The Beatles - Revolver, 60 Years Later
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- 39 min read
Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream...the Beatles’ Revolver turns 60.
John Lennon: guitar, harmony vocals, Hammond organ, harmonium, tape loops, tambourine, lead vocals on “I’m Only Sleeping,” “She Said She Said,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Doctor Robert,” “Tomorrow Never Knows”
Paul McCartney: bass, piano, rhythm guitar, clavichord, tape loops, harmony vocals, guitar solo on “Taxman,” lead vocals on “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here There And Everywhere,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “For No One,” and “Got To Get You Into My Life”
George Harrison: guitar, sitar, tambura, some bass, tambourine, tape loops, harmony vocals, lead vocals on “Taxman,” “Love You To,” and “I Want To Tell You”
Ringo Starr: drums, percussion, tape loops, lead vocals on “Yellow Submarine”
Special guests:
Alan Civil: French horn, “For No One”
Anil Bhagwat: tabla, “Love You To”
Neil Aspinall, Mal Evans, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Brian Jones, Pattie Boyd: partygoers on “Yellow Submarine”
Uncredited players from Asian Music Circle: additional instrumentation on “Love You To”
Produced by George Martin, engineered by Geoff Emerick
art by Klaus Voormann
“Trust your divinity, trust your brain, trust your companions. Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.”
– Timothy Leary, introduction to The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based On The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Pre-British Invasion, the album’s sole purpose was to push sales. Basically, record labels wanted to sell you the single twice. Major shifts in the purpose of the album occurred in response to the latest Beatles album.
Released in December of 1965, Rubber Soul was the starting gun of two years of remarkable collective advancement in rock-and-roll. John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs author Ian Leslie said, “In no time at all, the Beatles had transformed themselves from performers who made LPs to recording artists who worked with sound to make album-length artistic statements.” Over the next two years, a massive collective advancement in rock-and-roll took place. Everyone was inspired by each other, and everyone was challenged by each other. Not too shabby for an album recorded in just about two weeks!
Post-Rubber Soul, the Beatles made it clear to manager Brian Epstein that they needed a break. They’d been nonstop since Hamburg: when they weren’t playing live, they were on television. When they weren’t on television, they were on the radio. When they weren’t on the radio, they were in interview, writing, recording, or doing some other silly promotional thing. All the Beatles had known for their entire adult lives to this point were being Beatles. It’s a miracle any of them had the time to get married, let alone three! Brian granted the Beatles’ wish in the form of a three-month hiatus from public appearances. George kicked the break off with his wedding and honeymoon in January of 1966. Little did the Fab Four know that in just one album, a few hundred hours in the studio, and seven months' time, they would no longer be rock-and-roll darlings.
The Inspiration beatles revolver album review
While John, George, and Ringo had all bought houses in the country and visited each other daily, Paul was the last Beatle still living in London full-time. John’s place was a long drive, so he’d only turn up to work. This changed their relationship; effectively separating Lennon-McCartney from here on out. beatles revolver album review
In John’s absence, Paul’s got some new friends. His girlfriend’s brother, pop star Peter Asher, and his friend, Indica Gallery owner (and Marianne Faithfull’s ex-husband) John Dunbar induct Paul into the London underground scene. He’s meeting lots of people and absorbing lots of new influences. He rubbed shoulders with everyone from Bertrand Russell and Cornelius Cardew to Cliff Richard and Stevie Wonder. Paul was invited to lots of parties, and one of these parties was hosted by avant-garde composer Luciano Berio; contemporary of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Paul took an immediate liking to these composers; particularly Stockhausen and his early experiments in electronic music. Paul listened to lots of classical music, too; he was exposed to Handel and Haydn through the Asher family. He said to the New Musical Express that June,
“I’m learning all the time. You do, if you keep your eyes open. I find life is an education...but it’s only because I keep my eyes open and I see what’s going on around me. Anyone can learn...if they look.”
quoted from: “How ‘Paperback’ Came About.” New Musical Express, 6/24/1966.
Speaking of the Asher family, Paul’s relationship with Jane was straining. She was reluctant to give up her successful acting career to be a rock star’s wife. Paul knew in his heart of hearts that he wanted to settle down and be a family man...but he could not stop cheating on Jane Asher. Their conflict shows up on Rubber Soul cuts like “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You,” and “We Can Work It Out.” Paul continues his trend of writing about messy relationships and lonely people into 1966.
While the Beatles were on break, Paul started writing this song about a “Miss Daisy Hawkins” and a Father McCartney. Upon deciding his dad’s name didn’t quite work, he flips through the phone book to find the name “McKenzie.” The genesis of Daisy’s new name has been contested over the years. Was it the Rigby & Evens firm sign, or the literal actual Eleanor Rigby headstone in the St. Peter’s churchyard? Who knows. But Paul’s new songs display a level of detachment; highly unusual for the king of silly love songs. “Eleanor Rigby” is in third person. “For No One,” which he wrote while on a ski vacation with Jane, is in second person. With this new batch of tunes, Paul has officially graduated from “me-you-love” songs.
While Paul was out living his best social butterfly life, John played the homebody. He spun singles by Little Richard, the Miracles, and Bob Dylan on his home jukebox. He read lots of books, notably Nietzsche and Hugh Schonfield’s The Passover Plot. John said he gave up writing love songs after “It’s Only Love.” Now he writes “In My Life” about the procession of time and grappling with change. “Nowhere Man” is about feeling lost in life. Where The Music Had To Go author Jim Windolf wrote, “Now that the Dylan influence had been fully absorbed into (the) Lennon-McCartney songcraft, John reveled in the freedom to write about almost anything.”
Why the sudden expansion in the Beatles’ interests? They’d either dropped out of high school or college to do this for a living. They were making up for time lost, and these few months of relative quiet on the Beatle front were the perfect time to get out there (or, in John’s case, get stoned and lay in bed all day) and do so.
Dick James gave John and Paul state-of-the-art reel-to-reel tape recorders. This enabled them to develop their work at home; they weren’t just cutting demos, now they could overdub them. Paul used his new toy to carry out his own electronic music experiments, a la Stockhausen. For Christmas 1965, he brought in a home tape called “Unforgettable.” Though it was basically a 20-minute mixtape/shitpost combo, it made an impact. George said, “John, Ringo, and I played it and realized Paul was onto something new.” Combine that with John’s interest in musique concrete and the alchemy was inevitable.
