August 1966. The Beatles put out Revolver, and popular music never sat quite right in its chair again.
Most rock bands were still cutting fairly straight arrangements at the time. The Beatles handed in something genuinely strange. A string octet on "Eleanor Rigby." Backwards guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping." The tape loops and drones of "Tomorrow Never Knows." Then that big Motown bounce on "Got to Get You into My Life." One record.
Sixty years later it still holds up as maybe the most ambitious rock album anyone's made. You can hear everything that came after it sitting inside it. Psychedelia. Art rock. Ambient. Sampling. And it still sounds completely planted in 1966.
For The British Invasion Years, records like Revolver are the inspiration and the standard both. The craft. The way every arrangement got real thought. That's the bar the '60s set. It's the bar the band holds itself to onstage.
Some songs just need a crowd. Come hear them with one.