The Beatles are dropping the extraordinary 50th anniversary box set of “Rubber Soul” at midnight Thursday.
Giles Martin has remixed the original album, and the team also salvaged a bunch of demos and rehearsals. That disc, in particular, of the four CDs, is of the most interest.
Plus, there’s an unreleased John Lennon recording of his song, “Little Girl,” from that early era.
The collection comes in several configurations in CD, LP, and so on. They all contain lavish books and all kinds of artifacts.
Paul McCartney explains how the band chose the title “Rubber Soul”:
“As we always did, the four of us would sit around
and discuss what we should call the new album.
We would go through many possibilities before we landed on something that we all felt summed up our mood at the time. Because we had always
been interested in double meanings – like the name
of our group, The Beatles – we hit upon Rubber
Soul. We liked that it mentioned the modern music
trend and at the same time had a tongue-in-cheek
reference to the bottom of a shoe.”
It’s kind of mindblowing that this was the turn The Beatles took in 1965 after three years of unprecedented success as a pop band. McCartney refers to it as “our new music.” And this was after all those hits, from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Help!” and “A Hard Days Night.”
What I found impressive, as usual, is the remix is absolutely sterling. Fanatics will nitpick but the clarity and richness of the sound gives “Rubber Soul” a new life. There will be some who prefer the 2009 version but I appreciated what Giles Martin did here. Part of this set is a mono recording of “Rubber Soul,” which I dare say most aficionados will prefer.
Each Beatles box set has a surprise disc that I put into heavy rotation, like the Esher recordings from The White Album or the Glyn Johns remix of “Let it Be.” The new mono “Rubber Soul” separate from the 2009 one in the mono box) goes right into heavy rotation.
Come back tomorrow night at midnight for the premiere of “Little Girl.”
