Episode 09 – Beatles ’66 pt3

Turmoil may have followed the Beatles on tour, but in the studio the band reached its zenith with their 7th and perhaps finest LP ever: Revolver. While Sgt. Pepper nearly a year later tends to be remembered as their greatest achievement, it's on Revolver where the combined efforts of John, Paul, George and Ringo shine the brightest and in the most cohesion. Psychedelia is, for the first time, used as a songwriting tool by the band who by this point had been well into dropping acid. Even Paul, the notorious LSD hold-out, had finally succumb to the pressures of his friends and of his generation the prior December of 1965, setting the stage for the kinds of schisms that would shake the group apart just 3 1/2 short years later. But for all the chemical experimentation, The Beatles' song craft had grown to towering heights on tracks from the LP such as Here There and Everywhere, Tomorrow Never Knows, Eleanor Rigby, For No One, I'm Only Sleeping, Taxman and so many more. Another shift also swept through Revolver, with George Harrison contributing a full three songs to the record and a Ringo vocal topping the singles charts! But the storms that had brewed earlier in the summer had yet to subside, and despite the smash-success of their latest masterpiece, once again the group found themselves at the center of a firestorm in the American south...