The Beatles - Revolver
Listen to an audio version of this review by Greg
Released on August 5, 1966 (the same day but not the year as my wedding anniversary), Revolver is The Beatles' seventh studio album, and perhaps the most groundbreaking. Let me explain.
By the end of 1965, The Beatles were already dominating the world. But who thought they could take it to even the NEXT level! Their previous album, Rubber Soul had been embraced by the establishment AND the counter-culture.
Band member John Lennon had some serious emotional pain from his childhood that he was looking to release, and that year he noted was the year he'd also found LSD. This would play a part in the writing and production of their next album, Revolver.
When the recording began in April 1966, the band wanted to challenge their audience with this next record. In many ways, they explored even alienating them. As I had noted in my review of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, 1965-1966 were years when many musicians and artists started to shift from recording albums that were singles focused to focus more on concept albums, where the songs are carefully and strategically placed throughout the record, not just smashed together.
After the band canceled a proposed film project by their manager Brian Epstein, they found themselves with more free time than they'd had (about 3 months' worth) since 1962. Therefore, they had an extraordinary amount of time to prepare for a new album. During this time, and while recording was active, they spent it doing what I would call, "exploratory musical research". For the first 6 months of 1966, the band attended concerts in London by musical acts such as Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, The Mamas & The Papas, Roy Orbison, The Lovin' Spoonful, and Ravi Shankar. John and Paul were also invited to attend a private listening party for The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album.
I was a late bloomer to some of the deeper Beatles albums. Although I'd heard 90% of the tracks already on Revolver, it wasn't until I was driving my 2 and 4-year-old sons to daycare every day that I fell in love with this album, and realized its true influence. Remember this came BEFORE Sgt. Peppers. I still had a CD player in my car at the time, so when I would grab a CD from my house collection, it would usually stay in my car stereo for months. So as you can imagine, for at least 6 months, every day during that drive…..Revolver..
This album would be their last before they retired from touring, forever. Things just got too big and too crazy on the road for The Beatles, to the point where they were scared regularly for their safety while on tour.
Klaus Voormann, bass player for the band Manfred Mann and several sessions and recordings with members of The Beatles on their solo albums, designed the album cover. Voorman was inspired by the black ink drawings from Aubrey Beardsley, a late 1800s author, and illustrator. Voorman went on to win a Grammy for Best Album Cover in 1967 for the Revolver cover.
Produced by George Martin at EMI Studios in London (now Abbey Road Studios), Revolver stretched the boundaries of popular music in 1965 and 1966, like The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, it transformed general studio recording, bringing with it, the 1960s counterculture and the creation of what would later be identified as psychedelic rock and progressive rock.
It is known that Paul McCartney's feverish avant-garde or forward-looking drive to go "too far, too quickly" would be tempered as their management and band members weren't sure how a psychedelic album would be received by the public. Nevertheless, in March of '66 there were hints of The Beatles urge to challenge and even alienate their fans. There's one photo from that period capturing the first time the group took risks with their public persona. In this photo, the band is pictured wearing white coats covered with slabs of meat and blood, surrounded by dismembered dolls. Oh yes, Revolver was going to be a very different Beatles album!
For a special addition to this review, we are going to celebrate the remixed, recut Super Deluxe release of Revolver. Giles Martin, the son of original Revolver producer, George Martin remixed this album, adding hours of outtakes, rare cuts, conversations, and additional tracks during the 1966 recording sessions. In total, the Super Deluxe issue, which came out on October 28th, 2022 consists of 5 Discs (for those of you who still think of albums in terms of records or CDs). Listen to the early takes of each song before they were completed. Then listen to a clip of the final version to hear how the songs progressed into what they eventually became.
The album kicks off with Taxman.
Written by guitarist George Harrison, with some lyrical contributions from John, Taxman is a story, or a confession by Harrison, of his feelings toward how they felt about the HMRC (or "Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs Office), the UK version of the IRS in the United States. The band realized during this time their finances were tighter than they'd originally expected, and with more income, came higher taxes, hence the additional motivation by George to write the song.
On Eleanor Rigby, Paul collaborated with John, Ringo, and George during the writing process.George is said to have thought up the "Ah, look at all the lonely people" part. Paul is said to have come up with the name Eleanor after working with actress Eleanor Bron in their 1965 film, "Help!" He later chose the name "Rigby" after seeing it on a sign in a storefront titled, "Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd and he noted he just liked the two names together.
