The Beatles grew up on Rubber Soul. In the fall of 1965, the Fab Four went into the studio as the world’s favorite moptops — but they emerged as bold artists, ready to challenge the world. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr
were experimenting with new sounds, weird ideas. They invented the whole idea of the album as we know it today — a full-length statement, rather than a hits collection. “Finally we took over the studio,” as Lennon told Rolling Stone.
Rubber Soul shocked the world as soon as it arrived in December 1965. But it’s never sounded better than it does now, on the long-awaited Special Edition. The new Rubber Soul drops on October 2, from Apple Corps Ltd and UMG. The new editions are available to pre-order here. “Michelle (Take 1)” is available to listen to now.
Producer Giles Martin, son of the band’s visionary producer George Martin, gives Rolling Stone an exclusive preview of the secrets of the new edition. “It’s an album born out of frustration of not wanting to be little boys anymore,” he says. “It has so much depth to it. This is the first album where they weren’t trying to write a bunch of singles and deciding what should be the single.”
You can hear the Beatles at their most playful and inventive, trying out their wildest whims. They explore fresh sounds like the sitar on “Norwegian Wood,” or the harmonium on “The Word.” “It was a license to experiment,” Giles Martin says. “I remember asking my dad on his deathbed, did he ever think he was bad at music? And he said, ‘Well, I always thought I was brilliant.’ And that’s the thing about the Beatles. No matter what anyone says about them, my dad said, ‘They didn’t change a bit. They’re the same arrogant bastards that they always were when I met them.’ I think that we view them with a sense of humility and nervousness, but there’s none of that. They weren’t threatened by anyone.”
Rubber Soul has the original 14-track album in stereo, mono, and Dolby Atmos. It’s remixed by Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell, using the “de-mixing” audio technology developed for Peter Jackson’s historic documentary Get Back, by the team led by Emile de la Rey at Jackson’s WingNut Films. It follows the previous Special Editions that have redefined the Beatles’ legacy over the past decade — Sgt. Pepper in 2017, followed by the White Album in 2018, Abbey Road in 2019, Let It Be in 2021, Revolver in 2022, and Anthology in 2025.
It’s got outtakes and alternate versions, including 20 previously unreleased takes. It’s also got “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper,” both sides of the 1965 stand-alone single made at the same time. There’s three unreleased home demos, with early drafts of “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out.” But there’s also “Little Girl,” a new John demo — until now, nobody had any idea this song even existed.
The Super Deluxe Edition has 68 songs in all, on either four CDs or five vinyl LPs, with the “We Can Work It Out”/“Day Tripper” 7-inch single. There’s an 88-page hardcover book of photos and essays with a new introduction by Paul McCartney (“a very exciting record to make”), with quotes from John Lennon and track notes from historian Kevin Howlett. There’s also the U.S. version of Rubber Soul, with a slightly different tracklist — a massively influential album in its own right. Rubber Soul will be available in standard single-disc editions and double-disc Special Editions, as well as Blu-Ray, featuring the Dolby Atmos mix.
John, Paul, George, and Ringo whipped up Rubber Soul at warp speed — they went into the studio with a tight deadline to crunch out an album in time for Christmas 1965, in just a month. But that just encouraged their madcap sense of experimentation. They wrote half the songs in a week. They were heavily influenced by their hero Bob Dylan — but also by some new substances. As George recalled, “Rubber Soul was the first one where we were fully-fledged potheads.” They didn’t even put their name on the cover, just their warped faces.
But as soon as Rubber Soul came out, listeners were stunned. Brian Wilson heard it one night in Hollywood and got the inspiration for Pet Sounds. “I said to myself, ‘Now I’m gonna make an album just as good as Rubber Soul,” he said in 2009. The next morning, he went to the piano and wrote “God Only Knows.” From Bob Dylan to Stevie Wonder, from Marvin Gaye to Carole King, from the Rolling Stones to the Grateful Dead, artists everywhere took it as a challenge to make their own album-length personal statements.
That’s why Rubber Soul has always remained the standard that pop visionaries aspire to reach. “Rubber Soul — that’s my favorite from The Beatles,” Harry Styles told Rolling Stone. “‘Girl,’ ‘Michelle,’ ‘The Word’ — those are brilliant.” Ariana Grande cited it as a key inspiration for her Eternal Sunshine. Phoebe Bridgers said that if she were a music teacher, Rubber Soul is the first album she would play for the kids. As she explained, “I think that’s a good introduction-to-everything record.”
