“Just stunning”: The Beatles album that raised the bar for Paul Stanley
The Beatles were utterly inescapable when they initially landed in America. The success of their single ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ spoke for itself, as the band kicked off the British Invasion and became the only musical group worth talking about. The impact was almost immediate, unlike anything that had been seen before.
“It transformed America,” said E Street Guitarist Steve Van Zandt when discussing the moment Beatlemania took full force, “On February 8th, there were no bands in America; on February 9th we had Ed Sullivan and on February 10th, everybody had a band in their garage. It was literally overnight.”
Queue the British invasion. Shortly behind The Beatles, you had Dave Clark Five, Rolling Stones, and more, all British bands making their way to America, as the Fab Four had proven that it was a country where you could be successful. As The Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham put it, “There is The Beatles and then there is everything else.”
While The Beatles’ music never really lost relevancy and continues to inspire artists to this day, the British Invasion did come to an end with the rise in popularity of folk music. “The floodgates opened until the summer of ’65,” commented Van Zandt, “When the Americans took the charts back with the folk-rock of The Byrds and Bob Dylan.”
It’s true that when Bob Dylan started releasing music, people’s eyes were opened to something a bit different, something that had good melody and was well-executed but also had heart, soul, and truth buried within. Bruce Springsteen ended up calling Bob Dylan “father of my country” because of how much his raw appeal took the States by storm, and it wasn’t just the people of the US who found themselves influenced by him.
The Beatles also saw the merit in Bob Dylan, some likely more than others. Given John Lennon went on to say that a lot of his favourite Beatles songs are the band’s most honest, it’s likely he enjoyed Dylan’s work a great deal. You can hear his influence in their music if you listen to it, as when the band made Rubber Soul, and Dylan was well and truly topping the charts, that album’s stripped-back and authentic nature is a clear reflection of the folk singer.
Paul Stanley of Kiss commented on this record, saying how much that stripped-back feel heightened the sense of the band. “Not only did Rubber Soul show the depth and breadth of their writing – as if that wasn’t obvious enough – they raised the bar,” he said, “It was influenced by the folk music movement. This time, there was no superfluous adornment to anything. A song like ‘In My Life’ was just stunning, and the same applies to ‘Norwegian Wood’.”
Stanley continued, “The music being made by Dylan, Donovan and Judy Collins had really rubbed off on them, and yet they retained who they were. Their own identity that made them so great was kept. I found that album really, really impressive.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.