Revolver

The making of Revolver - hunkered down in Abbey Road with George Martin - is in itself a great Beatles story, but it would be nothing if the results weren't so influential. More than even Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds, Revolver fed directly into the rock 'n' roll zeitgeist, and its influence could be heard everywhere: from the psychedelic San Francisco sound of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead to the first wave of post-blues hard rock a la Sabbath and Zeppelin, through movie soundtracks and pretty much everything that followed - including every generation of guitar-based pop music and even heavy metal. More than any record before or after, Revolver was the game-changer, and this is, finally, the detailed telling of its storied recording and enormous impact. Paperback, 266 p.