While on break, the guys also participated in a series of features with Maureen Cleave, to be published in the Evening Standard. Surely these won’t have widespread repercussions!
The Taxman
Just before the end of Beatles’ hiatus, on March 31st, 1966, the Labour Party’s Harold Wilson was re-elected as Prime Minister in a landslide win against the Tories’ Edward Heath.
Post-World War II, the British government was still in a massive deficit. One of the ways to alleviate this was a whopping 96.25% tax on the wealthiest earners. Some very rough math: that’s one for you, nineteen for me. The pro of this supertax is, of course, taxing the rich. The con: a tax that high didn’t exactly incentivize the rich to stay in the country and contribute to its economy. In more than one case, this supertax and its consequences (namely poor business practices) forced Britain’s greatest cultural contributors out of the country. Consider that the Beatles grew up working-class. Growing up poor affects how you handle money! The guys very suddenly learned that making money was not as simple as just making money. This may seem naive, but now they were paying nineteen shillings and sixpence out of every pound they made.
George was most anti-war of the Beatles. He hated that his supertax went to funding weapons manufacturing specifically. In interview with Radio Caroline, he said, “they can’t...take the taxes down ’cause they (government) haven’t got enough money...they’ll never have enough money while they’re buying all that crap like F-111s. Which they’ve proved they’re no use whatsoever...what’s good all that? So if they pay off a few of the bloody debts” (to the steel industry, Ringo clarifies,) “then maybe they’d be able to cut the tax down a little, Harold?” For all of these reasons, George wrote “Taxman.”
The Psychedelic Experience
While George grumbled about his money woes, Paul brought John to the Indica Gallery. John was looking for texts by “Nitz-Ga,” whoever that guy is. (Nietzsche. John was referring to Nietzsche.) Instead, he picked up a copy of Timothy Leary et. al.’s The Psychedelic Experience.
A common misconception about a certain song John wrote is that the lyric based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. To this day, revered Beatle authors and historians make this gaffe. And that’s because a., they clearly haven’t read the Book of the Dead or Leary, and b., the myth was stoked by Paul himself! He accidentally name-dropped book to the NME.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead was meant to guide devotees through the cycle of death and rebirth. Carl Jung’s foreword makes note of the second phase, chonyid baro; the dream state after death. Jung also notes transition from sidpa to chonyid baro as “a sacrifice of the ego’s stability and a surrender to the extreme uncertainty of what must seem like a chaotic riot of phantasmal forms.” Timothy Leary, studying psychedelics at Harvard, found the Book of the Dead read like...the psychedelic experience. Leary and his collaborators combined Jung’s commentary with a “pop” version of Eastern philosophy and heavy paraphrasing of the Book of the Dead for The Psychedelic Experience. (They have hardly anything in common.) The Psychedelic Experience interprets the Book of the Dead as not being a guide through literal death, but ego death.
“An ever-changing surging turmoil of color may engulf your vision. This is the ceaseless transformation of energy. The life process. Do not fear it. Surrender to it. Join it. It is part of you. You are part of it. Remember also: Beyond the restless flowing electricity of life is the ultimate reality – The Void.”
quoted from: Timothy Leary, introduction to The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based On The Tibetan Book of the Dead (2007 ed.)
In The Psychedelic Experience, “John saw an opportunity to prove that even if he was bot an urbane cultural maven like Paul, he was still the Beatle best able to channel the culture’s most radical currents.” John’ssongwriting right now also sports certain detachment, thanks to his heroic intake of acid! Friend Pete Shotton said, “He saw acid as a godsend – a magical key to uncharted regions of his own imagination, and a potential cure for most of his psychological problems. It gave almost tangible form to his lifelong perception of the world as a surrealistic carnival, and it enabled him – instantaneously, effortlessly, and without leaving his chair – to experience the semblance of mystical visions and even communion with God.”
The Void
Revolver was recorded in ten weeks in the spring of 1966. Work began on April 4th. Two very consequential things happen that day. Number one: 21-year-old Geoff Emerick was appointed head engineer of the project. Number two: working title “Mark 1,” or “The Void.” Much has been said in recent years about Geoff taking credit for stuff he didn’t do in his memoir, but one thing is for certain: without him, “Tomorrow Never Knows” wouldn’t have happened the way it did, and without “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the rest of Revolver would be very different. The guys had top-of-the-line equipment available to them at EMI, but there were strict rules of how to use it. For instance, when Donovan recorded his “Sunshine Superman” single at EMI back in December of ’65, Mickie Most had to submit request to a panel to turn up the bass. That’s how strict this place is! Geoff saw those rules, and being the young guy in the room who was most familiar with the Beatles’ influences, threw those rules out the window. He was responsible for Revolver’s three main innovations: the drum sound (achieved through moving mics closer to Ringo’s kit and deadening his bass drum with a sweater,) bringing in a Leslie cabinet so John’s voice sound like he was “the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a mountain,” and compression. Engineer Ken Townsend was in fact responsible for John’s automatic double tracking. This tech is a given nowadays; you can just go into whatever software you use and copy-paste the vocal track. But in April of 1966, ADT was the hydrogen bomb to the figurative coughing baby.
The next day, Paul brought in tape loops including an orchestra playing a B-flat major chord, wine glasses,distorted guitar and bass, and his own laugh. To get these loops on the backing track, everyone at EMI that day – all four Beatles, their whole entourage, and the entire staff of EMI white-coats – held pencils and drinking glasses to keep the tape taut.
“So much of how ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ turned out was just luck. Certainly, it wasn’t planned that way or mapped out beforehand...The Beatles had come into the Revolver sessions completely refreshed and rejuvenated...and they connected up with me, willing to try anything and everything. It was just magic, pure serendipity.”
quoted from: Geoff Emerick with Howard Massey, Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (2006.)
And also drugs! Mal Evans was off in the corner lighting incense to mask the weed smell!
