Rubber Soul (Stereo - 2009 remaster)

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Track list

Disc 1

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About

From the liner notes:

HISTORICAL NOTES

The Beatles’ six album was released in the UK on 3rd December, 1965. Only four months had elapsed since their previous album Help! and during that time they had a momentous tour of the US and Canada, including a record breaking concert for 55, 600 fans in Shea Stadium, New York. After resting for six weeks, The Beatles began sessions for an album planned to contain only self-composed material.

There were eleven songs from John and Paul, two from George and a song with the unique writing credit of Lennon-McCartney-Starkey for Ringo’s vocal spotlight ‘What Goes On’. They also recorded ‘Day Tripper’ and ‘We Can Work It Out’ at this time, which were issued on their eleventh Parlophone single on the same day that Rubber Soul was released. Their first double A-sided single and new album gave The Beatles the British number one single and album for the third consecutive Christmas. Rubber Soul stayed at the top for nine weeks of its 42 week stay in the album chart.

Robert Freeman’s stylish photographs had been featured on their album sleeves since the second LP With The Beatles. His distinctive cover shot for Rubber Soul came through a happy accident when he was projecting slides of his photos onto an LP-sized card. When the card fell back a little, The Beatles’ faces seemed slightly stretched and that was the image selected by the group. It is their first album not to feature the word Beatles on the front cover.

For t first time the USA release exactly duplicated the cover of a British Beatles LP but, as usual, Capitol Records altered the track listing. Two songs from the British version of Help! were added to ten of the tracks. The omitted four were eventually included on the album “Yesterday” …And Today released six months later. The American version of Rubber Soul reached number one in the first week of January, 1966 and stayed at the top for six weeks. It had an impressive initial chart run of 51 weeks.

This remastered album has been created from the original stereo digital master tapes from George Martin’s CD mixes made in 1986.

Remastered by Guy Massey and Steve Rooke
Project Co-ordinator: Allen Rouse
Thanks to Simon Gibson
Historical Notes: Kevin Howlett and Mike Heatley
Recording Notes: Allan Rouse and Kevin Howlett
Project management for EMI Records Ltd: Wendy Day and Guy Hayden

RECORDING NOTES
Produced by George Martin
Principal Engineer: Norman Smith

This album marked a turning point in The Beatles’ attitude to studio work–not only in the amount of time needed but also in relation to when the sessions took place.
The standard practice had been for sessions t be scheduled from 10.00am-1.00pm, 2.30-5.30pm and 7.00-10.00pm. From the recording of Beatles For Sale onwards, the group had abandoned mornings and their evening sessions became longer than usual. While making Rubber Soul, they spent even more time perfecting their songs and when this was combined with a pressing deadline for completion of the LP, sessions often stretched into the early hours of the morning.

From the start of recording on the 12th October to the final mixing session on the 15th November 1965, over a hundred hours were spent in the studio. The last recording session continued from 6.00pm until 7.00am the next day. During this time, The Beatles started and finished ‘Girl’ and ‘You Won’t See Me’ and completed overdubs on ‘Wait’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’.

As with their previous LP Help!, recording on four-track tape was sufficient for all the songs except one. A 7:00pm on 3rd November, The Beatles began the session for ‘Michelle’ by recording drums and acoustic guitars on track one and Paul’s lead vocal on track two. Backing vocals were then overdubbed onto track three and then double-tracked on the fourth.

To create space for more over-dubs, this four-track ‘master’ was copied to a new tape. e rhythm section and lead vocal were transferred to tracks one and two but the backing vocals on the other two but the backing vocals on the other two tracks were mixed together and recorded on just track was used for over-dubbing a bass, an electric and an acoustic guitar. This procedure of ‘bouncing down’ tracks became much more frequent in their future recordings.

Since their first session in 1962, the man at the mixing desk had been engineer Norman Smith. In three and a half years of recording and mixing the group, he had been responsible for six albums and eleven singles released in the UK. His last studio date with The Beatles was the all-night final Rubber Soul recording session on 11th/12th November, 1965–just three weeks before the album was available in the shops.

Rubber Soul was issued at a time when stereo records sold to a small number of hi-fi enthusiasts and so mixing to mono took priority over a stereo version. George Martin decided to give Rubber Soul a new stereo mix from the four-track tapes for its debut release on CD in 1987. The remastering team has worked with that version.

“Rubber Soul” was remastered from the 1987 mix done by George Martin, not from the original stereo mixes. From The 1987 CD mixes – The Daily Beatle (webgrafikk.com):

Giles Martin was in the studio, remixing the Beatles songs that were going to be used in the The Beatles:Rock Band game, singling out specific instruments from otherwise interlocked studio tapes, so he was able to talk a bit about that process.

But he was also involved in the “Love” project, and he was an insider at Abbey Road, so he was also able to listen in to the remasters project that was going on at the same time as he was mixing for RockBand. Here’s what he said (transcribed by me from the podcast of the interview) about those infamous 1987 remixes:

Giles Martin: Rubber Soul and Help! were remixed by my dad in 1988 or ’87 for CD. And when we did “Love”, we got to do Yesterday, and I couldn’t understand why there were so much echo and reverb on the voice ’cause it was very non-Beatles. And it was only when I came back and I was listening to the remasters I asked “how come this is the case?” and they said “well we are remastering the eighties versions of [Rubber Soul and Help!]” and I said “why aren’t we remastering the originals, we should remaster what came out then [in 1965]?”
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And they said “Well, your father wouldn’t be very happy with us not remastering the versions he did in the eighties.”
So I spoke to my dad and I asked “Do you mind if they remaster the sixties version?” and he went “I don’t even remember doing them in the eighties!”

Allan Rouse in an interview with Record Collector: “The remasters were based on the master-tapes, with the exception of two albums: George Martin’s 1987 mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul. People are questioning why we used those. George Martin is the fifth Beatle. He chose to do it. You can argue with him, but I’m not going to.”

So there you have it! The stereo remasters are the 1987 remixes out of the involved remastering engineers’ misguided respect for Sir George!

Last updated on October 25, 2023