Capitol 2442
Producer: George Martin
Track listing: I’ve Just Seen a Face / Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) / You Won’t See Me / Think for Yourself / The Word / Michelle / It’s Only Love / Girl / I’m Looking Through You / In My Life / Wait / Run for Your Life
January 8, 1966
6 weeks
On Rubber Soul, the Beatles were reaching new levels of songwriting expertise, both musically and lyrically. This was evident even in the album’s reconfigured American version, released just four months after Help!
As per Capitol’s usual overhaul, four tracks from the British version of Rubber Soul were deleted from the American album, while “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “It’s Only Love,” from the British version of Help!, opened each side of the American Rubber Soul.
The album includes several standouts, including “Michelle,” Paul McCartney’s follow-up to the Number One hit “Yesterday,” John Lennon’s heartfelt “In My Life,” and “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” which was the first Beatles recording to feature sitar.
“I’d been listening to the sitar and I was getting interested in it,” says George Harrison. “One day I went to this little shop in London called India Craft. I was buying some incense and I spotted this sitar in the back of the shop. It was a pretty cheap one, it wasn’t a brilliant one, but I bought it anyway. I brought it to Abbey Road and I tried to play it a little bit, but I didn’t have much of a clue about how to hold it and how to tune it.”
While Harrison was only vaguely familiar with the sitar, producer George Martin had some experience working with the instrument. “I was no stranger to Indian instruments,” he says. “I cut my teeth on doing spoofs with Peter Sellers before the Beatles arrived, so I knew about the sitar and the tabla.”
While recording “Norwegian Wood,” the sitar came in handy, despite the fact Harrison was still only learning how to actually play it. “John played a six-string, I played a 12-string guitar, we laid down the basic track, but it still seemed to need something else,” Harrison says. “So at that point I picked up the sitar and tried to play that lick. It sounded promising, so I just kind of figured it out. Everyone was real happy, because it gave the edge to that song. It made it a little more unique and gave it a little finishing touch.”
Other instrumental innovations on Rubber Soul included McCartney’s use of fuzz bass on Harrison’s “Think for Yourself,” which is believed to be one of the first uses of the distortion tool on record.
Lyrically, the Beatles were also making artistic leaps. Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood” delved into his personal life, revealing that he had been unfaithful to his then-wife Cynthia. “He was more or less stating what he felt about her in that,” says George Martin. McCartney also drew upon his personal life — “I’m Looking Through You” was reportedly inspired by a tiff McCartney had with his girlfriend at the time, actress Jane Asher. But it wasn’t all negative energy. “Even now, when I hear songs like ‘The Word,’ they just ooze this sort of energy and optimism,” Harrison says.
Rubber Soul hit the summit in its third week on the chart, becoming the Beatles’ seventh Number One album in less than two years. But it had one distinction that made it different than all of the group’s previous Number One albums: It was the first Beatles chart-topper not to include a Number One single. In fact, there wasn’t even a single released from the album.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 8, 1966
1. Rubber Soul, The Beatles
2. The Sound of Music, Soundtrack
3. Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass
4. December’s Children (and everybody’s), The Rolling Stones
5. Going Places, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass