Rubber Soul was the Beatles sixth studio album.. It was recorded in just over four weeks to make the Christmas market, and was released on 3 December 1965. It was produced by George Martin. Unlike the five albums that preceded it, Rubber Soul was recorded during a continuous period, whereas the group had previously recorded albums during breaks in between tour dates or other projects. After this, Beatles albums would be made without the burden of other commitments, except for the production of short promotional films.
Rubber Soul incorporates R&B, pop, soul, folk rock, and psychedelic music styles. The album is regarded by musicologists as a major artistic achievement that continued the Beatles' artistic maturation while attaining widespread critical and commercial success. The album's name comes from the term plastic soul, which popular African American soul musicians coined to describe Mick Jagger, a white musician singing soul music. It was the second Beatles album – after the British version of A Hard Day's Night – to contain only original material; the Beatles would record no more cover songs for their records until 1969, with the "Maggie Mae" excerpt appearing on Let It Be.
Rubber Soul is regarded by fans and critics alike as one of the greatest albums in popular music history. In 2012, Rubber Soul was ranked number five on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, the album was declared as having gone platinum.
Virtually all of the album's songs were composed immediately after the Beatles' return to London following their North American tour. The Beatles expanded their sound on the album, with influences drawn from wide-ranging sources, such as African American soul music, the contemporary folk-rock of Bob Dylan and The Byrds, and the vocal harmony pop of The Beach Boys. The album also saw the Beatles expanding rock and roll's instrumental resources, most notably on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" through George Harrison's use of the Indian sitar. He had been introduced to it via the instrumental score for their 1965 film Help!. Although The Kinks had incorporated droning guitars to mimic the sitar after a visit to India on "See My Friends", "Norwegian Wood" is generally credited as sparking off a musical craze for the sound of the novel instrument in the mid-1960s – a trend which would later branch out into the raga rock and Indian rock genres. The song is now acknowledged as one of the cornerstones of what is now usually called "world music" and it was a major landmark in the trend towards incorporating non-Western musical influences into Western popular music. Harrison's interest was fuelled by fellow Indian music fans Roger McGuinn David Crosby of the Byrds, whom Harrison met and befriended in August 1965. Harrison would eventually be transfixed by all things Indian, taking sitar lessons from renowned Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar.
French-like guitar lines on "Michelle" and Greek-influenced ones on "Girl", fuzz bass on "Think for Yourself," and a piano made to sound like a baroque harpsichord on the instrumental bridge of "In My Life" added to the exotic brushstrokes on the album. Ringo Starr had frequently augmented Beatles tracks with non-standard percussion instruments such as maracas or tambourine, but on the track "I'm Looking Through You" unusually used taps on a box of matches, perhaps influenced by a similar trick as done by Gene Krupa in the 1941 film Ball of Fire.
Rubber Soul was the group's first release not to feature their name on the cover, an uncommon tactic in 1965. The 'stretched' effect of the cover photo came about after photographer Bob Freeman had taken some pictures of the group wearing suede leather jackets at Lennon's house. Freeman showed the photos by projecting them onto an album-sized piece of cardboard to simulate how they would appear on an album cover. The unusual Rubber Soul album cover came to be when the slide card fell slightly backwards, elongating the projected image of the photograph and stretching it. Excited by the effect, they shouted, "Ah! Can we have that? Can you do it like that?", to which Freeman said he could. The distinctive lettering was created by Charles Front (father of actress Rebecca Front), and the original artwork was later auctioned at Bonhams, accompanied by an authenticating letter from Robert Freeman.
Rubber Soul was commercially successful, beginning a 42-week run in the British charts on 12 December 1965. The following week it replaced The Sound of Music soundtrack at the top of the charts, and held the top spot eight weeks. On 9 May 1987, Rubber Soul returned to the album charts for three weeks, and ten years later made another comeback to the charts. - Source
In Through the Out Door is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, and their final album of entirely new material. It was recorded over a three-week period in November and December 1978 at ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, and released by Swan Song Records on 15 August 1979. In Through the Out Door was the band's eighth and final studio release to reach the top of the charts in America, and was the last released by the band before the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980.
The album is a reflection of the personal turmoil that the band members had been going through before and during its recording. For example, frontman Robert Plant and his wife had gone through a serious car accident, and their young son, Karac Plant, died from a stomach illness. All four band members also felt weary of dealing with record companies and other associates. Despite this, the release wound up being a huge commercial success, particularly in the United States (sitting at the #1 slot on Billboard's chart in just its second week on the chart).
The album was named by the group to describe its recent struggles amidst the death of Robert Plant's son Karac in 1977, and the taxation exile the band took from the UK. The exile resulted in the band being unable to tour on British soil for over two years, and trying to get back into the public mind was therefore like "trying to get in through the 'out' door."
