The Daily Heller: My Favorite Beatles Album is My Favorite Album Ever

From Ringo Starr last week …

YES! The Beatles’ Revolver has been rereleased as a box set, and with it comes surprises, treasures and joy beyond belief. It’s a return to all the music that filled my angst-ridden 16-year-old rubber soul and raised me up every time I played it and stared at Klaus Voorman’s intriguing album cover. (What an amazing departure in style and tone for music graphics. It made me want to draw and do collage, too.)

From The Guardian: “A bonus disc on the new, expanded, remixed and remastered box set of 1966’s Revolver offers an even more transformative experience: a jaw-dropping sequence of ‘Yellow Submarine’ work tapes traces the song’s evolution from a fragile, sad wisp sung by John Lennon to its later iteration as a Ringo Starr-directed psych-pop goof. That the band steered ‘Yellow Submarine’ from morose folk trifle to boisterous stoner singalong seems improbable, but the tapes don’t lie: Through a combination of focused acoustic woodshedding and whimsical studio risks, the band arrived at the more familiar, upbeat ‘Yellow Submarine.'”

I saw the poster advertising Revolver on my local vacant lot post-no-bills hoarding and couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm. I ran home as fast as my arthritic leg would move to see whether the box set I’d preordered had arrived. So if I seem out of breath, and sound Beatlemanical, it’s because I am. (And no! It hadn’t arrived.)

So I went into the closet and pulled out my Klaus Voorman autographed copy of the German release of Revolver, which he gave me when we met in Munich years ago. And which I reproduce below because I simply want to celebrate everything Beatles.

What’s more: Even if the box set had arrived today, I don’t have a CD player or turntable at home. So I plan on driving around Manhattan all week in my car, which has a CD player, as I listen as many times as possible to the five discs. (Or maybe I’ll just listen to the songs here.)