ABSTRACT
Don Wargowsky, one of my oldest and dearest friends and one of the world's ultimate Beatles fans, has always claimed there are two answers to the question 'What is your favorite Beatles album?': the 'snooty' answer and the right answer. For him, the right answer has always been Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the snooty answer Revolver. Don and I are very frequently 'on the same page' when it comes to musical preferences, and our obsessive lists of'Greatest Songs of All Time', 'Greatest Albums of All Times', and even 'Greatest Songs Beginning Album Side Twos' usually tickle us with their superimposability. However, I never quite bought the distinction, nor did I accept the implications for the evolution of the Beatles' music encoded within Donald's evaluation of Revolver. Since the first day I heard it, Revolver has always been the right answer, as it increasingly seems to be for Beatles and rock and roll fans around the world. Revolver has been shocking, provoking, frightening and delighting listeners with its lyrical beauty and sonic wonders – spoken, sung, wailed, archaic, pop, atmospheric, acoustic, electronic, impossible, and some almost terrifyingly futuristic –for over thirty-five years, and, if the contemporary reviews I cite below are any indication, its grip on our collective imaginations shows no signs of loosening. Revolver remains a haunting, soothing, confusing, grandly complex and ambitious statement about the possibilities of popular music; it also still stands as a testament to the force a group of minds – the Beatles, George Martin, and all their performing and producing collaborators – can exert when they merge in some mystical space both deeply embedded in the culture of their times and simultaneously freed from the trammels of time and space. Part tribute, part labor of love, part inquiry into the mysteries of Revolvers many sounds, 'Every Sound There Is' collects fourteen attempts to define just what it is about Revolver that has exerted such enduring joy and magic for its millions of fans and casual listeners.