“Though we hadn’t tried pot ourselves, Phil (McDonald) and I had been around enough musicians to know what it was,” Geoff said, “and we were sometimes aware of the funny smell in the studio after the Beatles and their roadies snuck a joint off in the corner, though I doubt very much if the straitlaced George Martin knew what was going on...If the Beatles wanted to get high during their recording sessions, it was none of our business. We were there to do a job, and we just carried on with the work at hand.” Martin was no church mouse. He totally knew!“I knew that the boys smoked pot, and they equally knew that I disapproved. And they never did it in front of me. They would always have Mal roll them a joint and they’d nip out into the canteen and lock it, or else go into the loo and have a smoke and come back again, beaming all over their faces.”
The Beatles’ perpetual stoned-ness made for more experimenting: see John blowing bubbles into a drinking glass on “Yellow Submarine”...or Mal waterproofing a mic with a condom and submerging it into a bottle of milk!
The Circle
During Revolver production, the Beatles heard one very influential record – that was influenced by Rubber Soul!As much a bastardization as it was, the Capitol version of Rubber Soul enforces the idea of sonically-cohesive album. Again, this seems like Lincoln Logs to us, but in mid-1966, it was totally new.
Yes, Pet Sounds was a big deal. But as soon as this album is mentioned, people throw everything else happening in 1966 out the window! If they don’t do that, then they misconstrue the cross-pollination of pop music in ’66 as being solely between the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan.
Bob was involved: he met up with the Beatles when he arrived in England on his fated 1966 “world tour.” He played his guests an acetate of the yet-to-be-released Blonde On Blonde. Of note is (apparently) the song “Fourth Time Around. Beatle biographers Steve Turner and Jim Windolf interpret “Fourth Time” as Bob lashing out at John for “copying” him; “Norwegian Wood” being the fourth time he’d done so. Considering the songs sound nothing alike, I really don’t give much credence to this theory!
Always eager to impress, Paul played “Tomorrow Never Knows” for Bob. Depending on the account, he either said, “Oh I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore,” or up and walked out of the room!
But 1966 was not a Beatles/Beach Boys/Bob triangle. As my friend Nancy over at Vinyl Friday pointed out in one of her episodes a couple years back, it was really a circle which consisted of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and the Byrds. Roger McGuinn and David Crosby first played George the music of Ravi Shankar for George! And Croz would get get very close with the Fabs over the next year. Rubber Soul and this early version of “And Your Bird Can Sing” make the Byrds’ influence on the Beatles clear as day.
The R&B influence was still there. The title of “Got To Get You Into My Life” is a riff on Solomon Burke’s “Got To Get You Off My Mind.” The Beach Boys’ influence is felt on the header of “Here There And Everywhere.” You can even hear Albert Ayler and John Coltrane in Revolver’s guitar solos!
“Paperback Writer” backed with “Rain” was released in June. Geoff rewired a loudspeaker to be the mic for Paul’s Rickenbacker bass on the A-side; this allowed for the prominent bass sound on subsequent album cuts. “Rain” sports another lyric inspired by The Psychedelic Experience, and either by engineer error, John being stoned out of his gourd, or George Martin intentionally doing such while the boys were on break, the tape was put on the machine backwards. We’ll hear many more instances of backwards guitar and samples on Revolver.
The Butcher Cover
In interview with Alan Smith for the NME, Paul said, “There’ll always be people around like Andy Warhol in the States, the bloke who makes great long films of just people sleeping. Nothing is weird anymore. We sit down and write, or go into the recording studios, and we just see what comes up.” This “nothing is weird anymore” attitude put the Fabs at odds with their core fanbase. While they accepted new sounds like Pet Sounds, they still enjoyed pop music with pop song structures. This preference showed in “Paperback Writer”’s failure to take the number spot on debut.
The ads for “Paperback Writer” caused more of a stir than the single itself!
Robert Whitaker’s latest and greatest was inspired by Salvador Dali’s film Un Chien Andalou. He brought inbaby dolls a la Hans Bellmer and...fresh meat...delightful. Paul tried to play this photoshoot off as an anti-Vietnam statement, while John said it was because the Beatles were sick of all the photo shoots. The generally-accepted interpretation is that Whitaker sought to demythologize the pop star. “I’d got fed up with taking squeaky-clean pictures of the Beatles, and I thought I’d revolutionise what pop idols are.” This shoot has always felt more like a commentary on the commodification of pop stars to me. “I’ve always thought these screaming, knicker-wetting girls, if they ever got hold of the people, they’d have torn them apart,” Whitaker said.
The image in question was intended as the center panel of a triptych; in the middle of "creation" and "destruction." What dismembered dolls and rotting meat have to do with stasis, I have no idea. It was used again for the cover of the Yesterday and Today compilation. From an official statement made by Capitol exec Alan Livingston:
“The original cover, created in England, was intended as “pop art” satire. However a sampling of public opinion in the United States indicates that the cover design is subject to misinterpretation.”
quoted from: Jon Savage, 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded (2016.)
You can say that again! Stores in America were horrified and demanded a new cover.
The Beatles didn’t have time for controversy. They had an album to finish! They were firing on all cylinders creatively, but by June, they realized they were a song short. Never one to be put off by a deadline (“When I’m up against the wall, Paul, you’ll find I’m at my best,”) John banged out “She Said She Said.” The song is based on a bizarre situation he found himself in with George, Croz and McGuinn, and Peter Fonda; all high on LSD and watching Cat Ballou. Revolver marked the first time the Beatles attended mixing sessions and gave their input. This was also the first time the guys sequenced the album themselves, without George Martin! This was done while the Beatles were shut up in their hotel room in Tokyo ahead of their show at the Nippon Bukodan.
However, the album’s title was still undecided when they left for said tour in July. EMI’s projected release date was in August! The guys jostled around “Magic Circles,” “Abracadabra,” “Beatles on Safari,” “Freewheelin’ Beatles,” and we can’t forget their spoof on the Stones’ recent Aftermath. I think Paul was the one who suggested “After Geography.” In the end, they settled on Revolver.
The Phillipines Incident
The Beatles had plans to tour Germany, Japan, the Philippines, and America to promote Revolver. However, two major scandals – nay, international incidents – overshadowed its release.
