Fifty years ago today, the Beatles released Revolver:
[I]n their spare time, the Beatles make the greatest rock album ever, Revolver, released on August 5th, 1966 – an album so far ahead of its time, the world is still catching up with it 50 years later. This is where the Beatles jumped into a whole new future – where they truly became the tomorrow that never knows.
Revolver is all about the pleasure of being Beatles, from the period when they still thrived on each other's company. Given the acrimony that took over the band at the end, it's easy to overlook how much all four of them loved being Beatles at this point and still saw their prime perk as hanging with the other Beatles.
There's an endearing hubris all through the music – captured perfectly in the eight-second guitar break that cuts in at the end of "Got to Get You Into My Life," flipping it into a whole new song, or the dizzying guitar frills in "And Your Bird Can Sing." You can hear that in the band's press conferences from their summer tour, as when a reporter in L.A says, "In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. They referred to 'Day Tripper' as being about a prostitute and 'Norwegian Wood' as being about a lesbian. And I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today." Paul replies with a straight face. "We're just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."
This was one of the first CDs I ever bought—it's #36, from September 1988—and it's still one of my favorites. I think I should listen to it today, in fact.