What's more important about Eleanor Rigby is this song continued the alteration of The Beatles from a pop band to a more experimental, studio band. Producer George Martin came up with the idea to add the double-string quartet arrangement which had never been done by the band up until that point.
I'm Only Sleeping, written by John Lennon, refers to John's love for sleep. During the writing process of Revolver in 1966, Paul would frequently have to come to Lennon's apartment and rattle him out of bed. He noted during this time if John wasn't eating or watching television, he was sleeping, for sure.
I'm Only Sleeping features the then-unique sound of two guitars recorded over one another, but one of them in reverse.George Harrison spent approximately five hours late one night in the studio sharpening the part with the tape running backward so that, when reversed, it would fit what the band called "a dreamlike mood". One guitar was recorded with fuzz effects, the other without. During the break before the second bridge, the sound of a yawn can be heard, preceded by Lennon saying to McCartney, "Yawn, Paul.
In a unique twist, the band would record a song of George Harrison's for this album that scared many of the band's pop fans away….FAR away! Love You to offers their first song led by a sitar. This instrument became a part of Harrison's repertoire after listening to Ravi Shankar's music. Shankar was an Indian musician, composer, and sitarist. George introduced the sitar to Beatles fans on an earlier song, Norwegian Wood, off their previous album, Rubber Soul. Love You To is a love song to George's wife, Pattie Boyd, who by the way would later leave George for his close friend, Eric Clapton. Clapton's huge hit, Layla, was written about his love for Pattie and how he couldn't have her at the time. What a wild story! Back to Love You To, George also incorporated ideas inspired by his experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD, and like the songs on Revolver before it, Love You To served as one of the first examples of the Beatles expressing an ideology aligned with that of the emerging psychedelic music genre and the counterculture.
The track, She Said She Said, gives the listener a little more of a rock/pop taste. This is a bit of a change from Love to You. The creation of She Said She Said might just be the best story when compared to many other song creations by The Beatles.
It goes like this:
In August of 1965, the band rented a house in Beverly Hills while they were on a small break during a US Tour. During that break, they hosted a few guests including Roger McGuinn from The Byrds, and David Crosby, then also a member of The Byrds (this was before CSN or CSN&Y was even invented!). Another guest nobody remembered inviting was a guy named Peter Fonda. Fonda would later gain fame as an actor in the film, Easy Rider, also starring Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. But at this point, he was not very well known by anyone.
Apparently, 1965 is the first year John and George experienced LSD and they were eager to get Paul and Ringo to join them during this short break. Ringo and Paul were adamant, both refusing at first. The band would later say this division between the LSD boys and the non-LSD boys created such an awkward disconnection, that Ringo finally relented, but apparently, Paul stood his ground.
Peter Fonda was also a freelance writer for Rolling Stone Magazine at the time. He later wrote a column in the magazine describing his experience at the Beverly Hills mansion that week:
"I finally made my way past the kids and the guards. Paul and George were on the back patio, and the helicopters were patrolling overhead. They were sitting at a table under an umbrella in a rather comical attempt at privacy. Soon afterward we dropped acid and began tripping for what would prove to be all night and most of the next day; all of us, including the original Byrds, eventually ended up inside a huge, empty, and sunken tub in the bathroom, babbling our minds away.
I had the privilege of listening to the four of them sing, play around and scheme about what they would compose and achieve. They were so enthusiastic, so full of fun. John was the wittiest and most astute. I enjoyed just hearing him speak and there were no pretensions in his manner. He just sat around, laying out lines of poetry and thinking – an amazing mind. He talked a lot yet he still seemed so private.
It was a thoroughly tripped-out atmosphere because they kept finding girls hiding under tables and so forth: one snuck into the poolroom through a window while an acid-fired Ringo was shooting pool with the wrong end of the cue. "Wrong end?" he'd say. "So what f'in difference does it make?"
Apparently, the story goes: Lennon, Crosby, McGuinn, and Fonda later that night moved to a large bathtub and Peter Fonda told them the story of his nearly fatal self-inflicted gunshot accident when he was a kid. Now peaking on acid, this story freaked George out, causing him to get paranoid and fear that he was dying. Fonda continued to tell the group that because of this accident he had as a kid, he knew what it was like to be dead, which later gave birth to those lyrics in the song She Said She Said. John quickly urged Fonda to drop the subject, saying "Who put all that s**t in your head?" and told Fonda "You're making me feel like I've never been born", which also ended up on the lyrical sheet in the song.
