The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Beatles · John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr · produced by George Martin · Parlophone · fourteen tracks, about 35 minutes
Mode
Beat music turned toward folk rock, soul and the inward song; a soft, acoustic, close sound
Mythos
Archetypes evoked figure by figure: the everyman emptied out, the woman who wounds, the seducer outwitted, the remembrance of the dead, the revivalist’s call
Phase
Fourteen tracks, seven to a side; the new manner announced at the second, side one closing on Michelle, side two turning on Girl and In My Life, and the record closing on its least considered song
Presentation
Album; fourteen original songs, about thirty-five minutes, in mono and stereo; the cover photograph stretched out of true
Register
Love looked at from a step away, with irony or regret; soul, chanson, a sitar waltz, folk rock, country, a gospel call and a baroque keyboard in one warm palette
Scale
One young man’s life of love and its losses, with a wider world glimpsed in two or three songs
Governing Proposition
A beat group at the height of its fame makes an album of fourteen original songs, conceived and heard as one record, and turns the love song inward: desire humiliated, a lover changed, a self that is no one, memory holding the dead beside the living. The sound goes soft and acoustic, a sitar enters a Western pop song, and the form that carries the knowledge lives inside the songs, while the record closes on the one song it did not need.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on Drive My Car, a joke and a groove: a soul-inflected comic song about a girl who wants to be famous, with Paul McCartney’s bass forward and melodic. Then, at once, the second track announces the record’s new manner. A sitar, played by George Harrison, runs over a waltz, and the words tell of an affair that does not happen, with a coolness that leaves the singer’s revenge implied in the subtitle, “this bird has flown”. The music holds the distance the words keep: the sitar and the triple time set the scene in a cool, slightly foreign room. The singer answers with fire, and what happens and what the fire means have sustained interpretation since 1965.
The group made the record at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, in October and November 1965, with George Martin producing and Norman Smith engineering, and Parlophone issued it on 3 December, made fast for Christmas. The inheritance was the group’s own beat records, Help! the latest of them; Bob Dylan’s turn to the personal and oblique lyric, and the folk rock of the Byrds; and American soul, from Stax and Motown, which the title half mocks. What the group made of it was an album of fourteen original songs, conceived and heard as one record rather than as singles with fill. The lyric turned from courtship toward introspection, ambivalence and memory; the sound went acoustic and soft; a sitar entered a Western pop song, fuzz came onto the bass, and a baroque keyboard into a ballad.
The turn had a stake. A group at the height of its fame could have kept to the formula that had made it, and the record bet that its audience would follow it inward. The single issued the same day, Day Tripper with We Can Work It Out, was not on the album, and every song on it is the group’s own, which had not been true of the two albums before it. The turn was also gradual. Its steps were prepared on Help!, its lyric turn was learned from Dylan, whose Highway 61 Revisited of the same year stands at 8.9, and the larger break came on the next record. Robert Freeman’s cover photograph, the four faces stretched out of true, is of a piece with the music: a group asking to be heard as a record.
Movement II
Nowhere Man begins with three voices and nothing around them: an unaccompanied opening in three-part harmony that lifts at once, before the band enters. The song turns the camera on the singer. Its figure is a man of no place and no view, sitting in a land of nowhere, and the words close the distance on him: he is “a real nowhere man”. Here the record makes an archetype, the everyman emptied out, while keeping him an ordinary young man, and the form makes the point before the words do, a voice with nowhere around it. It is the strongest case on the record of the particular becoming archetype and staying particular.
What the record brings into the open is that the love song can carry adult ambivalence. Girl gives a woman who wounds, sung with an intake of breath in its sighing refrain: a figure of long descent, the belle dame of the ballad set in a London bedsit, whom the singer cannot leave. I’m Looking Through You sees a lover changed under one’s eyes. Think for Yourself, one of Harrison’s two songs here, makes a call to independence. Desire humiliated, love changed, a self that is no one, and in In My Life memory holding the dead beside the living: these can be stated, they are true, and they hold sixty years on. They are meanings and not moods, and the group’s songs had turned to them from courtship.
Each disclosure is a glimpse, held for the length of a song, and the record does not join them into a statement larger than its songs. The archetypes are evoked figure by figure and not built: the man of nowhere, the woman who wounds, the seducer outwitted, and in The Word a new creed of love sounded in the old form of the revivalist’s call. Fourteen songs with no frame do not let these figures carry the record’s structure. And one disclosure goes unexamined. Run for Your Life, the closer, brings out a possessive menace, “rather see you dead”, which the record neither examines nor places. A record that elsewhere looks at love from a step away ends by voicing the old threat with no distance at all.
