In any event, Revolver was the first product of the "adult" Beatles. On Rubber Soul and Help! the Fabs had made a point of rethinking and restructuring the moon-june-spoon love songs they were expected to play; by contrast, less than half of Revolver is even about love. Of those love songs, only the gorgeous "Here, There, and Everywhere" qualifies as a love song. The rest deal with love as adjunct to other things: nature ("Good Day Sunshine"), materialism ("And Your Bird Can Sing"), and joyless servitude ("For No One"). And, if we're to believe Paul, "Got To Get You Into My Life" is actually about marijuana and its effect of leading him to "another kind of mind."

Sonically, things were moving apace as well. Whereas the mid-period Beatles would spice up arrangements with exotic elements like foreign instruments and studio trickery; here they were building the songs around them, from the raga of "Love You To" (a real breakthrough for George) to the tape effects of "Tomorrow Never Knows". Their attempt at Motown turned into "Got To Get You Into My Life"; their attempt at classical turned into "Eleanor Rigby". They tried for even more on Sgt. Pepper, but not everything worked as well; Revolver was arguably the first recorded album to attempt so much and achieve it all.

This album references or draws inspiration from Vivaldi, The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, the British Prime Minister, Ravi Shankar, and LSD. It also comes a mere four years after "Love Me Do," which is the kind of thing that makes some fans think of the band as visionaries. They were, but in a different way: fact is, these elements and ideas were all sitting around, waiting to be picked up. It wasn't so much of a stretch, musically, for a rock group to attempt something like "Eleanor Rigby" -- all it required was a love for the music and sufficient balls to attempt it. The Beatles were smart, and talented, but they were mainly brave. If we're going to praise them, we should do it for that.