Beatles - Revolver

This is the very first time I have heard "Revolver" (with the exception of a couple of a couple of obvious tracks). There is only one LP I am more ashamed not to have heard, and that is the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds".

I was too young to be into the Beatles the first time round, although a few of their songs - "All My Loving" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand", for example - give me a sort of warm glow. I first started to listen seriously to the Beatles (and the Rolling Stones) around 1977, when all the bands I liked at the time (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin etc) were running out of steam, and punk (which I was still to loathe for another few months) was in the ascendant.

Back then "Sergeant Pepper" was the undisputed masterpiece, but opinion has shifted and there seems to be a widespread view that "Revolver" was the perfect pinnacle of the Beatles' work. That is strange, because to me it is anything but perfect, but rather imperfect and transitional. When you subtract "Eleanor Rigby", which has a sort of perfection, as if it could never be otherwise, and the awful "Here, There And Everywhere" (the token slushy love song), the thing which makes it so thrilling is the way in which it is striving for a new language (musical and verbal) but not quite succeeding - a struggle which is obvious in "Love You To" and made explicit in "I Want To Tell You" (both Harrison songs). And breaking through in "Tomorrow Never Knows".