.
“Things were changing,” said Paul McCartney in The Beatles Anthology documentary series in 1995. “The direction was moving away from the poppy stuff like Thank You Girl, From Me To You and She Love You… we’d come to a point where we thought, ‘We’ve done that. Now we can branch out into songs that are more surreal, a little more entertaining’. And other people were starting to arrive on the scene who were influential. Dylan was influencing us quite heavily at that point.”
Rubber Soul was also their first album that was influenced by marijuana. “Grass was really influential in a lot of our changes, especially with the writers,” reflected Ringo in the 1995 Anthology documentary. “We were expanding in all areas of our lives, opening up to a lot of different attitudes.”
The band already had one track ready, Wait, a leftover from the Help! Sessions. But the song that really kickstarted the album was Drive My Car, a direct homage to the Stax sound the band loved. The song’s bass-heavy R&B Stax feel had much to do with George Harrison, who was infatuated with Otis Redding’s 1965 hit Respect.
The song was conceived by McCartney who arrived at Lennon’s Weybridge home for a writing session, with the tune in his head. “The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which are always fatal [to songwriting],” recalled McCartney in a 1994 interview, quoted in Far Out magazine.
“I came in and I said, ‘These aren’t good lyrics but it’s a good tune’. Well, we tried, and John couldn’t think of anything, and we tried, and eventually it was, ‘Oh let’s leave it, let’s get off this one’. So we had a break… then we came back to it, and somehow it became ‘drive-my-car’ instead of ‘gol-den-rings,’ and then it was wonderful, because this nice tongue-in-cheek idea came.”
The lyrics, rich in sexual innuendo, focus on an aspiring actress who hires a ‘chauffeur’. Drive My Car was recorded on 13 October 1965 in a session that ran well after midnight. This was the album on which McCartney first used a Rickenbacker 4001S bass, with a fuller, punchier tone that would become a defining feature of the sound on Rubber Soul. McCartney opted for a Vox AC100 amp and a Fender Bassman. Lennon and Harrison, meanwhile, played through Vox AC30 and AC100 amps.
This was also the album on which Stratocasters were used for the first time. “I decided…
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