Movement III
In My Life is the record’s summit and its plainest disclosure. A plain melody moves on a slow ground: a young man’s song about the places and people of a life already partly lost, the dead held beside the living, without sentiment. The song opens at its bridge, and then George Martin’s sped-up keyboard solo turns briefly baroque and rises. Memory is set in an older music, the past heard through its own sound, and the form carries what the words say: change the setting and the song would know less. It touches the oldest theme of all, the remembrance of the dead and the passing of friends and places, in a pop song.
Elevation on the record is of this kind throughout: beauty, warm and close, rarely grandeur, never terror. Girl has a melancholy height; Michelle’s descending line and close harmonies close the first side in beauty; Nowhere Man lifts at once; Norwegian Wood’s sitar and waltz come near enchantment; If I Needed Someone rings on Harrison’s twelve-string figure. Six or seven of the fourteen songs rise, none for long. Drive My Car and The Word have drive and joy but not height, You Won’t See Me plods, and What Goes On, Wait and Run for Your Life stay on the ground. The highest of them is lovely more than overwhelming, and height and frequency are both real at the scale of the two-and-a-half-minute song.
The making is the song craft, and it bears the record’s weight. The melodies of Michelle, Girl and In My Life; three voices in harmony on Nowhere Man and If I Needed Someone; McCartney’s bass moved forward to carry melody on Drive My Car and The Word; Harrison’s sitar used as a colour exactly where Norwegian Wood needs it: these are made with exactness, and Martin’s solo is a small studio invention placed at the centre of a song. The record was made on four tracks in a few weeks, and nothing is wasted. The finish is uneven. Run for Your Life is careless, What Goes On routine, You Won’t See Me draggy, some backing parts rough, and the production is basic beside what the same studio would do within a year.
Movement IV
The field the record entered is the album of the 1960s, the most contested decade the popular album has had. Rubber Soul helped turn the pop LP from a set of singles and covers into a work heard as one: original songs with a common sound and an inward lyric. It carried the sitar into the pop mainstream. Little of this was invented here. Dylan had the lyric turn, and others reached the album idea in the same months. The force lay in doing it at the centre of the field, from the group at the height of its fame.
The reach followed. The group’s next records built on it. Norwegian Wood opened a vogue for Indian instruments in Western pop. The British and American groups of 1966 turned to the album as the unit. Part of that reach was drawn out by the records that followed, and the larger reorganisation came on them: Revolver, the next, stands at 8.9, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at 8.8. Rubber Soul is the step before the larger break, and it moved its field greatly without being that break.
Sixty years of return are the evidence for its depth. Its songs are among the most covered in popular music; their harmony is studied, from Michelle’s descending chromatic line to the modal turns of Norwegian Wood and If I Needed Someone; and studies of the group’s recordings take the album as a turning point and reopen it. The yield is chiefly formal: the words of most songs give what they state at first hearing, and part of the return is ritual, a known record replayed. The record survives whole, in mono and stereo, in print throughout. One charge falls on its presence. For over twenty years American listeners knew Capitol’s different album of December 1965 under this name, which dropped four of these songs and added two from the Help! sessions, and the UK sequence became the standard edition only on compact disc.
Movement V
The sequence is a good one. Drive My Car opens on a joke, Norwegian Wood follows with the new manner, side one closes on Michelle, and side two turns on Girl and In My Life, the summit placed eleventh of fourteen. But it is the order of a collection, and the record would know nearly the same in several other orders. Wait and If I Needed Someone follow In My Life, and then Run for Your Life closes the record: its weakest song and its least considered, an old possessive threat set at the end of a record that elsewhere looks at love from a step away. The ending costs the whole: the last word is the one the record has not thought about.
The songs the record could lose are few. Inside each track there is no slack, none sprawls, and four of them, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Girl and In My Life, are what the record is. Wait, sturdy and generic, and You Won’t See Me, long for what it says, give variety the quieter songs need. What Goes On, an older country song handed to Ringo Starr, could go with no loss but variety, and Run for Your Life with none at all. Those two are also where the record’s law strains. One law governs the rest: love looked at from a step away, in a soft, close, warm sound. Drive My Car and In My Life, the comic soul song and the meditation on the dead, are the two most distant songs on the record, and they obey it, one laughing and one grieving.
What the record holds is one young man’s life of love and its losses: consciousness in Nowhere Man’s self-scrutiny and In My Life’s memory; the couple in affair, quarrel, estrangement, devotion and possession; memory and mortality together; ambition and money, comically, in Drive My Car; the sacred faintly in The Word; society in the young man of no place and the call of Think for Yourself. Labour, the family, the state, history and the natural order are absent, and what is present is joined by tone rather than by a held structure. Short songs describe the form. Within it the record holds the couple, the self and memory well, and it changed what a pop album could be asked to carry: fourteen songs made fast for Christmas, whose best songs carry their knowledge in their form.