John Lennon explained in a 1980 interview:
"We didn't want to hear about that! We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties, and this guy – who I really didn't know; he hadn't made Easy Rider or anything – kept coming over, wearing shades, saying, "I know what it's like to be dead," and we kept leaving him because he was so boring! ... It was scary. You know ... when you're flying high and [whispers] "I know what it's like to be dead, man."
Apparently, John eventually asked Fonda to leave the party and that was that.
And Your Bird Can Sing is a happy, sing-along tune that moves swiftly with a double guitar melody and makes everyone smile. The guitar parts were played separately by George and Paul. This song was originally written by Lennon with music/instrument credits to Paul. Originally John called it "You Don't Get Me" but later changed it. Apparently John never fully revealed the origin of his lyrics. There are many theories out there, too many to mention here and frankly, they sounded pretty far-fetched to me. The band originally recorded the song in a less produced style, more free-flowing like a Byrds song.
The use of dual two guitars harmonizing together on And Your Bird Can Sing was not something many bands had done up through 1966. So, this approach was very revolutionary. If you listen to a lot of music a decade later in the 1970s,The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote and recorded many songs using double harmonizing guitars.Boston and Iron Maiden are additional examples, also forming in the 1970s.
For No One is primarily a McCartney song, but like many tracks, John also collaborated with Paul as most of the songs were credited to Lennon-McCartney.
This song combines chamber music and a little bit of McCartney Pop. Definitely a radio song. The track is also notable because of its French horn solo halfway through and again toward the end. Performed by Alan Civil, a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he was a session soloist and the first non-German invited to join the Berlin Orchestra. Civil also played on the orchestra part in A Day in the Life, which is off their following album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and a favorite of most Beatle fanatics.
Paul said he wrote this song in the bathroom of his hotel room at a ski resort in Switzerland. The song ends with Paul singing, "A love that should have lasted years", which Paul noted was a reference to his then-girlfriend Jane Asher, a London-born actor (actress? Can we say actress anymore, or has that word been deleted from the English language?).
I always think of my Mom when I listen to this song. I haven't addressed this in the review yet, but my Mom was a huge Beatles fan. She saw them at Shea Stadium in '66 and introduced me to the band when I was a little kid. I can remember songs like I Wanna Hold Your Hand that never resonated with me. But it was not until I got older, maybe in my teenage years that I heard EVERYTHING else, like Sgt Peppers, The White Album, Let it Be, Rubber Soul, Abbey Road, and what else did I miss?
My Mom passed in 2020 and so now The Beatles hold an even stronger, more special place in my heart. I think she gravitated more towards the McCartney songs, as the more trippy Lennon songs weren't entirely her "cup of tea". So whenever I hear Paul's voice, I can't help but think of her. I was FINALLY able to see Paul McCartney in Concert in June of 2022 at my beloved Fenway Park. I got emotional several times during the show. My Mom attended Garland Junior College in the late 60s, a school that would later become part of what is now Simmons College. Her dorm was two blocks from Fenway. While attending the concert, I couldn't help but wonder what would she be thinking, sitting in her dorm in '67 listening to Sgt Pepper knowing her son would be seeing Paul 55 years later, two blocks from where she was sitting. It was a great show, Paul played EVERYTHING and I felt a little closer to Mom that night.
Doctor Robert might be my favorite track on Revolver, mostly because I think the best part of the album is the trippy part of the song when they go into:
"Well, Well Well, You're feeling fine. Well, Well, Well he'll make you…"
Most of the song was written by John, but the band credits (once again) the track to "Lennon-McCartney. It's no secret the song is about drug use, where Doctor Robert is the Doctor that helps you feel fine, sort of giving inspiration to words like "Candyman" and "Dr. Feelgood", which were terms used for years referencing drug dealers, and later made more famous by The Grateful Dead and Motely Crue.
This part where it breaks, the "Well, Well Well", just never fails to put me in a little, itty, bitty trance for about 3 seconds before the song darts back into the faster verse and chorus. I really enjoy the hopping bass line Paul puts down in this song. I can remember being a young bass player, maybe 13 or 14, and commenting to friends how I didn't feel McCartney was a good bass player, that he was just fair. MAN, why didn't someone just Will Smith me across the face! I was wrong. So wrong. Paul jumps all over the neck of the bass, playing jazzy, again I'll say, "hopping" bass lines. He really holds EVERY Beatles song together. Most bass players in pop music in this era would just hang on the major chord until it was time to make the change or changes, but not Paul. He improvises even during the verse and chorus, and he always comes back to "home base" (or home "bass" ) if you know what I mean?