First came “the Philippines incident.” This can be chalked up to a slew of miscommunications, beginning with tour manager Vic Lewis booking the Beatles to stay on a yacht rather than a hotel. Brian Epstein wasn’t aware of this. He played along until unauthorized guests boarded the boat to lunch and meet the Beatles. Brian freaked out, and moved the guys to a hotel in Manila. Brian also wasn’t aware that, in Filipino culture at the time, anything but an explicit “no” to an invitation would be taken as a “yes.” That’s how you got President Marcos and his wife preparing for the Beatles’ arrival at their palace while the Beatles’ team had turned down a 3 PM palace visit the day before. They hadn’t turned down this other invitation to this lunch because Ramon Ramos buried the lunch invitation in the small print of the papers. He hoped this would massage the situation into a yes on the day, but again, Brian said no.
The Beatles’ team weren’t fully aware of the political situation in the Philippines at the time. An “invitation” from the “the President’s wife” was more like an order from the dictator’s wife. (David Guerrero has a whole book about the debacle titled You Won’t See Me. He’s Filipino, so he’s got a perspective not all of us have on these events.) After “ghosting” Imelda Marcos and the First Family, the situation quickly devolved. The Beatles’ military security was revoked, leaving them running through the airport to escape agitators. Some tax issue arose surrounding the Beatles’ show fee, tying Vic up. Mal Evans and Tony Barrow’s entries into the country were scrutinized by officials as an intimidation tactic. As the two were ordered off the plane, Mal turned to George and said, “Tell Lil (his wife) that I love her.”
George hadn’t liked touring since ’65. He said to reporters on the Heathrow tarmac, “We’re going to have a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans.”
...hey, remember those Maureen Cleave features?
The Bigger Than Jesus Thing
“Bigger than Jesus” wasn’t even the most controversial thing one of the Fabs said in the Evening Standard profiles. For instance, George said, “I think religion falls flat on its face. All this ‘love thy neighbour,’ but none of them are doing it. How can anybody get into the position of being the Pope an accept all the glory and the money and the Mercedes-Benz and all that?” Later, “Why can’t we bring all this out in the open? Why is there all this stuff about blasphemy? If Christianity’s as good as they say it is, it should stand up to a bit of discussion.” Back in April, Time published the headline, “Is God Dead?” proving American culture was having this conversation already!
When asked about religion, a topic he'd spoken about before in interview with the trusted journalist Cleave, John said,
“I think Jesus was probably a very hip guy. I think a lot of the stuff about magic and miracles is probably a lot of bullshit that was written about years later. I think he was just a very hip guy and you can read his messages. What he really says is, ‘You are here. Be true to yourselves. Try to love people. Love your neighbor. Help someone if they’re down.”
quoted from: Maureen Cleave, “On a Hill in Surrey…A Young Man, Famous, Loaded, and Waiting For Something” The Evening Standard, 3/4/1966.
But the quote that caught people’s attention was,
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ’n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
quoted from: Maureen Cleave, “On a Hill in Surrey…A Young Man, Famous, Loaded, and Waiting For Something” The Evening Standard, 3/4/1966.
John was trying to say that the teachings of Christ got lost amid thousands of years fanaticism, interpretation, and re-interpretation. One might argue that the messages of Christianity are skewed when they are taken out of context. John’s feature was published in March without incident. It ran again in the New York Times Magazine in April. Again, no problem.
It was when the story was sold to Datebook and edited by Art Unger, who sent advance copies to media in the American South, that it all went wrong. John’s comments might’ve flown under the radar had the Layton and Charles show on WAQY out of Birmingham, Alabama, not received one of these promotional issues and spoken about it on air. And even then, this might’ve gone unnoticed had a journalist looking for his next story not been listening to that show on his morning commute. Because of him, “Bigger Than Jesus” breached containment. All hell broke loose.
Chapters of the KKK began picketing Beatles shows, which scared the daylights out of them, as you can imagine. And of course, there were the “Beatle burnings.” Having gotten himself and Datebook in way over their heads, Art Unger panicked and phoned Brian. Still sick from whatever he caught in the Philippines, Brian basically told Art this was no big deal. “They have to buy the albums to burn them.” Once Brian recovered, he realized this is, in fact, a big fucking deal. He went into crisis mode, making a public statement saying the whole thing was taken out of context. Which it was, but it also kinda wasn’t? NEMS signed off on selling Cleave’s stories to Datebook, which caused this firestorm in the first place!
John felt horrible about the whole thing. His epic flub endangered those close to him, and put the careers of the other Beatles and all who worked for them at risk. On the other hand, John still believed in the core of what he said. He wasn’t wrong! That’s how you got him making a public apology at press conference while defending himself in same breath. (Shoutout to Paul for talking the foot out of John’s mouth a few times there.) Thankfully, John had a good sense of humor about it all. “I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days.”
The funniest side effect of “Bigger Than Jesus” was EMI and Capitol rush-releasing “Eleanor Rigby” backed with “Yellow Submarine” as a good-old-fashioned diversion tactic. And it worked! The single peaked at number one in both the UK and the US.
The Reception
Disc and Music Echo gave the Revolver review to Ray Davies ahead of release. He said “Taxman” was “a bit limited,” called “And Your Bird Can Sing” “too predictable,” and wrote off “Yellow Submarine” as “a load of rubbish.” About “Eleanor Rigby,” Ray said,
“I bought a Haydn LP the other day and this sounds just like it. It’s all sort of quartet stuff and it sounds like they’re out to please music teachers in primary schools. I can imagine John saying: ‘I’m going to write this for my old schoolmistress.’”
quoted from: “Ray Davies Reviews the Beatles LP” Disc & Music Echo, 7/31/1966.
Ironic, considering Paul wrote “Rigby,” and George said it would “probably only appeal to Ray Davies types.”
Melody Maker acknowledged Revolver as a major win, as the Beatles’ previous work (that which their live sets still heavily relied upon) was now old hat. “There are still more ideas buzzing around in the Beatles’ heads than in most of the pop world put together. A lot of them have been poured into Revolver, and the result is, like Rubber Soul, a veritable goldmine of ideas…” The Beatles’ final American tour was lowkey cursed. Fourteen cities in eighteen days was already grueling, and ticket sales dipped after the “Bigger Than Jesus” thing. A bomb threat delayed their show in Memphis. The Cincinnati date was cancelled after, as the crew set up the band’s in the rain, Mal Evans was knocked on his ass by an electric shock. St. Louis one of the worst the Beatles ever played. It was clear they were overworked and under-rehearsed. Ralph J. Gleason reviewed the final show of this tour, at Candlestick Park in San Fransisco. He was unimpressed.
