The Beatles were the greatest thing in showbiz in 1965. The Beatles are still the greatest thing in showbiz in 2025. I don’t like being one of those “the Beatles are the best rock band ever” guysbecause that’s no fun. But sometimes the correct choice is the easiest one. I didn’t voluntarily listen to any of their records the whole time I was in college. My first trip back to Penny Lane after graduation? I was dumbfounded all over again. Every listen to these guys makes you just as easy and impressionable as you were at 13. Paste just named a discombobulatednoisyfuck-all collage record made by Mexican siblings one of the best LPs of the year. And yet! The Beatles still whip me into shapeman. Those melodiesthose harmoniesthose what-were-they-thinking mop-tops: ohhow spectacular it was for me to be born into a world where millions had already found the language to describe it all.
Walmart used to have a CD section. I’m talking rows and rows of jewel cases and digipaksnot the BTS Butter overstock that never runs out. My cornfield eyes used to scour and scour through those rows while Mom filled up the buggy with groceries. Instead of an allowanceevery two weeks I got a new CD. The store closest to my house always had two rows of Beatles CDs—the thin cardboard ones that looked like tiny vinyl. Deep in the lunacy of my own Fab Four obsessionsI owned just about every title. I even had the Early Beatles discan Americanized1965 reshuffling of a then-two years old Please Please Mewhich I got especially hooked on. But there it waswaiting for me in the electronics section: Robert Freeman’s photo of the lads in John Lennon’s gardenstretched beneath the cornerly decoration of Charles Front’s orange lettering. Rubber Soulthe last copy. My copy.
After I paid the Walmart cashier a ten-spotRubber Soul crashed into me like a carom. Suddenly hackneyed pop was cool. Protest music was funny. Those nursery-rhyme chart-mongers were like sugar on a beautiful babe’s tongue. My mom’s car stereo could barely handle the singalongs; “Drive My Car” and “Wait” and “I’m Looking Through You” made us both vibrate. When I got homeI fished my copy of 1 out of my CD binder and threw it in the closet. That hit-making ephemera was old hatJack. Rubber Soul wasn’t just REAL rock music but an avatar for relevancy. And for manyit was the album that saved rock and rollthough Creem may have put a couple of bucks on quaaludes and Trans-Ams 50 years ago. Well: Pontiac shuttered in 2010 and quaaludes were discontinued in the mid-1980s. And here Rubber Soul isstill knocking on every one of my doors.
And the Beatlemaniacs bought into it 60 years ago toobefore John Lennon went and put his band above Jesus Christ: Rubber Soul spent 42 weeks on the Record Retailer LPs chartwent to #1 on Melody Maker’s national charttopped the Billboard Top LPs chart for six weeksandin ten days’ timesold 1.2 million copies in the United States alone. And on release dayDecember 3rd1965the Beatles also shared the double A-side single “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper,” the former of which topped the Hot 100 for two weeks after selling 500,000 copies in advance. New Music Express modestly called Rubber Soul a “fine piece of recording artistry and adventure in group sound.” One Record Mirror critic suggested that Manfred Mann’s recently-released Mann Made was a better album. The Brits didn’t quite have the vocabulary for Rubber Soul.
ButI mean… Jesusdoes anybody? This wasn’t just rock and roll. This was m-u-s-i-c. Those pretty boys from Help! were real artists nowsinging about love but not that boyishcutesyforgettable love. This is love as horrorlove as lifelove as tough and complicated. Love that puts an ulcer in your stomach and a crack in your molar. A self-loathing John Lennon sings about cheating on his wife Cynthia and dreams of other women with clenched teeth. A vain Paul McCartney sings about the collapse of his relationship with Jane Asher and goes full cabaret. An LSD-reliantdispassionate George Harrison protests conformity and chases his infatuation with Pattie Boyd. Ringo Starr does a country song. It’s thinkin’ musicnot dancin’ music: Stratocasters cut through the paranoia and boredom on “Nowhere Man”; a commandingOtis Redding-hued rhythm ignites the sexual flavor of “Drive My Car”; Strawberry Fields and Menlove Avenue are gentleunspoken figures in “In My Life.”
