My #2 All-Time Favorite Album: Revolver by the Beatles

Ever since REVOLVER by THE BEATLES...my all-time #2 favorite album...came out in 1966 and my parents promptly purchased a copy, I've liked it and the great variety of music on it.  I wouldn't discover until many years later, though, that the version sold in the United States, as opposed to the original marketed in Britain and elsewhere, was diminished in what it offered.  Three tracks...I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing, and Doctor Robert, were missing in "our" version, having been placed on an America-only patched together album titled Yesterday and Today that was released earlier in '66 (I was nine going on ten at the time) ...my mom and dad quickly snapped that one up, too.  When CDs came out, the record industry bosses decided to just use the more complete British version of Revolver, which I am naturally totally okay with.  Every one of the fourteen tracks on it are good, although over the course of the 56 years I've heard it they've varied as to which are my favorites.  Back then while I was growing up, I tended to prefer the last two tracks of the album, Paul's Got to Get You into My Life and John's Tomorrow Never Knows...although my parents disliked the latter and never did buy a subsequent Beatles album.  Revolver came out just as the Beatles had finished a harrowing world tour and had decided to stop performing live and just produce studio albums instead.  The next album would be the somewhat pretentious Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, still an all-time favorite of mine.  But Revolver stayed true to the tried-and-true formula that had vaulted the Fab Four to fame and fortune...although its opening track Taxman, a George Harrison piece, strongly insinuates that it was the British government with its excessive taxation that has profited from their success the most.  "Back then" I preferred Side Two with those two aforementioned songs along with the melancholy Paul piano-and-horn piece For No One.  Now, though, I kind of dig the Harrison contributions, especially the heavily Indian music-influenced Love You To.  Below I have the album's fourteen tracks rearranged into the order of my own personal preference, with the principal singer and songwriter (with the exception of Yellow Submarine, sung by Ringo but written by Paul and John) following the title...

1 ELEANOR RIGBY (Paul McCartney)

2 FOR NO ONE (Paul)

3 TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS (John Lennon)

4 DOCTOR ROBERT (John)

5 AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING (John)

6 LOVE YOU TO (George Harrison)

7 TAXMAN (George)

8 I'M ONLY SLEEPING (John)

9 GOT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE (Paul)

10 SHE SAID SHE SAID (John)

11 HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE (Paul)

12 I WANT TO TELL YOU (George)

13 YELLOW SUBMARINE (Ringo Starr)

14 GOOD DAY SUNSHINE (Paul)

Next week I'll reveal and discuss my #1 all-time favorite album, from a different British quartet...