In contrast to previous Led Zeppelin albums, In Through the Out Door features much greater influence on the part of bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones and vocalist Robert Plant, and relatively less from drummer John Bonham and guitarist Jimmy Page. Two songs from the album—"South Bound Saurez" and "All My Love"—were the only two original Led Zeppelin songs that Jimmy Page had no part in writing. With the exception of "Darlene," a boogie-woogie based song credited to all band members (which was eventually released on the 1982 album, Coda), Bonham did not receive writing credits for any of the songs recorded at Polar Studios. This diminished input by Page and Bonham is attributed to the two band members often not showing up on time at the recording studio, with Bonham struggling with alcoholism and Page battling heroin addiction. As Jones said, "there were two distinct camps by then, and we [Plant and I] were in the relatively clean one."
Many of the songs were consequently put together by Plant and Jones during the day, with Page and Bonham adding their parts late at night. According to Jones, this was
“... mainly because I had a new toy. I had this big new keyboard. And Robert and I just got to rehearsals early, basically. With Zeppelin writing, if you came up with good things, and everybody agreed that they were good things, they got used. There was no formula for writing. So Robert and I, by the time everybody turned up for rehearsals, we’d written three or four songs. So we started rehearsing those immediately, because they were something to be getting on with.”
Following the recording sessions at Polar Studios, the album was mixed at Page's personal studio at his home in Plumpton. "Wearing and Tearing", "Ozone Baby" and "Darlene" were recorded during sessions for this album, but were dropped because of space constraints. All later appeared on Coda.
The album was intended to be released before the band's twin concerts at Knebworth in 1979, but production delays meant that it was released shortly after their performances at this event. Plant jokingly referred to the delays at times during the performance on 4 August.
Despite receiving poor reviews, the album went to No. 1 on Billboard's chart in its second week on the chart. - Source
Tattoo You is the 16th British and 18th American studio album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1981. The follow-up to Emotional Rescue (1980), the album is mostly composed of studio outtakes recorded during the 1970s, and contains one of the band's most well-known songs, "Start Me Up", which hit second place on the United States's Billboard singles charts.
The album proved to be both a critical and commercial success upon release, reaching the top of the Billboard charts, and selling more than four million copies in the United States alone. It was also the final Rolling Stones album to reach the top position of the US charts, thus concluding the band's string of number-one albums there, dating back to 1971's Sticky Fingers. It is considered by many fans and critics to be the Rolling Stones' last great album.
Tattoo You is an album primarily composed of outtakes from previous recording sessions, some dating back a decade, with new vocals and overdubs. Along with two new songs, the Rolling Stones put together this collection to have a new album to promote for their worldwide American Tour 1981/European Tour 1982 beginning that September. Guitarist Keith Richards commented in 1993:
"The thing with Tattoo You wasn't that we'd stopped writing new stuff, it was a question of time. We'd agreed we were going to go out on the road and we wanted to tour behind a record. There was no time to make a whole new album and make the start of the tour."
The album's associate producer, Chris Kimsey, who'd been associated with The Stones dating back to Sticky Fingers (1971) said Tattoo You "...came about because Mick [Jagger] and Keith were going through a period of not getting on. There was a need to have an album out, and I told everyone I could make an album from what I knew was still there." He began sifting through the band's vaults: "I spent three months going through (the recording tapes from) like the last four, five albums finding stuff that had been either forgotten about or at the time rejected. And then I presented it to the band and I said, 'Hey, look guys, you've got all this great stuff sitting in the can and it's great material, do something with it."
Many of the songs consisted at this point of instrumental backing tracks for which vocals had not been recorded. Jagger said in a 1995 interview, "It wasn't all outtakes; some of it was old songs... I had to write lyrics and melodies. A lot of them didn't have anything, which is why they weren't used at the time – because they weren't complete. They were just bits, or they were from early takes". Despite the eclectic nature of the album, the Rolling Stones were able to divide Tattoo You into two distinct halves: a rock and roll side backed with one focusing on ballads.
The earliest songs used for Tattoo You are "Tops" and "Waiting on a Friend". The backing tracks for both songs were cut in late 1972 during the Goats Head Soup (1973) sessions and feature Mick Taylor, not Ronnie Wood, on guitar. Taylor, who was not credited, later demanded and received a share of the album's royalties.
"Start Me Up" was released in August 1981, just a week before Tattoo You, to a very strong response, reaching the top 10 in both the United States and UK, and number 1 in Australia. Widely considered one of the Stones' most infectious songs, it was enough to carry Tattoo You to No. 1 for nine weeks in the United States, while reaching No. 2 in the UK with solid sales. It's been certified 4x platinum in the United States alone. The critical reaction was positive, many feeling that Tattoo You was an improvement over Emotional Rescue and a high-quality release. "Waiting on a Friend" and "Hang Fire" became Top 20 US hits as well.
"Start Me Up" would prove to be The Rolling Stones' last single to reach as high as No. 2 in the US, while Tattoo You is their last American No. 1 album to date. - Source
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