While in retrospect it seems like a no-brainer that the world would embrace the new grown-up Beatles, this was by no means clear. As Geoff Emerick, later their engineer, reports, “There was almost no buzz at all in the Abbey Road corridors about Rubber Soul. Though everyone agreed that it had quite a few good songs and a crisp, clean sound, the general feeling among the staff that were working on it was that it was a pleasant diversion into the realm of folk and country music.” Early reviews were mixed—the U.K. music press called it “monotonous” and “not their best.”
