A 12” disc of 180 gram vinyl, encased in a glossy, dark green cover. Four mop-topped boys on the front look like brothers, and they’re oddly slanted, the grainy photo distorted. In the corner are fat, bubbly letters perfectly reminiscent of the psychedelic mid-sixties. I’m told by music journals that the album cover was edgy. It probably looks like how the Beatles saw the world starting that year. Ringo says they were stoned out of their mind for the filming of their movie, Help!, just months before, so it’s safe to say they were probably stoned for most of this album, too. Granny probably wasn’t thinking this, though. The album, I’m sure, left a lasting impression on her back in 1965.
The disc I carefully slip onto the record player now is a reissue of the British album, so not the Rubber Soul Granny would have known, but it’s not far off. Mine’s a little more durable, but when I place the needle on the outer grooves, it crackles like it’s 60 years old. I imagine some people wouldn’t like the sound, but it soothes me. My speakers aren’t high-tech, 21st-century equipment. They’re probably fifty years old, the brown tweed covering dating them. They add a slightly muffled, vintage sound to anything played through them. A crackly record just makes sense.
I listen as the needle cruises to song one, “Drive My Car,” a song that wouldn’t have been on Granny’s Rubber Soul. It’s a shame the US couldn’t handle fourteen songs on an album, as I can’t really imagine this album without the four that were chopped from the US version. However, Brian Wilson said the US Rubber Soul inspired Pet Sounds, one of the most influential albums ever, so what do I know? I wonder if Granny was as inspired by this album as Brian Wilson was. I wonder if her eyes lit up when “I’ve Just Seen A Face,” the opening track of her Rubber Soul, began, the same way mine light up when the opening of my Rubber Soul plays. Did she know from that alone that the album would be one of the best? I wonder if she fell in love with “Norwegian Wood” from that very first listen. It’s her favorite Beatles song to this day, after all.
The record cruises on, and I adjust the bass during “Think for Yourself,” the song that made me fall in love with a Rickenbacker bass and a fuzz pedal. One of the things I love most about the Beatles isn’t their finely-tailored suits in the early Sixties, or their long, hippie hair a few years later, but the bass playing. I think Paul McCartney pioneered bass playing. Before Paul, no one paid attention to any bass players. They just stood in the back while the hip guitar players waltzed around the stage with their biting guitar sound. Paul McCartney was cute, though—“the cute Beatle,” they called him. What your eyes couldn’t see but your ears could hear was the basslines that McCartney incorporated into his songs, basslines that could have carried a song on their own, basslines just as melodic as vocal lines.
I wasn’t even thought of when Granny heard this song for the first time. She didn’t know her son would marry a woman forty years later who would come with two bonus grandchildren. One was me, and music talk always reminded me that I really was a part of the family, even if not by blood. I always knew I was, but this was just a little reminder.
I wonder if she enjoyed the cheekiness of the backing vocals in “Girl” more than me. Paul later recalled they knew exactly what they were doing when they slipped in the “tit, tit, tit” bit. They snuck this in to poke fun at the innocence of the Beach Boys’ doo-wop style backing vocals over in America. I wonder if Granny enjoyed it, if perhaps she picked up on the little ode to the Beach Boys. I personally find it a little repetitive and annoying. If that song was the last song on the side, I’d skip it. The album still wouldn’t be the same without it, though.
As I listen to the slow nostalgia of “In My Life,” with its warm guitar sound, fulfilling bass, soft Lennon-McCartney-Harrison harmonies, and uncanny drum beat, I’m reminded of my stepdad-turned-dad. It’s his favorite. He got his love of music from Granny, and I got my love of the Beatles from him. Because of this, it’s become one of my favorites, too, as has all of Rubber Soul. Every time I listen to this album, I’m reminded of my family. I could lie here and listen to it on repeat until the end of time. Sixty years out, it never got old, and it never could.
*****
Lilly Romines is a student at Tennessee Technological University studying creative writing.
