from http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 818698.ece

Brian Wilson on the Beatles' Rubber Soul
The band shows increasing sophistication, Lennon shines on Norwegian Wood, and they stun their Beach Boys rival ... Brian Wilson

It must have been in November of 1965. I was living in this house in the Hollywood Hills then, way up on Laurel Way, and I remember sitting in the living room one night talking with some friends when another friend came in with a copy of the Beatles’ new one, Rubber Soul, I don’t know if it had even come out yet. But he had it and so we put it on the record player and, wow. As soon as I started hearing it I loved it. I mean, LOVED it!

I still remember hearing Michelle for the first time, and Girl. What an incredible song! Everything about the way John Lennon sang, and the lyrics he was writing. “Oh, girl, girl.” It sounded amazing.

Norwegian Wood is my favourite, too. The lyrics are so good, and so creative, right from the first line: “I once had a girl/ Or should I say, she once had me.” It’s so mysterious. Is he into her, or she into him? It just blew my mind. And in the end, when he wakes up and she’s gone, so he lights a fire. “Isn’t it good? Norwegian wood.” Is he setting her house on fire? I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I thought that was fantastic. I can’t forget the sitar, too, I’d never heard that before, that unbelievable sound. No one had heard that in rock’n’roll back then, this amazing, exotic sound. It really did inspire the instrumentation I ended up using for Pet Sounds.

So many other songs are on there, too. You Won’t See Me is like a cheerful pop song, and Think for Yourself is kind of dark. I’d forgotten that was George’s song. He really wrote that? Well, I know it has that cool fuzzy bass sound. I’d used that already on Little Honda, so it was more familiar to me. But then came The Word, and that was something else, too. A song about love, but not just about girls and boys.

Then there’s In My Life, that’s another John song. And that’s my favorite song on the record too, except for Norwegian Wood. I loved the sound of John’s voice. I’d never heard a collection of songs that were all that good before. It’s like a collection of folk songs, and they’re all just really, really great songs. And not just about love. They’re about a lot of different things, but they all go together, somehow.

Listening to Rubber Soul didn’t clarify my ideas for Pet Sounds, exactly. But it inspired me. When we were listening to it that night I said to myself, “Now I’m gonna make an album just as good as Rubber Soul.” Not the same album. Obviously there can only be one album that’s Rubber Soul, just like there can only be one Pet Sounds. But it inspired me to do my own thing, and so the next morning I went to the piano and wrote God Only Knows with Tony Asher.

And it’s still my favourite Beatles album. That and Let It Be. Obviously, they’re very different records. But the Beatles changed musically, and got better over the years. So did I.

I love how everything Brian talks about is the best thing he's ever encountered. "That one's my favorite too, plus that other one, which is also my favorite!"

Love that guy.

I envy the folks who were able to experience the Beatles albums when they were originally released. By the time I heard Rubber Soul I already had the later albums and was familiar with "Michelle," "Norwegian Wood," etc. from years of radio play. Don't get me wrong, I love Rubber Soul, but I sometimes forget how groundbreaking it was at the time.

I hadn't heard much Beatles before I taped the Red and Blue double LP sets around 1980. They were my entry, a good way to start. I would have been 16 or 17 at the time. Come to think of it, I hadn't heard much Beach Boys either at that time. So a lot of these classic albums would have been new to me in my youth, I was never a big radio listener.

Was "Rubber Soul" their first psychedelic album? I think so. It was made under the influence and it certainly seemed like a new departure.

I think of it as the transition of the quasi-folky sound they'd been playing around since Dylan introduced them to pot in late '64 and throughout '65 and the truly psychedelic Revolver that follows.

Lately I've been splitting the Beatles "periods" into four groups of three albums each -- the "power-pop/rock" triad of Please Please Me/With The Beatles/A Hard Day's Night, the "country/folk/pop" sounds of Beatles for Sale/Help!/Rubber Soul, the "psychedelic pop rock" sounds of Revolver/Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band/Magical Mystery Tour/Yellow Submarine (the latter two being effectively two EPs amounting to an album's worth of output), and the "rock/prog/pop" of The Beatles/Abbey Road/Let It Be.

That's the way I look at their work, too, although I think LIB was more back to basics, with the exception of the two big McCartney ballads that had classical orchestration.

Agreed. Get Back/Let It Be was indeed an attempt to go back to basics. Compositionally, the songs share a lot of similarity with the tracks off the White Album, though. With all the bells and whistles and overdubs, any of those tracks could have easily fit on either of the two albums that flanked it.

Remember that the price you pay for this opportunity is that you would now be in your mid-fifties or later.

I never heard much Beatles on the radio, so I discovered the vast majority of the songs as I purchased the albums. I didn't know "Getting Better" was actually a "real" song-- I had always thought it was just the GE jingle until I bought Sgt. Pepper when I was 22.

I was a tadpole during the early releases and a preteen during the late releases. Beatles and the Silver Age of comics... I don't mind paying that price at all.

(Please bear with me while I resurrect some older posts. I've been away.)

I read the title of this thread and thought to myself, "He was? First I've heard of it."

Yes, it's common knowledge that Brian was blown away by Rubber Soul, but here you have him expound on it at length.

He held up the waxed paper against the amp for the extra fuzziness on "Think For Yourself."

No, he didn't. I'm just making that up.

I think about this all the time. How cool must it have been to be driving down the road and hear Strawberry Fields or Hey Jude on the radio for the first time? All my Beatles discoveries happened on LPs long after they'd broken up.

Same here.

.... pssssstt, Goog.....

I think you misunderstood Ven's humorous reference here. I believe he's pointing out that your thread title can be read as a statement that Brian Wilson appears on the Rubber Soul album, as a performer.

Glad to see Ven back, for now.

NoPhone, I realized what Ven meant, but only after posting.