“Is it all worth it? As a spectacle it is not without sociological interest, of course. As a performance it is, like John Lennon says, a puppet show. It can hardly continue to be attractive to four such rational, intelligent and talented human beings.”
quoted from: Jim Windolf, Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – And The World (2026.)
The conclusion of the Melody Maker review states that the Beatles would “never be able to copy this. Neither will the Beatles be able to reproduce a tenth of this material on a live performance. But who cares? Let John, Paul, George, and Ringo worry about that when the time comes.” That time never came. The Beatles were sick of risking their safety and disrupting the communities they visited. They wanted to focus on their studio work, since their music had advanced far beyond what a live setting was capable of. After Candlestick Park, the Beatles unceremoniously pulled the plug on touring. When it came time for the NME’s year-end readers’ poll – one which the Beatles were all but guaranteed to win “best group” in – The Beatles came in second place, after the Beach Boys.
After being left to marinate for six decades, Revolver regularly usurps Sgt. Pepper’s as the fans’ pick for “the best Beatles album.” “Yellow Submarine” launched an animated film that became years-long thorn in the Beatles’ sides – I’m talking from Pepper’s through Let It Be! The Chemical Brothers sampled “Tomorrow Never Knows.” The song also plays over an iconic scene in Mad Men. A video for “I’m Only Sleeping” won aGrammy in 2023. But Revolver hasn’t always been thought of so fondly. Why did this album falter? Easy: the Beatles’ core audience was, on average, ten years younger than them. Well-adjusted fifteen-year-olds don’t think of mortality or taxes! How long were the Beatles going to fake holding our hands? Paul said, “You can’t be singing 15-year-old songs at 20 because you don’t think 15-year-old thoughts at 20 – a fact that escapes some people.” Revolver’s reception is also indicative of split history of 1966. Mind you, while Dylan was singing, “Everybody must get stoned!” and the Beatles were the first to put backwards music on the radio (according to John,) “Ballad of the Green Berets” was America’s best-selling single of 1966!
The Songs
I first covered Revolver about three years ago. I was a very different listener, and not much of a writer! I thought this album was too in-between, and at times “not Sixties enough.” Now that I have a fuller understanding of the year 1966 and how consequential of a year it was for everyone, especially the Beatles, my understanding of this album has totally changed! Do I think this Revolver is the “best” album of 1966? I think it’s balanced, wonderfully crafted, well-written, and well-executed. Is Revolver one of the albums of 1966? Absolutely. Like The Velvet Underground and Nico couldn’t have come from any place in time but the New York underground scene in 1966, and the Doors’ self-titled debut couldn’t have been made anywhere but Laurel Canyon in 1966,Revolver is London at the peak of its pop culture power in 1966. Like the London underground in the mid-Sixties, Revolver is all about breaking conventions and challenging world views. This album seeks to make something artful and new.
All that being said, I’m more confident answering the question of: is the procession of the following 60 years of rock-and-roll the same without Revolver? I say no. This album is an essential stone laid in the path.
Speaking of breaking conventions, it’s highly unusual to start a Beatles album with a George song. This was the first and only time in the Beatles’ discography that this happened. Revolver begins with collage of sounds: a voice counting in, tape scratches, a guitar warmup, and a cough. This was obviously a product of the studio, but we’ve shrugged off glossy pop sheen. This isn’t the sky-high chord that kicks off A Hard Day’s Night.
Taxman’s stop-start riff was inspired by the Batman theme. (No, really. The Beatles received promo copies of the single ahead of show airing!) The riff is sleek, thrifty, and vicious. It wastes no time. Neither does the slice of reality George serves us: “Let me tell you how it will be/It’s one for you, nineteen for me.” The narrator taunts the listener: “Should five percent appear too small?/Be thankful I don’t take it all!” The taxman takes it all, no matter who you are, what you do, how much or how little you have, or how ridiculous the reason.
“If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street.
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat.
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.”
There isn’t a logical reason. “Don’t ask me what I want it for/If you don’t want to pay some more.” The girl-group backing vocals (“Ah-aah”) call out “Mr. Wilson” and “Mr. Heath.” George doesn’t identify this isn’t a “left-versus-right” issue, it’s us versus “The Man.” Always handy with their pop sensibility, the Beatles build on the “Taxman” riff well. The tambourine comes in on the second verse, with a cowbell hammering on the beat halfway through that. Paul injects a surprisingly complex bassline; listen to his bending of the notes leading into the bridge. He tended to play more complex lines when he wasn’t singing (probably because he didn’t have to worry about coming up with two parts!) And of course there’s Paul’s searing solo. It borrows from free jazz a la the Byrds; a free stream of notes that play in and around the key of the song. This is Revolver’s sense of spontaneity.
As fun as the stream-of-consciousness solo and breathy, cutesy backing vocals are, “Taxman” is dark. “My advice to those who’ve died/Declare the pennies on your eyes” This references the death duty. Yes, you pay taxes when you die. Realizing you’ll never be free of the capitalism death machine, even in death, will fill you with existential dread. If we can’t win over The Man, what does it all nean? This is the existential darkness which permeates Revolver.
This darkness carries into Eleanor Rigby. The arrangement was inspired by the score for Hitchcock’s Psycho, for one! “Eleanor Rigby’”s stark, black-and-white arrangement proves that you can do the most with the least. This is just a string octet and Paul; no other Beatles appear on “Rigby.”
Never has a harmony vocal sounded so alone as it sang, “Ah, look at all the lonely people.” The Greek chorus sings down from above this scene, which Jim Windolf says is “bleak as anything in the Dylan oevre.” “Rigby” observes two lonely people who never get to meet in life. “Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been.” She is the faceless woman who cleans up after the chosen ones. She is not invited to sit at the table. Paul counters this tenderness with a creepy, surreal image. “Waits at the window/Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” Eleanor puts on mask, even for just observing life. There’s little evidence in her eponymous tune that she ever really lived it herself. The same goes for Father McKenzie, who works long into the night on sermons which no one will hear. Again, we get a sense of futility. What is the point of giving sermon if no one will hear the gospel, not even God? Only in death do our hero and heroine meet. Eleanor Rigby dies alone and forgotten. She was no one in death, just as she was no one in life. Father McKenzie is the only attendee of her service; acting as both priest and gravedigger. In the end, “no one was saved.”
