The Missing Link: Revolver and the Great Creative Leapfrog
It's hard NOT to have an opinion about the Beatles, although now that I think about it, I'd say that if one doesn't have an opinion about them, it's likely that they've never been a part of your life, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just what it is given how identity seems to be founded and molded by cultural and brand adherence, but I'm rapidly heading into deeper intellectual waters than what this Yellow Submarine is rated for.
Let's cut over to Peter Jackson and his appropriately gargantuan giga-documentary Get Back that followed the Fab Four Fellowship attempting to deliver the One Ring of a "New Beatles Album" through the lifeless Khazad-dûm of Twickenham (with off-camera retreats to the Rivendell of George Harrison's home) and ending up atop Mount Doom—the Apple Corps offices—for their (not that they knew this at the time) final public performance. The dissolution of the Beatles is a world-famous public divorce that everyone (see above regarding the relevance or none thereof of the Beatles) knows about but without much detail. The documentary provides a concentrated look into the turbulence and joy (the latter, while overshadowed by what we know as the inevitable, is still radiant) before "things truly fell apart," although the zoomed-in bit of the longer tale is still a large data point on gravity's relentless plot curve.
Writing this originally in 2021, I couldn't have anticipated the curious coda that awaited: "Now and Then," released in late 2023 via AI-assisted archaeology of John's decades-old demo cassette. The song became both utterly contemporary in its use of machine learning vocal separation and deeply rooted in the band's history—a final technological and artistic phase change that somehow felt both inevitable and miraculous. The entire experience, beyond just the song itself, proved quite impacting: watching Paul and Ringo complete something their departed bandmates had started, witnessing multiple generations discover a "new" Beatles song simultaneously, seeing how legacy and innovation could meaningfully converge rather than simply repackage nostalgia.
That particular Beatles "wave"—from Get Back through "Now and Then"—has now passed, creating space for reflection rather than reaction. And then yesterday, as if to punctuate this moment of looking backward, Brian Wilson died at 82, taking with him the other half of one of popular music's greatest creative dialogues.
Wilson's passing brings into sharp focus that famous creative leapfrog: Rubber Soul inspiring Wilson to create Pet Sounds, which then motivated the Beatles toward Sgt. Pepper's. But notice what's missing from that three-album progression? Revolver. This absence actually emphasizes the very point I want to make about that album.
And what does all this have to do with Revolver? Again, it's hard not to be opinionated about the Beatles, and having emerged wiser and sadder after the closing credits of Get Back, having processed the technological poignancy of "Now and Then," and now contemplating Wilson's remarkable legacy, I've returned to what I firmly believe to be my favorite Fab Four LP. I've long believed this album to be the phase change point between the mop top pop idolry and the psychedelic oneironautics stages of their career, that magic moment where pop instincts and sonic experiments crystallize into wisdom and insight (and eventually fossilize), and all the lights go dazzly.
Revolver sits conspicuously outside the Beatles-Beach Boys creative tennis match, which actually reinforces its significance as a transformation moment. While Wilson was responding to Rubber Soul by creating his most sophisticated orchestral pop, the Beatles were simultaneously moving in a completely different direction—exploring backwards recordings, tape loops, Indian music, and studio experimentation that had nothing to do with the Beach Boys' approach. They weren't trying to match or respond to anyone; they were undergoing their own private creative metamorphosis.
By the time Sgt. Pepper's landed, the Beatles weren't the same band Wilson had inspired—they'd already crossed the threshold Revolver had quietly built. They could then engage with Pet Sounds innovations from this transformed position, bringing orchestral ambition to their newly psychedelic palette. Revolver was their chrysalis album—the internal transformation that happened while everyone was watching the public creative dialogue.
To state the obvious, I'm not a music critic nor do I play one on streaming. That said, I personally cherish Revolver. Between the endcaps of George Harrison's here-on-earth tax protest and John Lennon's tripadelic transcendental blast-off, there's this enchanting pop-up book of scenes and voices—from lonely Eleanor Rigby to the dreamy detachment of "I'm Only Sleeping," from the sepia-tinged nostalgia of "Here, There and Everywhere" to the jaunty melancholy of "For No One." There's a dazzling spectrum of places and feelings here, and I'm particularly taken by Paul McCartney's pensive deep dives into loneliness. Alienation had never sounded so baroquely propelled nor had the desolation of a breakup ever sounded so beautifully prosaic.
Departing from Newtonian mechanics, elevating one thing doesn't require something else to be jettisoned in the opposite direction. In other words, my adulation of Revolver doesn't diminish the preceding or following works (I recently had an especially revelatory listening of Abbey Road, with "aha!" moments prepped by Get Back's contextual wallpapering). For me it's an especially scintillating glint in a revolution of the kaleidoscope that is The Beatles Story™.
That kaleidoscope continues turning even now. From the backwards vocals and tape loops of Revolver to the AI-assisted archaeology of "Now and Then," the Beatles have always been about technological and artistic evolution. Wilson's Beach Boys represented the other path—orchestral sophistication, harmonic complexity, emotional vulnerability. His death marks not just the end of a genius, but the closing of an era when popular music's greatest innovators pushed each other toward heights neither might have reached alone.
In this moment of settled reflection, after the waves of renewed Beatles discourse have receded, Revolver endures as that crucial pivot point—not responding to outside influences, not trying to match anyone else's achievements, but simply becoming something new. Sometimes the most profound transformations happen not in dialogue with others, but in the quiet space of internal discovery. That's the phase change Revolver represents, and perhaps why it continues to reveal new meanings across different life stages and cultural moments, including this one, as we say goodbye to Brian Wilson and process what it means when the giants of our most cherished art continue to leave us.
As Brian Wilson's voice fades into history, Revolver still plays—not in competition, but in counterpoint, a different kind of genius turning inward just as the world was about to explode into color, leaving behind the colors still shifting in the kaleidoscope.