[By David Peek] I’ll never forget the first time I dropped the needle on Rubber Soul. I was nine years old, and I was thumbing through my older sister’s record collection. She was off at college when I saw the cover and thought to myself “I’ve heard of these guys.” When the record needle hit the grooves, my heart nearly stopped. I was thunderstruck. And my nearly life-long love and passion for the band started that day.
Rubber Soul is legendary amongst hard-core Beatle fans as being a miracle record in that it was the first time The Lads walked into the studio virtually empty-handed…and produced a masterpiece in only 13 working days.
To give a brief background: Both the lead off song Drive My Car and the (Official UK) album release were recorded between October 12th and November 11th, 1965 for the upcoming Christmas season.
Walter Everett, in his book The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul, highlights how the sessions were held in only thirteen recording days with a further seventeen hours allowed for mixing. In addition to completing 14 songs for the album, the Beatles also produced a Double-A Sided single containing We Can Work It Out and Day Tripper. That’s 16 songs…in 13 days.
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