This edition has a snippet of the late-night studio banter from November 1965, with the Beatles trying out harmonies for George’s “Think for Yourself.” They’re giggling too hard to get it right, cracking each other up, with John sighing, “I get something in me head, you know, and all the walls of Rome couldn’t stop me!” As Giles Martin says, “I try and put as much dialogue on there as possible, because I think it’s really important to hear them as people.”
It’s a snapshot of how playful the sessions were, even under the insane deadline pressure. “Also, it’s the time they started working nights as well,” Martin says. “So if you work at nights, it’s a different vibe anyway, especially with the pot and whatever. ‘Drive My Car’ was the first session they played beyond 12 o’clock at night. But by the time two weeks later, they were recording till seven in the morning.” Yet instead of feeling the strain, the lads are bristling with comic energy at Abbey Road. “It’s such a release for them as well. I mean, they didn’t really have much of a social life. It was just one of the few places they could come and be free. They were there all together.”
The biggest new surprise is the John demo “Little Girl” — until now, this song has never been heard or even rumored. “Yeah, it was surprising,” Martin says. “It was one of those things that came from the Lennon Estate — I think it was Sean. It was one of those things where they say, ‘Oh, and then there’s this.’” It’s a raw sketch, with an unfinished lyric, but a bittersweet tune — it sounds like an early draft of “I’m Only Sleeping,” which became a highlight of Revolver.
One of the album’s most famous experiments is George Martin’s piano solo for “In My Life,” which he composed, played, and sped up to resemble a harpsichord. (This collection has an outtake where he also tries it on organ.) “When my dad used to talk about doing that, he said they went out for lunch and he came up with that bit. He said, ‘I played it to John, and John though it was great.’ But I think that the experimentation came from all of them at that stage. I think they were just done with being that band. But they weren’t done with each other.”
Rubber Soul is where they declared their independence as a band. “I do think this is probably John’s decision to drag them out of Shea Stadium, out of their suits, out of that thing, and into what he believes they should be doing,” Martin says. But all four Beatles shared that rebellious spirit. “The fact they chose to sing ‘Baby’s In Black’ at Shea Stadium is just weird if you think about it. And that’s the beginning of that. They’re meeting Dylan and they’re meeting the Byrds, hearing about how they’ve influenced people like the Byrds, and going, ‘Okay, if you’re nicking our stuff, we’re going to steal yours.’”
But they thrived under the pressure. You can hear that in these outtakes, as they tinker with“I’m Looking Through You,” adding new ideas, dropping others, ending up with the song as we know it. (The American version accidentally added a false start on guitar that adds considerably to the song.) They were willing to try anything, even the clumsy blues-jam outtake “12-Bar Original.” (Mercifully omitted here, since as Martin says, “It’s not very good in the first place, and it’s on the Anthology.”) Yet you can also hear that they’re having the time of their lives together. “It’s a very harmonious record,” Martin says, “and I mean that in both senses of the word.”
The songs face up to adult emotion, with a sense of candor that was new for pop music — especially the way the Beatles sing about adult women with their own minds and their own lives. John’s “Girl,” Paul’s “I’m Looking Through You,” George’s “If I Needed Someone” — these are remarkably tough-minded and unsentimental love songs, with no happy endings. Even Paul, pop’s prime romantic, sings, “Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight,” at 23 — the age Olivia Rodrigo is now. (He really does seem pretty sad for a boy so in love.)
The new mix brings their voices alive — and more than anything, it’s their singing that make Rubber Soul unique. Their moptop voices have deepened, to suit the adult emotions. You especially hear it in the way they keep elevating each other’s songs — how Paul harmonizes with John in “Norwegian Wood,” or how John lifts “You Won’t See Me” with his “no I wouldn’t” harmonies. If you’re a Beatles fan because you love to hear them sing together, no other album gives such a vivid sense of a room full of boys sharing their most deeply personal stories out loud. For some of us, it’ll always be our favorite.
On the final night of the sessions, they still needed two more songs to finish the album. So they showed up with two of their best: John’s “Girl” and Paul’s “You Won’t See Me.” You can hear the weary strain in John’s voice in “Girl.” “But it suits the song,” Martin says. “It’s such a beautiful atmospheric song. It’s one of those songs that you can’t really imagine someone covering without sounding like William Shatner.”
Nobody was prepared for Rubber Soul — least of all the Beatles themselves. But as Paul McCartney said at the time, “We are so well established that we can bring the fans along with us and stretch the limits of pop.” Nobody was talking this way in 1965. But the Beatles were totally defiant about their new direction. “You don’t know us if you don’t know Rubber Soul,” John insisted. “All our ideas are different now.” Over 60 years later, those ideas continue to change the way pop music is heard and created — which is why the world has been listening ever since.
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