Ian Leslie presents the music of “Eleanor Rigby” as a mirror to John’s “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Both utilize just two chords, and a limited melody. Paul ends each verse with question or commentary; “Lives in a dream,” “Who is it for?” “Where do they all belong?” etc., like “God’s eye view” of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” But even with such a desolate song as “Rigby,” Paul still finds a way to write to the heart. That was his talent as a writer. “Look at all the lonely people” is a pretty bang-on lyrical expression of sonder; realizing everyone around you has a life as vivid, complex, and lonely as yours. That can be quite overwhelming. This insight is why “Rigby” overwhelms me.
Where “Taxman” and “Rigby” were startlingly alive in how stark and forward they sound, I’m Only Sleeping islethargic on every level: the slow, plodding crack of the drums, to the fuzzy, fat bass, woozy backing vocals, and characteristic strums up acoustic guitar strings with a loose wrist and hand. It’s fuzzy and warm, like when you sleep wrong and your arm “falls asleep.”
John’s voice was an interesting instrument. It could take a lot of wear and tear. He could scream well, and had a real bite to his voice overall. But a song like “I’m Only Sleeping” emphasizes my favorite thing about John’s singing voice: his natural slur. His slur pulled on “L” and “S” sounds especially, “I’m on-L-y SL-eeping.” The backwards guitar makes that quality shine. It pulls on notes in a similar manner. The listener travels through a hazy, gummy, viscous dream space. Here, John finds some safety for once. “Please don’t wake me, no don’t shake me/Leave me where I am…” “I’m Only Sleeping” reflects the distracted, dreamy headspace that John liked to be in; whether by drink, weed, acid, pills, or heroin. His mind was so active, he needed something to occupy it. John was also lazy! He needed his beauty sleep, and he loved watching television in bed all day.
“Everybody seems to think I’m lazy,
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy.
Running everywhere at such a speed,
’Til they find there’s no need...”
As put by Steve Turner, “John’s rationale for dropping out in this way was that the world outside – the world that condemned him for being lazy – was madly rushing about in pursuit of – what? Maybe they were mad and he was sane.” John didn’t want to be part of the rat race. He’d rather “keep an eye on the world going by my window.” This is our second instance on Revolver of a character on the inside looking out. As everything on “I’m Only Sleeping” moves so slow, the last fifteen seconds rocket us back into reality. The varispeeded, backwards guitar preps us for the exotic sounds to come.
To counter “I’m Only Sleeping”’s upwards strums, George strums down the strings of his sitar. I believe this was an intentional sequencing choice. Revolver was the first time the Beatles sequenced their own record. The artist has a feel for which songs make sonic sense and where.
After hearing Ravi Shankar for the first time via the Byrds, George had his 23-year-old mind blown. When he broke a string recording “Norwegian Wood,” he called Ayana Angadi at the High Commission of India(basically the British equivalent to the Indian Embassy.) They referred him to a musicians’ society called the Asian Music Circle. Through the AMC, George met tabla player Anil Bhagwat. Love You To was the first song he wrote with Indian instruments in mind.
George became a “demo darling” in the late Sixties and early Seventies. With “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Something,” and “Isn’t It A Pity,” you know his songs are great from the jump. This wasn’t apparent with the demo of “Love You To.” George can’t find the key, he’s scratching the chords out on guitar. The lyrics aren’t his finest work. This song was desperately in need of the Indian classical dressing, and boy did it deliver!
Other songs from this era featuring the sitar use the instrument in a pop song structure. “Love You To” is a raga structure, through-and-through. What do I mean by this? Take the guitar solo of the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.” It uses improvisation in a free jazz manner. One might call it noodling. There is no such thing as “noodling” in raga. George doesn’t treat the “Love You To” solo as a free-for-all. He’s methodical about where his notes go in respect to the whole. I believe this quality and the discipline of learning the sitar made him a better guitarist once he returned to his main instrument in 1968. Not to mention the melody becoming the drone at the end of each verse, and harmony vocal falling down an Eastern scale. “Love You To” is one of my favorite Beatles songs because it does so much and is so subtle about it. And I’m just a sucker for George’s raga rock arc! I’d be pretty thrilled hearing the first three cuts of Revolver as a listener in 1966, but “Love You To” would’ve sounded like a transmission from another planet. Sounds like these – a careful and agile bend of a note, the low groan of a tambura, Anil Bhagwat’s energetic tabla playing – in this format just didn’t exist on a pop record in 1966.
Having gone so far out with the past few songs, we come back to earth with tender, classy ballad Here There And Everywhere. The Beach Boys’ influence is obvious on the song’s header and the pretty little inversions in backing vocals. But don’t count out those Temptations finger snaps!
Paul can write a love song like few other. “Here There And Everywhere” is written like a romance movie montage. “Here, making each day of the year.” “There, running my hands through her hair.” “I want her everywhere” captures the tender everyday moments. I sense trouble in paradise with, “and if she’s beside me I know I need never care,” and “Watching her eyes, and hoping I’m always there.” The narrator is content, so long as his girl is in his sight line, and he knows he’s her only one. This sets up the insecurity and strain Paul visits on his Revolver contributions. But the narrator can’t help being besotted, “for to love her is to need her everywhere” When you really love someone, you see them in everything.
The Flamingoes proved that the best love songs are so simple in words, but say so much. “Are the stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright/For I only have eyes for you.” Paul invokes that with, “Someone is speaking/But she doesn’t know he’s there.” It’s simple, but says so much: these two only have eyes for each other. Paul a fabulous performer. He spun that pure love into the melody of “Here There And Everywhere.” It showcases his full falsetto on the high notes of each verse, and he keeps his lower notes light.
What is there to say about Yellow Submarine? It’s a Ringo love-fest! It’s everything we love about him, all rolled into one song. His enthusiasm, earnesty, charisma, and optimism shine on this lovely little tale about a magical yellow submarine. What starts as a campfire singalong on lone acoustic guitar and bass drum becomes a picture book in song. The tape loops were set up by Martin and Geoff, while Phil McDonald found the Sousa march excerpt. We hear bubbles and the squeaking wheel, waves lapping against the porthole, and a honking horn. After all the pondering and weeping Revolver has done so far, “Yellow Submarine” is a cheery moment to lift your spirits.
