Received wisdom has
always put Sgt. Pepper at the head of the class, but it was Revolver
that truly signaled the Beatles' sea change from a functional band to a
studio-based ensemble. These changes began before Rubber Soul but came
to fruition on Revolver, which took an astonishing 300 hours to produce,
far more than any rock record before it. The making of Revolver -
hunkered down in Abbey Road with George Martin - is in itself a great
Beatles story, but would be nothing if the results weren't so impactful.
More than even Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds, Revolver fed directly into
the rock 'n' roll zeitgeist, and its influence could be heard
everywhere, from the psychedelic San Francisco sound (Jefferson
Airplane, Grateful Dead) to the first wave of post-blues hard rock
(Sabbath, Zeppelin) through movie soundtracks and pretty much everything
that followed it, including every generation of guitar-based pop music
and even heavy metal. More than any record before or after, Revolver was
the game-changer, and this is, finally, the detailed telling of its
storied recording and enormous impact.
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