Rubber Soul is widely regarded as a transitional album for the Beatles. Released in December 1965, it represents the beginning of the second phase of their career - the end of the “mop top” era and the beginning of their more sophisticated, studio-driven sound. They would continue to tour through the summer of the following year, but they had already begun to change.
So, too, did the women who populated their songs.
From Please Please Me through Help!, those women had barely been women; they were scarcely more than girls, from the her Paul saw standing there to the you whose hand John wants to hold, they are teenagers – objects of young love and desire. The Beatles’ early hits are a compendium of valentines to these two-dimensional stand-ins for actual lovers.
With Rubber Soul, this changed. With Rubber Soul, the girls became women – and formidable women, at that.
This is evident from Track One, Side One - “Drive My Car”, in which Paul encounters a woman pursuing a career as an actress, who suggests that he can become her chauffeur – he can “drive her car,” which of a course is just code for sex.
The point of the exchange is that it is the woman, and not Paul, who’s in charge: she’s the boss, the one dangling a job in front of him; viewed euphemistically, she is likewise the sexual aggressor in the scenario. Paul is just responding. This level of female empowerment – in a pop song! - is virtually unprecedented in 1965 England.
Next is John’s turn in the hot seat – or it would have been, if the woman in “Norwegian Wood” had any chairs in her flat. This thinly-disguised confession of infidelity on John’s part tells of an elicit encounter in the woman’s home likewise empowers the woman, damn near emasculating John in the process.
From the first line - “I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me” - equal footing is established, with additional ground swiftly surrendered by John as the tale unfolds and the two stay up late drinking – only for John to find himself sexually rejected. It’s a breathtaking, almost inexplicable confession, rending the singer powerless and at the mercy of this strong, self-possessed woman.
Later, Paul encounters a woman who is much the opposite of the aspiring actress; “Michelle” is sophisticated, captivating – and just as elusive. Paul finds himself almost pining, trying to convince her of his passion and resolve.
And John finds himself pining as well, for the “Girl” who seems to utterly own him, tying him in anxious notes as he struggles to process his desire for her in the face of his realization that her domination is slowly unraveling him.
Then there are the biographical tunes – Paul's “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You” and George’s “If I Needed Someone”.
Both of Paul’s tunes, written about his relationship with Jane Asher and the frustrations he endured, coping with her independence (see “From Me to You: Dear Jane”, page ***), are almost embarrassing confessions to the world that she has the upper hand in the relationship. Paul’s writing about the intimate details of their bumpy love life seems to be an attempt to level the playing field, but it falls flat; Jane is one woman of Rubber Soul who clearly isn’t so easily put in her place.
George’s song is more subtle. Written for girlfriend Pattie Boyd, who became his wife the month after Rubber Soul was released, “If I Needed Someone” is a man’s confession that the woman he’s singing to is the one he really loves (as opposed, supposedly, to the one he’s actually with). The song has a rueful tone, an air of regret; in real life, this regret was avoided, but the song clearly communicates a man conflicted.
It’s true that women of substance had surfaced earlier in the Beatles canon – the women of “Day Tripper”, “Ticket to Ride” and “Yesterday” were surely not Beatlemaniacs – but as of Rubber Soul, we detect a distinct sea change in the Beatles’ lyrical narrative, the appearance of a woman that now challenges them as men, forcing them to think about women and relationships in new ways.
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