Which song by The Beatles hinted at ‘Revolver’?
If you haven’t given Revolver by The Beatles a spin recently, rectify that immediately. Over half a century after its release, this is still a record that sounds fresher than a daisy doused in Febreze. The songwriting is obviously staggering, we know that by now, but even the very sound of the record itself is impeccable.
It ticks along like it came out last month rather than two years before Josh Brolin was born. Listening to Revolver on release must have been like discovering a broadcast from an alien race, but in context, there are more signs in The Beatles’ back catalogue that they were going this far out there than you’d think.
Even Help and Beatles For Sale have moments that allude to the sophistry they’d later display on their 1966 opus. The latter has the Fabs channelling their inner Byrds in ‘I’m A Loser’ and ‘I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party’, and the former has ‘Yesterday’. Enough said. However, the real sign of the times came with the album that, if you want to be churlish, is the real answer to “What hinted towards Revolver?”
Everywhere you look, Rubber Soul contains hints toward the creative heights they’d achieve in their late period pomp. Do you want rockers? ‘Drive My Car’ and ‘The Word’, thank you very much. Folkies? ‘Norwegian Wood’ would love a word. Ballads? Only two of the finest of the band’s entire output are ‘Girl’ and ‘In My Life’. However, I’d put one song above all the others as the true signpost for what would come next.
See, as astonishing as all those songs are, they were more or less still love songs. They’d long since moved from ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and the like, but they were still dealing with subjects of the heart. That is until you get to Revolver. Suddenly, you’ve got songs about Tibetan philosophy, lonely church workers, underwater vehicles and, most vitally of all, having a snooze. Suddenly, the band went more conceptual with their songwriting, and one song from Rubber Soul was the genesis of all this.
One that, of all things, stemmed from John Lennon having a nasty bout of writer’s block. Clearly feeling the aforementioned push to write about something other than relationships, Lennon told Playboy in 1980 that he had “spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.”
The song is a mix of two types of songs that would define the rest of the band’s career, especially their work on Revolver. The whimsical character study normally associated with McCartney and the emotionally intense self-analysis that was Lennon’s stock in trade. In ‘Nowhere Man’, Lennon perfected both. On the surface, it is a supremely catchy study of a man stuck in life, going nowhere because he doesn’t believe in anything or think much of anything.
This side of the track was joyous enough to feature in the movie Yellow Submarine, but the dark side of the track was never that far away. Surprise, surprise, the man John was describing was how he viewed himself. There’s a reason why McCartney himself called the song “Anti-John”. Once the song was written, though, the floodgates seemed to open, and everything in their life became fair play to write about. In one song, The Beatles hadn’t just expanded their musical vocabulary but that of rock music as a whole.
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.