There are many theories out there as to who the actual Doctor Robert was, whether John was referring to a specific Doctor or if it was fictional. Either way, it's my favorite track on this record for sure.
The closing song on Revolver, Tomorrow Never Knows once again follows much of that early, psychedelic direction the Beatles were going. I think there's a strong debate here that if the band didn't have Paul (or George of course) and his songwriting, their music might not have resonated as much with the younger, pop crowd. Not to say that Paul was writing songs like Herman's Hermits (Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter) but this is a perfect example of why they are considered the greatest of all time. Lennon's lyrics and songwriting were of a genius (yes, I'm saying genius again, but this is LEGIT), but when added with Paul's influences, (a bit more, just a bit more melodic, containing topics about love and women), mix that with George's input and his guitar playing (not to mention Ringo's underrated drumming for the time), you have, ladies and gentlemen, the greatest of all time!
Again, Tomorrow Never Knows was an early adopter and influencer in the psychedelic genre. If you listen to real early Pink Floyd, it's just LOADED with Beatles influences and sound all over the place. The song also pioneered the use of sampling, something that the hip-hop genre would do starting in the 1980s (except The Beatles sampled their own music). The song and the whole Revolver album really presented lyrical themes in pop music that advocated for mind expansion, anti-establishment, and even eastern spirituality.
When the album came out, Tomorrow Never Knows was ridiculed by most journalists and even their fans, harkening back to what I mentioned earlier in the review about The Beatles actually wanting to alienate their fan base. But in the end, I think things worked out, don't you?
Several music journalists today have ranked Tomorrow Never Knows in the top 20 songs of the entire 60s decade and amongst the greatest of all Beatles songs, mostly for the doors it broke through.
It's important to mention there were a few tracks that were recorded for Revolver that were eventually left off. Rain and Paperback Writer were examples of these. During the mid-1960s, the Beatles made a habit of releasing singles that included "B-Sides" to whet the appetite of their fans. When the album Revolver was later released, the band didn't want to cheat their fans by making them pay for a song twice. Therefore, they omitted Rain and Paperback Writer from the album.
Rain is a song I first heard during a performance back in 1996 or 97 of a Vermont Jam band named,Strangefolk. To learn more about Strangefolk and their album Lore, part of my desert-island 5 record collection, check out my review of Lore here.
I'm embarrassed to admit that for about 5 years I thought Rain was a Strangefolk song. I was in love with the song and like my first time hearing the band, The Slip, play Bouncing Around the Room, I loved that, and later found it was a Phish song. When I did learn it was a Beatles tune, my desire to dig deeper into their discography only strengthened.
The coda of Rain includes vocals recorded backward, which John noted as the first time the band ever used this technique on a record. Coda is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as "the concluding passage of a piece or movement". I looked it up and apparently when edited together from John's vocal track, the backward part consists of John singing the word "sunshine", then the word "rain" which is lengthened and taken from one of the choruses, and finally molded together with the song's opening line, "If the rain comes, they run and hide their heads". Ringo noted that out of every Beatles tune, Rain was his best-recorded drum performance. Listen in and see if you agree!
Revolver in many critics' minds, has surpassed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles'best album. I think this is open for debate. But I wanted to review Revolver today because I think what it does have "over" Sgt Pepper is order. It was first therefore it influenced more future artists to copy or emulate the style for later records, including the fact that it influenced The Beatles themselves in future writing.
Interestingly enough, The Beatles did not perform any of the songs from Revolver during their US tour in August of '66. This likely was because most of the tracks, with their heavy experimental, studio production quality, would have been close to impossible to replicate in concert. This was really the very beginning of the end of touring for The Beatles. Their last official "concert" was played at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29th, 1966. The only other time they would play together in front of an audience (outside the studio) was the famous show on the rooftop at Apple Studios in January of 1969. But then that was it. Forever….
By late 1966, the band's attitude towards touring was that it had become fruitless. They had to admit to themselves, as lame as it might sound, they'd gotten "too popular" and way too big to tour anymore, which I don't think will ever happen to another band as long as we are all still alive.
So if you want to geek out on The Beatles, start with Revolver, then work your way forward to Sgt Peppers, and so on and so forth. I'm not recommending you skip other albums entirely, but this one is special, and I think that is why George Martin's son Giles decided to remix it in 2022.
