REVOLVER

This was the first album I ever owned- sort of. My parents bought me the American version of this album which has some of the songs removed. I'll let others argue endlessly about whether the Beatles were prog or not. Simply put, this is where prog started in my opinion. Much better than Seargent Pepper's.

The Good: There isn't much on this album which isn't good, even great. There isn't any song here which is filler. "Taxman" is a great Harrison song which shows he is coming into his own as a songwriter. "Eleanor Rigby" is a great song. "Gotto Get You Into My Life" is the kind of song which sounds great with horns(Too bad Mr. Collins didn't write "horny" songs like this in the 80's !) And "Tomorrow Never Knows" ? Tell me THAT wasn't progressive !

The Bad: There wasn't any filler on this album, but "Yellow Submarine" is a bit of a novelty song sung by Ringo. Still, Lennon/Cartney learned how to write better songs for Ringo like this one... ones which didn't have too large of a vocal range.

The Ugly: It's too bad those of us on this side of the Atlantic had to wait 20 years to get "Revolver" as it was meant to be.

So how do I rate Revolver ? As I said above, this is where Prog started, IMHO. I'll go ahead and say it- a masterpiece of progressive music. 5 stars.