Act III · The Twelve
Fourteen songs in about thirty-five minutes, and none sprawls: inside each track there is no slack, and each ends as soon as it has said its piece. Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Girl and In My Life are what the record is; remove them and it is a lesser album. The songs a subtractive test would question next, Wait, sturdy and generic, and You Won’t See Me, long for what it says, give a variety the quieter songs need. What holds the figure is two songs the record could lose: What Goes On, an older country song handed to Ringo Starr, which could go with no loss but variety, and Run for Your Life, the closer and the least considered song here. The cap is met.
Score: 7.9 / 10
What the record brings into the open is that the love song can carry adult ambivalence: desire humiliated, love changed under one’s eyes, a self that is no one, memory holding the dead beside the living. Norwegian Wood tells of an affair that does not happen, its revenge left implied in “this bird has flown”. I’m Looking Through You sees a lover changed; Girl gives a woman who wounds; Nowhere Man turns the camera on the singer, “a real nowhere man”. In My Life is the plainest disclosure, places and people already partly lost, held without sentiment. These are true and hold. What holds the figure: each is a glimpse the length of a song, and Run for Your Life voices a possessive menace, “rather see you dead”, that the record neither examines nor places.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Elevation is frequent and of one kind: beauty, warm and close, rarely grandeur, never terror. In My Life is the summit, a plain melody on a slow ground that opens at the bridge and then, in George Martin’s sped-up keyboard solo, turns briefly baroque and rises. Girl has a melancholy height in its sighing refrain; Michelle’s descending line and close harmonies are beautiful; Nowhere Man’s unaccompanied opening lifts at once; Norwegian Wood comes near enchantment; If I Needed Someone rings. Drive My Car and The Word have drive but not height, and What Goes On, Wait and Run for Your Life stay on the ground. Six or seven of fourteen songs rise, none for long, and the highest is lovely more than overwhelming.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Myth is evoked figure by figure, and in the best songs the particular becomes archetype while staying particular. Nowhere Man is the strongest case: a man of no place and no view, the everyman emptied out, kept an ordinary young man. Girl is a figure of long descent, the woman who wounds and whom the singer cannot leave, the belle dame of the ballad in a London bedsit. Norwegian Wood is the seducer outwitted, who answers with fire; In My Life touches the oldest theme, the remembrance of the dead; The Word sounds a new creed in the revivalist’s call. What holds the figure is construction: fourteen songs with no frame, and the archetypes do not carry the record’s structure.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The inheritance is the group’s own beat records, Help! the latest; Bob Dylan’s personal and oblique lyric and the folk rock of the Byrds; and American soul, which the title half mocks. The turn is real: an album of original songs conceived and heard as one record, the lyric turned from courtship toward introspection and memory, the sound gone acoustic and soft, a sitar in a Western pop song, fuzz on the bass, a baroque keyboard in a ballad. The stake was real: a group at the height of its fame could have kept to the formula that made it, and bet that its audience would follow it inward. It is held from the top because the turn was gradual, prepared on Help!, its lyric learned from Dylan, and the larger break came on the next record.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Change the form and the best songs lose what they know, because the form that carries the knowledge lives inside them. Norwegian Wood’s waltz and sitar set an affair in a cool, slightly foreign room, holding the distance the words keep. In My Life’s slow ground and sudden baroque solo set memory in an older music. Nowhere Man begins unaccompanied, a voice with nowhere around it. The sequence is counted here, once, and it is a good order: Drive My Car opens on a joke and a groove, Norwegian Wood announces the new manner, side one closes on Michelle, side two turns on Girl and In My Life. What holds the figure: it is the order of a collection, elsewhere the song form is a container, and the record ends on its least considered song.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Evidence over sixty years, and the record has been returned to without exhausting. Its songs are among the most covered in popular music, Michelle, In My Life, Norwegian Wood and Nowhere Man among them; they are studied for their harmony, Michelle’s descending chromatic line and the modal turns of Norwegian Wood and If I Needed Someone; and the ambiguity of Norwegian Wood, what happens and what the fire means, has sustained interpretation since 1965. Studies of the group’s recordings take the album as a turning point and reopen it. What holds the figure: the yield is chiefly formal, in melody and harmony; the words of most songs give what they state at first hearing; and part of the return is ritual, a known record replayed.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The field is the album of the 1960s, the most contested decade the popular album has had. The intrinsic force is large: the record helped turn the pop LP from a set of singles and covers into a work heard as one, of original songs with a common sound and an inward lyric, and carried the sitar into the pop mainstream. Little was invented here; Dylan had the lyric turn, and others reached the album idea in the same months. The force is in doing it at the centre of the field. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the group’s next records built on it, Norwegian Wood opened a vogue for Indian instruments in Western pop, and the groups of 1966 turned to the album as the unit, though the larger reorganisation came on the records that followed.