The Beatles' influence continues to reverberate across the decades since their epoch-making emergence in global culture. Last year alone, they outpaced all "catalog" acts with some 1.5 billion streams. Meanwhile, "Revolver," the subject of their latest "super deluxe" boxed set series, registered a top-five showing on the Billboard charts. When it was originally released back in August 1966, Revolver marked an artistic, even psychedelic breakthrough, building mightily on the strengths of "Rubber Soul," its folk-oriented predecessor.
Taking its name from the image of a spinning phonograph record, "Revolver" has proven to be an even more prescient metaphor for understanding the Beatles' phenomenal success: it's a near certainty that the LP has been playing somewhere, without fail, in every minute of every hour since music lovers first laid their hands on the album during that long-ago summer.
