How The Beatles made 'Rubber Soul' and broke up with their past

Robin Hilton (0:00)

This episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from NPR Music. I'm Robin Hilton, and this week on the show, we're going to take a break from brand new music and talk about a legendary album that's been given a whole new life, Rubber Soul by The Beatles.

A super deluxe box set of the 1965 album Rubber Soul just came out, and it's got a lot of the stuff that you usually get with these sorts of things. You know, lots of previously unreleased outtakes and demos, there's a book of photos and essays about every track, but it's also got a completely remixed version of the album. Remixed, which means it sounds like nothing you've ever heard before from these songs. Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer George Martin, he's been working with the surviving members of the band to remix all of the Beatles' albums. He started with Sgt. Pepper's in 2017, he's done the White Album, Abbey Road and some others. But when it came to the older recordings, like the ones on Rubber Soul, there was a problem.

All of the parts, the drums, the bass, guitars, the vocals, they very often were recorded on top of each other, or at the same time on a single track, which made it virtually impossible to remix. Then, while working on the Get Back documentary that came out in 2021, the director, Peter Jackson, spearheaded the development of new tech that allowed him to strip out and separate all the different instruments and voices. It's kind of like if you took a cake and you unmixed all of the ingredients, separating the flour, sugar and everything, so that you could remix it, re-bake it and make it taste better.

Giles Martin first used this mind-blowing tech to remix The Beatles' Revolver album in 2022, and now with Rubber Soul. You know, a lot of people think Sergeant Pepper's that album was the big turning point for The Beatles, you know, when they took this massive, unimaginable, creative leap. But really, it started with Rubber Soul. Up to this point in the band's run, they were still playing a lot of cover songs, they were touring and focused on stuff that they could play live. Beatlemania was in full swing, and they were feeling kind of done with it all. By the time they entered the studio to make Rubber Soul, they were ready to say goodbye to all of that and move in a whole new direction. So I sat down with Giles Martin to talk about the new mixes and what they reveal about this dramatic shift for The Beatles, how the music was changing, and why Rubber Soul was one of the most significant turning points in the band's career.

Giles Martin (3:17)

We're witnessing the invention of a different form of music. That's what this is. It's the genesis of this creativity where the studio starts becoming an instrument, where there's a sort of a danger to things, where other instruments can be used, like the sitar, famously.

But at the time, it's just purely... I think Ringo said, if the elephant could sing, we'd probably bring it to the studios and try and record it in those days.

Robin Hilton (3:45)

It's amazing.

And the pace they were working at was breathtaking. I think they play Shea Stadium in August. They get back to the UK. They record Rubber Soul in October, November, and it's out by December 3rd.

Giles Martin (4:00)

Yeah, it took about a month in total, I think, which for them was a long time. They didn't really make that many mistakes in the studios. They knew what sounds they were making. They knew, and vocally, they were so strong.

So there's no reason to take too much time.

Robin Hilton (4:13)

And the pressure was really high, and the expectations were really high. I was reminded while reading the extensive liner notes in the book that's included in this deluxe version, Paul said in a 65 interview that the hardest thing was just being who they were. And George said that the standards were cruelly high.

Giles Martin (4:32)

Well, I mean, absolutely, the standards are cruelly high because of the expectations they put on themselves. People think that recording artists or musicians are these sort of like peaceful hippies that wander around and going, oh, that's just lucky that happened, I wrote this song. There's much more deliberation, and The Beatles wanted to be, as John Lennon said, the topmost, the popmost. And they got there, they got there, and they became the world's first stadium band, as you say, at Shea Stadium. They became the biggest band in the world, and they were the first real global band, you know, as far as, you know, traveling the world. Everywhere was Beatles, but it suffocated them, and they rejected it. And they also, the demands were hard on them because they never wanted to do a sequel. They never wanted to sustain their success by doing the same thing. They always wanted to morph into something else. And that was the secret of their success, and that's why the music is so enduring, and that's why they're so sticky as a band for new generations, because if you don't like a hard day's night, you might like something, because they're two different bands. You don't like Aaron The Rigby, you might like Helter Skelter.