At the beginning of Rubber Soulthe Beatles were smoking a lot of dope and emulating Dylan (“Girl” is “Just Like a Woman” but better) and the Byrds (“The Bells of Rhymery” is all over “If I Needed Someone”)singing nascently about meaningful thingsluxuriating in the psychedelic glitz of their own eclecticism and baroque curiositiesand making fun of white British acts trying to do American soul in Wellington boots. By the record’s endto quote the great folkster Roy Harper“they’d come onto my turfgot there before meand they were kings of itovernight. We’d all been outflanked.” And the Fab Four had certainly lost their mindsemploying a bric-a-brac of Mixolydian melodiesHolland-Dozier-Holland tomesdog-barking bass licksbackwards drum fillssuspended harmonium chordslayered singing (“The Word” alone has seven vocal parts)dronesFrench phrases12-bar “chick”-y12-bar blues rhythms ripped straight from the M.G.’sacoustic guitars mimicking Greek bouzoukistone-pedal leadsand Indian strings on a mainstream album. Elvis Costello said he “didn’t understand a word” of Rubber Soul butsix weeks latercouldn’t live without it. “That’s when you trust the people who make music to take you somewhere you haven’t been before.” Gone were those briefhead-bobbing times.
Brian Wilson thought every song on Rubber Soul “was a gas” and made Pet Sounds to top it. But here’s the thing: Rubber Soul has got some serious clunkers on it. The record is a masterpiecedon’t get me wrongbut “Think for Yourself,” “The Word,” “Michelle,” and “Run for Your Life” make up some of the Beatles’ least-inspiring material. They’re good songs—well madeundoubtedly—but they do practically nothing for me now that I’ve heard them a billion times (and skipped them just as often). Calling all those songs “a gas” is a wonky appraisal. But when you get to the superb stufflike “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Girl,” “In My Life,” and “Wait,” you realize: of course the Beach Boys responded to this by nuking their entire surfer identity and making a record with bicycle hornsbanjossleigh bellswater jugsCoke cansbobby pinsbongosand live animals. I meanwhat else are you supposed to do when a pop album employs a goddamn sitar?
The Beatles made better records than Rubber Soul. In factthey made fourprobably fiveperhaps six better records—sevenif you’re me and also adore Help!. Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band rarely rattle around in my noggin nowbecause I am firmly in the “All I’ve Got to Do” and “No Reply” camps these daysbut I do love those LPs. They were revolutionaryearth-shattering releases made quickly at EMI in London. If you’re ever thinking to yourself“I’m good at what I do,” just remember that four men (five if you count George Martinwhich you should) made the greatest rock and roll album ever in two months.
Despite Rubber Soul being my seventh favorite Beatles albumI think it’s the most important rock and roll album ever finished—an altar I’m still worshipping atthough less often now. The Velvet UndergroundStevie Wonderand the Stones are theretoo. Every chordmelodybreathand idea thought up and spit out before December 3rd1965was nothing but a blob of monochromatic hullabaloo. Dylan got close when “Like a Rolling Stone” hit AM stations on the morning of July 20thbut Rubber Soul was this grand and inviting illustration—a portal to the palatable and forward-thinking brilliance of eld. When my age was in the single digits and I hadn’t yet taken a general history courseI thought the world was black-and-white for a while and then the color just turned on. When I listen to Rubber SoulI know how correct I was.
And before the Beatles splinteredwent solomade vapid muzakpartly diedgot resurrected by artificial intelligenceand won a Grammy semi-posthumouslyJohnGeorgePauland Ringo arrived at EMI Studios on October 18th1965and made every bit of “In My Life” but the Bach-inspired piano solo that sparkles in the bridgewhich George Martin recorded on a tape running at half-speed four days later. I will not cop to this being the “greatest” Beatles song of all time. I have already put it in writing that that ribbon goes to “She’s Leaving Home.” But,”In My Life” may well be the most important pop song we have. Lennonwriting about his dead mum Julia and dead pal Stu Sutcliffedistills life’s most arbitrary and fleeting emotions about death and nostalgia into a miraculous middle-eight artifact. I’m looking at my Rubber Soul vinyl right now and it’s beat to shit—by me and by the older gentleman I bought it from sevenmaybe eight years ago. He heard “in my lifeI love you more” and now I get to hear ittoo. I tried to resist “In My Life” for so longwhen I considered myself to be “above” its sentimentalitybut the top comment on one of the thousands of Rubber Soul videos on YouTube is: “‘In My Life’ is my favorite song. I can’t listen to it without crying. I’m old.” There’s still something in this music worth reaching for. What a necessaryuncomplicated magic that is.
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editorreporting from their home in Los Angeles.
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