Bookending side one of Revolver with two electric numbers was smart. If the last few numbers of Eastern spirituality, love songs, and magical underwater voyages got too flowery for you, She Said She Said returns to the biting, electric face of this album’s four heads. The intricate guitar lines are so bright, I have to squint at it. The high-pitched organ drone lifts you up, and from there, “She Said” runs off with you. This is the best drumming Ringo does on the whole album. He never does more than what is needed, and is always reluctant to show off. In this instance, Ringo drops in some crashes here and offsets a beat there. His changes in tempo keep “She Said” from becoming a durge.
After love and submarines, “She Said” returns to drugs, existentialism, and death. John’s lyrics detail the party from hell; a head trip all the way down from, “She said, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead.’” Understandably, the narrator is like, what the hell? “I said, ‘You put all those things in your head/Things that make me feel that I’m mad.’” I like how John chose to tell us this story in a pretty realistic way. She said this, and then I said this, and then she was like this! What could read as frivolous and lighthearted, John socks to us with one hell of a line: “You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born.”
“She Said” was the first instance of the Beatles joining unfinished songs together to make a whole. They’d do it again to great effect on “A Day In The Life,” “Happiness Is A Warm Gun,” and “the Long One.” It’s ironic that John gave “the Long One” in particular so much grief when he himself introduced this method to the Beatles’ fold! “She said, ‘You don’t understand what I said’/I said, ‘No, no, no, you’re wrong’” is gone in a flash. It becomes a classical-inspired tromping beat and stately trip down fretboard as John remembers how, when he was a boy, everything was right. Now, everything is so wrong. No one in this scene knows what the hell they’re saying, let alone the other person!
It’s nice to have Good Day Sunshine welcome us into lovin’ arms after “She Said” chewed us up and spit us out. At last, we hear some familiar elements: cozy harmonies, a showman lead vocal in Paul’s warm tenor, a boogie-woogie piano through verses, and subject matter we can actually get our mind around! “Good Day Sunshine” is about the simple pleasure of going for a walk...even if you burn your feet on the sidewalk! It’s carefree and one of the only songs on Revolver that’s upbeat, no-strings-attached. Yes, there’s death and taxes, exploitative people, substance use as a crutch, loneliness, and all these horrible things in the world. There’s also just enjoying being alive. I think that’s why Paul pushed “Good Day Sunshine” onto Revolver. It sticks out like a sore thumb sonically. It’s not my favorite on the album, but Revolver needs a bright spot. It can’t be all bleak
John treated And Your Bird Can Sing it as “a horror” and “one of (his) throwaways” in interview with Playboyin 1980. I disagree! “And Your Bird” started as a bang-on Byrds impression. Ultimately I’m glad the song was reworked to have its own identity. Though the guitars have been dulled, it fits much better on Revolver this way. The guitar solo is totally Handel, and Paul goes off on the bass part! He’s all over the fret board. I’m not sure why others are so confused about this lyric. People seem to think this is a Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull diss track, but it’s not that simple.
“And Your Bird” opens up when you consider Bob Dylan; particularly Highway 61, Revisited songs like “Ballad Of A Thin Man” and “Like A Rolling Stone.” Though everyone and their uncle wanted to be Mr. Jones for some reason, “Thin Man” drags the faux-hip set Bob detested. John hated them, too. “You say you’ve seen seven wonders/And your bird is green/But you can’t see me.” Though John was a part of the first-class traveling set by 1966, he never felt at home there. He loved his big houses and fast cars, but in his mind, he was still the working-class hero. While others use material wealth to buy fancy things or a diploma from a prestigious institution, John reminds us you can’t buy what truly matters. There’s a hint of the princess on a steeple and the diplomat in, “When your prized possessions start to weigh you down/Look in my direction, I’ll be ’round.”Finally, John swings at those who refuse to handle pop music as an art form. “You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is/And your bird can swing/But you can’t hear me.” All those who still reduce the Beatles to mop tops, matching clothes, and screaming girls can’t really hear the Beatles. If Leonard Bernstein is calling them the best of the best, these guys have no reason not to listen!
With “Here There And Everywhere” on side one, For No One presents a conflicting perspective on the same relationship. Where Paul so acutely captured being totally, unconditionally in love by just looking at your sweetheart, Paul sums up the crushing pain of slowly falling out of love in just about the same amount of words.
“Your day breaks,
Your mind aches,
You find that all her words of kindness linger on
When she no longer needs you.”
As if that line wasn’t painful enough?
“In her eyes, you see nothing,
No sign of love behind the tears.
Cries for no one,
A love that should have lasted years.”
That’s the worst thing about falling out of love! Unless the other party has done something insane, the love isn’t replaced by hate. It’s replaced by nothing at all. I’ve wondered why the lyric of this song flows so freely through so many time changes; once again doing those little classical inversions. Then, I noticed Paul uses devices of assonance (repeating vowel sounds) and consonance (repeating the consonant sound.) “Linger on when she no longer needs you,” uses both assonance and consonance.
French horn solo just about at the top of the instrument’s range! I wonder if Paul picked up on French horn from the solo on “God Only Knows.”
While I roll my eyes at the classifier, Doctor Robert is a “drug song” through-and-through. Drugs were no revelation in the Beatles’ world in ’66: they were taking “pep pills” to play seven-hour sets in Hamburg. The song’s subject could be Dr. Robert Freymann out in New York, or London coke dealer to the stars Robert Fraser. No matter how many times I listen to this one, I can’t remember any defining traits besides its mock-choir boy refrain and punchy percussion.
I Want To Tell You is about an issue George knew all too well: speaking his mind. His natural instinct was not to open up. Rather, he’d sit, stew, pout, and lash out. And I say that as a George girlie! He was the grumpy Beatle! This also isn’t his strongest lyric, but the tension created between guitar lick and the angular, uncomfy piano chords is one of Revolver’s finest musical moments.
Got To Get You Into My Life carries over the Stax/Motown influence from Rubber Soul. The Beatles loved American R&B records. There was even talk to record Revolver in Memphis or to record an album of Holland-Dozier-Holland songs!
But you guys...I can’t do it. The horns are way too shrill. Paul wanted the beefed-up Stax horns, a la Sam and Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’.” Instead, he got this awful sound. Paul said “Got To Get You Into My Life” was one of two songs that would’ve sounded better recorded in America; the other being “Taxman.” I’d leave “Taxman” be, but I fully agree with his assessment of this song. The microphone placement on the horn ensemble was a failed experiment on Geoff’s part. It seriously detracts from the overall quality of the song.
