A lot of people cite the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band as the most significant turning point for The Beatles, when the band took its biggest creative leap. But, really, that turning point began with Rubber Soul in 1965.
At that point, The Beatles were still playing a lot of cover songs; they were touring and focused on music that they could play live. Beatlemania was in full swing and the Fab Four were working at a breathless pace. The band had recorded and released about a half dozen albums in its two short years; they were making films and touring the world, including their infamous performance at Shea Stadium. And by the time they paused to make Rubber Soul, The Beatles were spent.
A super deluxe box set of the 1965 album has just come out, and it captures this moment in time, with 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, which means these songs you might know well sound like nothing you've heard before.
Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer George Martin, has 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 others. But older recordings like the ones on Rubber Soul, presented a problem. The different parts — drums, bass, guitars, vocals — were often recorded on top of each other or at the same time on a single track, making 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 technology that allowed him to strip out and separate all the different instruments and voices. It's like if you took a cake and unmixed all the ingredients, separating the flour, sugar and eggs so that you can remix and rebake it, but make it taste better.
Giles Martin first used this mind-blowing tech to remix the Beatles Revolver album in 2022, and now he's applied it to Rubber Soul.
In this conversation with All Songs Considered host Robin Hilton, Martin talks about the new mixes, what they reveal about this dramatic shift in The Beatles' songwriting and why Rubber Soul sounds like the band breaking up with its past, its fans and everything they thought they knew about the band. Martin also explains how the AI tools he used to update the mixes work and how he preserved the original spirit of the album.
You can hear the full conversation with the "listen" link at the top of the page and read edited highlights below.
Giles Martin on why Rubber Soul was so pivotal:
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. They started writing songs about themselves and about how they felt about things. If you listen lyrically, it's a lot about breakup and about disillusionment.
And I think actually maybe the breakup is with their fans to a certain degree. It's not "From Me To You." It's not "P.S. I Love You." Or "Can't Buy Me Love," or, you know, "Eight Days A Week," or any of these sort of slightly flippant songs. It's the beginning of bittersweet. It's a reasonably bleak album. "I'm Looking Through You," for example, is an interesting title for a song. They weren't enjoying themselves when they got to where they wanted to go. They found they were in the wrong place, as simple as that. And so they started writing songs more about themselves and less about looking out.
On the band's breathless work pace and pressure they were under:
[Making Rubber Soul] took about a month in total. Which for them was a long time. They didn't really make that many mistakes in the studio and they knew what sounds they were making. And vocally they were so strong. So, there's no reason to take too much time.
I mean, absolutely, [the stakes were] cruelly high because of the expectations they put on themselves. You know, people think that recording artists or musicians are these peaceful hippies that wander around and going, "Oh, that's just lucky that happened." But there's much more deliberation. And The Beatles wanted to be, as John Lennon said, the topmost of the topmost. And they got there. They got there and they became the biggest band in the world. Everywhere was Beatles, but it suffocated them and they rejected it.
But people often ask, "What is the secret?" Is it Abbey Road or is it my dad, or is it, you know, the compressors they used or the desk? No. It's them. It's them in a room making a noise, and they're really good at it. And that's what [Rubber Soul] shows. They're disciplined. And you don't make that many records without being disciplined. That's going back to the pressure that there was. [It] was more them putting pressure on themselves.
On why he included a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations in the new box set:
I think there's so much dehumanization in music now. You know, is it really people doing it? And actually, often, the answer is there isn't. And I think there's a beauty and a timelessness to the fact that you can hear the creator. You can hear them getting things wrong and then getting things right and working out how they do it, and what goes into making these great records.
When I approach these box sets, it's a bit like, you know, I went around a Rembrandt exhibition once and there were pencil drawings of his paintings, and I love that because the pencil drawing wasn't as beautiful as the painting — and by no means is take two and three of "Day Tripper" as good as "Day Tripper," but it shows the pencil drawing that happened. You know, that's the painting. And I think that sort makes it more beautiful for me in understanding that it is just almost blood, sweat and tears that makes it happen and not someone flicking a switch. That's why I love the conversations. You just go, "Oh, they're completely normal." They're having their cups of tea, and then they're going to do something that lasts beyond 60 or 70 years.
On the previously unreleased John Lennon demo "Little Girl":
It was found in on a reel-to-reel by someone. And we heard it and it's beautiful. I mean, it's not a good enough song to be on Revolver or Double Fantasy or whatever it is. But it's an artist at work and it's kind of beautiful in its own way.
On the infamous studio trick used to record the piano solo on "In My Life":
Quite often the Beatles would record a song and they'd leave a hole for a solo. And for this they left the hole there, and [my dad, George Martin] decided to write a baroque sort of Bach style solo. But it was too complicated or too fast [for him] to play. So, he played the tape at half speed and just dropped [it] an octave. It's one of those nice quirks in math and life. If you play, it'll be the same notes but an octave down. So he played the whole thing an octave down at half speed and then sped it up, and it ended up sounding like a harpsichord and a baroque solo. You can tell it's sped up if you listen to it at the very end of the solo. The rundown is kind of ridiculously fast.
On remixing the album while preserving the spirit and intent of the original recordings:
For me, I'm not working with a band that doesn't exist. I'm not. I am working with a bunch of 25-year olds. Music doesn't get old. We just get old around music. That's the truth. A recording is essentially time travel. That tape sounds the same now as it did the day after they recorded it. And that's the beauty of it. So, one of the things I try and do, and sometimes I use technology to do it, is to try and remove technology from a record. Some of the constraints they had, say, using a four-track tape machine where you've got everything on one track, is not a natural way to listen to a band. You know, just a band with a drum in the middle, say, and the guitar to the side or whatever. And so I try and make you feel as though you're closer to the band.
This is what we've done here. It's a more natural sound field. If you're listening on headphones, the voice is in the middle, and all these things. So, there's a lot of care and attention that goes into these mixes. I try and come up with something that only when you go back and listen and compare that you may notice it's different. You know, I never want people to listen to my mix. I want people to listen to their songs."
On the ways AI made remixing Rubber Soul possible:
Pandora's box has been well and truly opened. [But] if there was a question like, "Would I rather not be able to remix things and have all of AI music deleted?" Yes, I'd like that very much. Because I don't think the end result is that welcoming, to me anyway as a person. I feel a bit like the man that kept the arm in the Terminator movie, you know, that caused the apocalypse. Because I've done more in AI and source separation than anyone else has done. And I think that we're in danger of being able to copy humans without any recompense. [But] what I do is very different. Essentially what I'm doing is restoration. I'm not creating anything. I'm not making anything. I think the danger is when people don't know where creativity comes from, or what the foundation of the creativity is. But I also think that humans will out.
On why we need Rubber Soul now more than ever:
"We spend so much time doing nothing these days. I always find it amazing. There are so many meetings and zoom calls and I always just say to someone, you know, "Go and listen to a record." The other day... ...we just put on a standard Stan Getz record, you know, with the family and the kids and stuff. And I had some cocktails. And we just listened to records that night. It was just great. And no one was on their phones and no one was looking at stuff. And I think that Rubber Soul harks back to that time. It feels like that kind of record, even the cover and the art ... it feels earthy. It feels of a time where you should probably go for a walk without a phone and without any music. It feels like that's such a ridiculous thing to say. But it's a record that reminds us of love, of breakup and heartbreak, but of what we can achieve as humans without the cyber world telling us what we should be doing with our lives.
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