JoJo’s Bizarre Musical Adventure: Nowhere Man, Rubber Soul

Part 3 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders is perhaps the most well-known or the most popular part of the series. The musical nomenclature took a more subtle approach; instead, it was swapped out for the major arcana of the tarot cards. Stardust Crusaders also saw a vast number of secondary antagonists who were swiftly dispatched, it is among them that the music references pop up.  

The first major callback happens to be Rubber Soul.  

“The title Rubber Soul was kind of, ‘Hey man, it’s got soul – it’s a lot of soul. A lot of soul, that music’. It was a spoof on that you know. Seemed nice and amusing. Very us – you know, very whacky.” 

– Paul McCartney on the title Rubber Soul. 

Rubber Soul is The Beatles’ sixth studio album. It was responsible for turning pop music into a serious art form. Rubber Soul also marked the bridge of The Beatles’ sound from rock and roll to experimental pop. It was also the first album to not have the group’s name on the cover. 

Rubber Soul’s iconic cover image was taken by Robert Freeman outside Lennon’s house. It has a stretched effect, a happy accident that occurred while Freeman was projecting the photo on an LP-sized cardboard. The board fell backwards, resulting in the image being stretched.  

The psychedelic-style rounded font — reminiscent of sap from a rubber tree — combined with the stretched cover cemented the image of The Beatles moving on from the naïveté of youth to full-fledged potheads.  

“Our whole attitude was changing – we’d grown up a little. I think grass was really influential in a lot of our changes, especially with the writers.” 

– Ringo Starr 

JJBA’s Rubber Soul was a man whose Stand (a manifestation of energy) takes on the form of a sticky, rubbery substance that consumes anything in its path known as Yellow Temperance. His stand could mold itself to match any appearance, giving him the ability to shapeshift.  

Rubber Soul was one of the many minions hired by DIO to eliminate the Joestar group. DIO promised him a reward of 100 million dollars if he was successful in killing Jotaro (Joseph’s grandson and the third JoJo). Eager for the money, Rubber Soul headed off to Singapore and infiltrated the group by impersonating one of the members.  

Back to the album, Rubber Soul has some of the most memorable songs by The Beatles, with a lot of firsts. 

“Norwegian Wood” was the first song in Western rock history to feature the Indian stringed instrument, the sitar. George Harrison had quite accidentally discovered the sitar on the sets of their second film Help.  

“We’d recorded the ‘Norwegian Wood’ backing track and it needed something. We would usually start looking through the cupboard to see if we could come up with something, a new sound, and I picked the sitar up – it was just lying around; I hadn’t really figured out what to do with it,” Harrison was to recall later. This was much before he met Pandit Ravi Shankar and formally trained to play the instrument.  

Lennon, who wrote the song, intended for it to be a “sophisticated” way of alluding to an affair, hoping that his wife Cynthia wouldn’t know! The title, according to McCartney was a subtle reference to the cheap wood paneling in vogue those days, which were easy for a spurned lover to set fire to.  

JJBA’s Rubber Soul wasn’t exactly an arsonist but he had no problem killing and consuming any person or animal in his path. Viewing other lifeforms as forms of sustenance, Rubber Soul ambled on. What made him such a difficult villain to catch was the fact that no one could tell what, who, or where he was. A friend? A foe? Rubber Soul’s shapeshifting abilities made him a real Nowhere Man.  

He’s a real nowhere man 

Sitting in his nowhere land 

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody 

Doesn’t have a point of view 

Knows not where he’s going to 

Isn’t he a bit like you and me? 

“Nowhere Man” was the first song by the band that didn’t feature a romantic theme. Lennon who was having difficulty coming up with meaningful lyrics gave up after hours of trying, to just “lay down” and then it came to him.  

This was also the first time we find Lennon turning introspective about his life. “In My Life” was originally written as a long poem looking back at his childhood. The version he had written out back then heavily featured the bus route he used to take in Liverpool. He then reworked it to a more fond reminiscing of the time and people he once knew. The original lyrics went like this: 

There are places I’ll remember, 

All my life, tho’ some have changed, 

Some forever but not for better, 

Some have gone and some remain. 

Penny Lane is one I’m missing, 

Up church and to the clocktower, 

In the circle of the Abbey, 

I have seen some happy hours. 

Past the tram sheds with no trams, 

On the 5 bus into town, 

Past the Dutch and St. Columbus, 

To the Dockers Umbrella that they pulled down. 

All these places have their memories, 

Some are dead and some are living 

And “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields” were saved for another day.  

McCartney wrote “Michelle” inspired by the Parisian bohemian culture which was getting increasingly popular those days in Liverpool. Initially, he came up with a faux French song in Chet Atkins’ finger-picking style, parodying a performance he saw at a party.  

For Rubber Soul, however, he got by with a little help from his friends to come up with actual French phrases and thus was born “Michelle, ma belle.” 

Rubber Soul continues to be a timeless masterpiece and the pivotal album that shook the music industry back in 1965. 

Rubber Soul isn’t the first Beatles reference we get in JJBA, (that is quite literally JoJo from Get Back), and it certainly isn’t the last.