On the complete other end of the spectrum, Tomorrow Never Knows is “a mass market avant-garde artefact that fused radical technology...with the most explicit evocation yet in popular culture of mystical transcendence,” as Jon Savage said. Listening to the demo, this thing was remarkably fully-formed. We have the lyric. We have the tape loops. We have the Leslie. We have backwards guitar. The last major element that had to be figured out was Ringo’s drums, which are not a loop! Ringo played “Tomorrow Never Knows” all the way through! Talk about a big bang. Simple as this drum pattern sounds to us, it isn’t easy to play live all the way through. He is the fucking click!
To this day, 60 years later, there is some uncomfortable, distressing, dark magnetism about “Tomorrow Never Knows.” If Jimmy Page’s definition of psychedelic music is anything which disturbs the senses, then “Tomorrow Never Knows” is psychedelic. I know what the loops are on paper: guitar, bass, tambura, and Paul’s laugh. But I just can’t wrap my head around them in this context. They whir past at dizzying speeds, the pendulum swings back and forth. What a force “Tomorrow Never Knows” is. You can’t stop it. You can only enter.
The Dalai Lennon cries from the mountaintop in iambic pentameter,
“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream
It is not dying, it is not dying.
Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void,
It is shining, it is shining.”
“Tomorrow Never Knows” circles down and around you ad infinitum, pulling you into the depths. This plays perfectly to my tastes. I love the ancestral circle and the tambura. In this space the Beatles have created, your thoughts are a weapon. John instructs us how to survive it. You must lay your thought-weapon down and not fight the current. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. The “ignorance and haste” line was adapted from Psalms 19:2 in the King James Bible; it’s worth noting that Bob Dylan had a copy on-hand while recording Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding.
On the very last line of Revolver, John deals one of the best lines he ever wrote: “Or play the game, existence to the end of the beginning.” As “Tomorrow Never Knows” continues into infinity, so does Revolver.
(The album actually ends with a goofy varispeeded piano vamp. People forget the Beatles were terminally unserious.)
The Revolver
After Revolver, rock-and-roll had all these big ideas. Let’s make an album as this other band. Let’s jet off to an ashram in India for a few weeks and write 30 songs there. Let’s do a...something. (The Beatles didn’t know what the Get Back/Let It Be project was supposed to be until woefully late in the timeline!) Let’s have one last go at it.
For the Beatles, Revolver was the last album where there was no plan. This was their last real organic flow of ideas, and I think this is why listeners 60 years later respond to Revolver. People are rejecting social media in favor of real, tangible experiences. (And blogs over Tiktok algorithms!) Physical media is on the rise, as evidenced by your following of this website.
The most recent episode of the Fans On The Run podcast (as of me writing this) examined the paranoia and derealization of Revolver, which culminates in “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Guest host Michael Sokil of the Gear There & Everywhere YouTube channel called Revolver John’s acid album. “He has experienced reality in a brand new way, which is not dissimilar to a panic attack.”
2026 is a paranoid, unreal year. The sinister rise of AI, which plagues YouTube and the Beatle fandom specifically, has us questioning everything. Thank God there’s a subset of sensible people who reject AI to seek what is real and human-made. This, if you ask me, is actually intelligent. As a culture, we’ve realizing we’ve gone too far in this direction without really doing anything at all. Like Sun Ra said, “Mankind is on the right road, we’re going in the wrong direction.” We’re experiencing reality in a brand new way, and figuring out where to go from here. Where do we fit into our own world?
All of this got me thinking about Revolver title. Magic circles, double meanings, blah blah blah, we all know the story by now. Tell us about the dream again, Paul! I thought of the wheels of Eastern and “alternative” philosophies that were popular among the counterculture in the mid- to late Sixties. Consider the wheel of fortune card of the tarot. Buddhism’s wheel of dharma, pictured in the Tibetan Book of the Dead! And my favorite, samsara; the of suffering we’re all trapped in for all our reincarnations, past, present, and future, until we shed our karma, rebuke ignorance, anger, and earthly desires, and reach enlightenment. Realizing that you, the self, that has been centered through all of western philosophy dogma, are just a tiny little cog in a greater machine that is not only the whole universe but the billions of years of its existence, will freak you out! So will not knowing for sure what is beyond our mortal plane, only knowing that one of these days you will find out. As certain pop star sampled for her most recent album, “No one lasts forever. They are dead. They are gone.” This can also be totally liberating. “Oblivion is freedom.”
I’ll close things with one more quote from our master of ceremonies this evening: “Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them. Avoid grasping the one or fleeing the other. Avoid imposing the ego game on the experience.” Love will come, love will go. Life comes and goes. So does material wealth. But whatever you release will always come back to you. With all this death and taxation, there is beauty that we must not lose sight of. Any and all that you put out into the universe will come back to you. 60 years later, all that Revolver released has come back tenfold.
Personal favorites: “Taxman,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Love You To,” “She Said She3 Said, “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Tomorrow Never Knows”
– AD ☆
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Paperback Writer's harmonies were also inspired by Brian Wilson.
“Then I had the idea to do the harmonies and we arranged that in the studio,” Paul continues. George Martin went on record to describe the “contrapuntal statements from the backing voices – no one had really done that before” and admitted that The Beach Boys were “a great inspiration” with regard to this Beatles song. With “Sloop John B” just entering the British charts and The Beatles having just been given a preview of the entire “Pet Sounds” album, the trademark Beach Boys harmonies were emulated for “Paperback Writer.”
"Paperback Writer" by The Beatles. The in-depth story behind the songs of the Beatles. Recording History. Songwriting History. Song Structure and…
you said
all the things I want
in my head
Thanks AD ⭐
I think that's why I prefer the writing over the video. It feels different when everything is becoming even more plastic than it was in the 60s and 70s. This is as close to Creem or Rolling Stone I can get these days. I know the second still exists but more nose up rear than it used to be. What more can I say about Revolver that you or others haven't??? I think it's the last album you come to. You start with Abbey Road or Pepper work your way to the early stuff before hopping to The White Album and then this. Come to think of it this should have come before the White Album and Pepper shou…