Paul McCartney Explains Meaning of Album Title “Rubber Soul” on 50th Anniversary Box Set That Includes Unreleased John Lennon Song

The Beatles are dropping the extraordinary 50th anniversary box set of “Rubber Soul” at midnight.

Giles Martin has remixed the original album, and the team also salvaged a bunch of demos and rehearsals. That disc, in particular, of the four CDs, is of the most interest.

Plus, there’s an unreleased John Lennon recording of his song, “Little Girl,” from that early era.

The collection comes in several configurations in CD, LP, and so on. They all contain lavish books and all kinds of artifacts.

Paul McCartney explains how the band chose the title “Rubber Soul”:

“Rubber Soul was a very exciting record to
make. The music we were listening to and the new
fashions in clothes, art and literature helped give us
ideas which we could put in our music.
As we always did, the four of us would sit around
and discuss what we should call the new album.
We would go through many possibilities before we landed on something that we all felt summed up our mood at the time. Because we had always
been interested in double meanings – like the name
of our group, The Beatles – we hit upon Rubber
Soul. We liked that it mentioned the modern music
trend and at the same time had a tongue-in-cheek
reference to the bottom of a shoe.”

It’s kind of mindblowing that this was the turn The Beatles took in 1965 after three years of unprecedented success as a pop band. McCartney refers to it as “our new music.” And this was after all those hits, from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Help!” and “A Hard Days Night.”

McCartney says:

“When Rubber Soul came around, we were up and running with our new music and excited by the recordings we were now making. With George Martin at the helm, our records were becoming stronger and more sophisticated than our earlier efforts.”

Come back at midnight for the premiere of “Little Girl.”