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Survival is weighed over sixty-one years, on form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: the record survives as issued, in mono and stereo. Presence is continuous and wide: in print throughout, its songs in broadcast and the common repertoire, several known to people who do not know the album. One charge falls on presence: for over twenty years American listeners knew Capitol’s different album under the name, and the UK sequence became the standard edition only on compact disc. The fabric is of its year in the early stereo, voices and instruments split between the speakers, and the possessive threat of Run for Your Life reads as a surface fixed to its moment. These hold it a tenth under 9.0.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere. Song craft is the record’s strength and is load-bearing: the melodies of Michelle, Girl and In My Life; three voices in harmony on Nowhere Man and If I Needed Someone; Paul McCartney’s bass, melodic and forward on Drive My Car and The Word; George Harrison’s ringing twelve-string figure and his sitar line, a colour placed exactly where the song needs it. Martin’s sped-up solo on In My Life is a small, exact studio invention at the song’s centre. Four tracks, a few weeks, nothing wasted. The charges are several: Run for Your Life careless, What Goes On routine, You Won’t See Me draggy, some backing parts rough, and the production basic beside what the same studio did within a year.
Score: 8.5 / 10
One law governs the record: a soft, acoustic, close sound in which love is looked at from a step away, with irony or regret. The two most distant elements, Drive My Car, a comic soul song about a girl who wants to be famous, and In My Life, a slow meditation on the dead and the living, obey it: both are a young man looking at love and ambition without illusion, one laughing, one grieving, in the same warm palette. The range is wide for a beat group in 1965: soul, French chanson in Michelle, a sitar waltz, folk rock, country, a gospel call, a baroque solo. The law strains twice, at the country cheer of What Goes On and the threat of Run for Your Life. Two strains in fourteen songs, and no break.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form; short songs keep the upper bands out of reach. Consciousness is held, in Nowhere Man’s self-scrutiny and In My Life’s memory. The couple is held in many forms: affair, quarrel, estrangement, devotion, possession. Memory and mortality enter together in In My Life. Ambition and money appear comically in Drive My Car; the sacred faintly, as a doctrine of love preached in The Word; society as the young man of no place and the call of Think for Yourself. What holds the figure: labour, the family, the state, history and the natural order are absent, and what is present is joined by tone rather than by a held structure.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
Pressure on Tradition at 9.1, The Imperishable at 8.9 and The Bottomless Well at 8.8. A record that helped turn the pop LP into a work heard as one and carried the sitar into the mainstream, at the centre of the most contested decade the album has had; whole and continuously present for sixty-one years; and returned to without exhausting, its songs among the most covered and most studied in popular music.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.3: one young man’s life of love and its losses, with consciousness, the couple and memory held well, the sacred and society glimpsed, and labour, the family, the state, history and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 7.9, where What Goes On and Run for Your Life could go; then The Sublime, The Archetypal Deep and The Living Form at 8.0: a beauty lovely more than overwhelming, archetypes evoked figure by figure with no frame to build them, and a form that carries knowledge inside the songs while the sequence remains the order of a collection.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: Pressure on Tradition at 9.1, The Imperishable at 8.9 and The Swerve at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 falls short by a tenth and The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 by half a point. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.9, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The summit is withheld twice: by the Epochal Gate at The Unconcealment and The Archetypal Deep, and by the aggregate, 8.4, which stands below 9.0.
Basis · the UK album as released by Parlophone on 3 December 1965, in mono and stereo, fourteen tracks in their original order, seven to a side, about thirty-five minutes; produced by George Martin, engineered by Norman Smith, and recorded at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London, in October and November 1965; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. Side one: Drive My Car; Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown); You Won’t See Me; Nowhere Man; Think for Yourself; The Word; Michelle. Side two: What Goes On; Girl; I’m Looking Through You; In My Life; Wait; If I Needed Someone; Run for Your Life. Eleven songs are credited to Lennon and McCartney, What Goes On to Lennon, McCartney and Starkey, and two to Harrison. The American Capitol album of the same name is a different object and is not judged, and the single issued the same day was not on the album. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and the running time is approximate. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words or fewer. Facts that could not be verified, among them exact timings and session dates, the attribution of some keyboard and percussion parts, the authorship of the music of In My Life, the later remixing of the stereo, the lettering of the cover and accounts of the record’s effect on particular later albums, are not given.