Beatlantis: 08} Tripper Soul (1965)

Tripper Soul (December, 1965, Timaeus)

< file under Beatles In Atlantis >

~ an approximation of this album, using latest remasters, can be heard here on Apple Music ~

With Help!ed still number one on the record charts and at the revived box office, and Spoil The Party — the budget LP — right behind it at number two, Dorna prepped the Atlantis counterpart to the band's sixth UK studio album in time for the final couple weeks of Winter Solstice holiday gift shopping. This meant despite the Tumults-related delays of past year, the album was in the webbed hands (and trapezoidal ears) of Atlantean fans only a week or so after appearing in Britain. Upon release, it rose immediately to first position and made the Beatles the only recording artists in the history of the Atlantis album charts to hold all three top spots at once. 

While working on the final sequence of this, the third Atlantis Beatles LP within the span of only about month, Dorna received an Oceangram signed by John Lennon and George Harrison praising his efforts on, and on behalf of, the previous LP. "You really help!ed our last album," it read, "thank!s"

Unlike the US concoction — which, by inclusion of a couple songs Capitol had left off of their Help! album and removal of key album tracks, had homogenized the sound compared to the UK issue, deemphasizing the creative strides the band was making — the Atlantis album further highlighted the group's artistic development by subbing out the actual Help! leftover Wait and the throwback closer for the two tracks from the double A-side single released in England same day as the UK LP. Moving Nowhere Man to the ending maintains the original's flow of concluding the album with a negative number— albeit one much more musically and lyrically mature, and at least potentially more hopeful, than the skulking rocker it replaced. While Run For Your Life conveys threatening jealousy, Nowhere Man, for the first time in a Beatles original, eschews the trappings of romance altogether and is presented by a pleading narrator who admits somewhat of a solidarity with the troubled and troubling titular addressee and challenges the listener to recognize the same.

Dorna maintained the progressive yet earthy dichotomy that drives the Rubber Soul crafted by The Beatles and George Martin, merely making the collection all the more astounding by way of a pair of pivotal song substitutions. A further change was necessitated, in light of recent events, by a language quirk. Through a centuries-old perversion of English, the word "rubber" had become slang in Atlantean for "robber," eventually associated specifically with those who collaborate with surface world pirates. Hence a new title was arrived at, a synthesis of the name of one of the two A-sides added to this release and the name of the original album. Tripper Soul proved a fitting descriptor for a set which looked both forward and inward.

With the fast pace of album releases, and having recently lost their expert typographer who'd given her life single-handedly battling, and nullifying, a horde of pirates, the mourning Timaeus art department didn't have time to adapt the iconic trippy title logo; a simpler tactic was taken

 

Side one

1.     Drive My Car †

2.     Norwegian Wood †

3.     You Won't See Me †

4.     Think For Yourself †

5.     The Word °

6.     Michelle [mono] °

7.     What Goes On †

Side two

1.     Day Tripper *

2.     Girl †

3.     I'm Looking Through You °

4.     In My Life †

5.     We Can Work It Out *

6.     If I Needed Someone †

7.     Nowhere Man †

All tracks stereo except as noted. 

† Rubber Soul [original 1965 stereo mix] {made by/fabriqué par Disque Americ Canada} or, if not available, Rubber Soul [original 1965 stereo mix] {The Beatles in Mono box set; 2009}

° Rubber Soul {The U.S. Albums box set; 2014}

* Yesterday and Today {The U.S. Albums box set; 2014}

next: 09} Revolvers (1966)

previous: 07} Help!ed (1965)