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Beatles album review....Part 1 Revolver (1 Viewer)

Guido Merkins

Footballguy
A few months back I went through my favorite Beatles albums in order. I had always wanted to do a series of threads that would focus on each Beatles album, which is really ambitious. So I won't promise I'll get through all of them.  But I'll start with the most famous ones first so hopefully I get through, at least, those.  So, I'll tart with my favorite and many people's favorite, 1966's Revolver....

Revolver in context

The Beatles were now in the 3rd year of Beatlemania with no signs of slowing down. In those prior 3 years they had done 2 albums per year, a single every three months,and 2 movies. This was all done around tours and TV shows and appearances. They were becoming fed up with this endless cycle and wanted to focus more on making records. 

Rubber Soul, the album that preceded Revolver was recorded in 30 days!!!  A masterpiece in a month!!  Not relying on cover songs anymore, they wrote and recorded 13 songs (and got one from the prior session, more when I cover that particular album).  But Rubber Soul is important because it showed a marked maturity in their songwriting. A trend that would continue with Revolver. 

They were supposed to make a new film, but they couldn’t agree on anything, so suddenly they had 3 months free from engagements, which was a first for the band since the early days. And since they had zero plans to play the new songs on stage and they were almost done with touring (3 of the Beatles especially, Paul would soon agree), they figured they could experiment with the technology a bit, and they did. Recording started in April 1966 and continued for 3 months, an ETERNITY in 1966. 

Also 1966 was the year of the famous Lennon “Christ” statement which, IMO, overshadowed the work they were doing at the time. This led, I think to Revolver being overshadowed in its time by its predecessor (Rubber Soul) and its follow-up (Pepper). It would take a couple of decades for this historical wrong to be righted. But today, many people consider it their best work. As I say above, an opinion I share. 

Overall impressions

John would call Rubber Soul the “pot” album and Revolver the “acid” album. And this fits with the general impressions of the albums. Rubber Soul is known as kind of a mellow album. As the Stones and The Who were getting louder, the Beatles were going more mellow and introspective. Revolver, on the other hand is louder, more electric. More painting pictures with sound. More experimental. To my ears, a lot of Revolver focuses on darker images. Death, anger, drugs, lost love, laziness, isolation, loneliness.  For example Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby are often compared because of the use of strings, but similarities really end there. But Rigby is a far darker song and the strings aren’t sweet. They almost scrape. Even Yellow Submarine can sound like a drunken sing a long if you listen for that. Paul has the requisite upbeat songs (Good Day Sunshine and Here There and Everywhere) but not all of them are. For No One is sad. Rigby is too. More on each song later. 

The cover art, to me, speaks to the isolation within. Klaus Voorhman did a great job with the collage and in a way, it’s as cool to look at as Pepper a year later, but to go totally black and white in an era where everybody’s cover art was colorful is a statement in and of itself. I love the picture on the back cover of the tripped out Beatles wearing sunglasses. They were the height of mid 60s cool at this point. 

Revolver pioneered the use of many studio tricks the Beatles had learned that they would become more famous for on Sgt Pepper a year later. Artificial Double Tracking, backwards tapes, vari speed, close mics, compression, sound effects, sampling, tape loops and fuzz tone. 

Two of the more distinctive new sounds on the album are the sound of Ringo’s drums, achieved by mics placed real close to each drum and using compression, tuning the drums lower and stuffing a woolen sweater in the bass drum,  to create a punchier sound. 

The other distinctive sound is the sound of Paul’s bass. For years the Beatles wanted to hear the same bass sounds they heard on Motown. In fact, there were even discussions had about Revolver being recorded at Stax or Motown.  Due to British technical limitations, bass hadn't really been heard in all its glory until Rubber Soul, but the Beatles wanted even more. So by 1966, EMI had figured how to get that sound without the needle jumping out of the groove. Paul helped by switching to a Rickenbacker bass and Geoff Emerick started doing things like rewiring a speaker to act as a mic and putting it right in front of Paul’s bass cabinet. Paul also started laying down bass tracks at the end so he could react to the melody in his playing.

The sheer variety of music on the album is also astonishing. It has been said that every song on Revolver started it’s own sub genre, which is probably an exaggeration, but still. Social commentary, classical, pop, soul, Indian, children’s, jazz, psychedelic, proto metal, and even proto techno can be heard in these grooves. 

And on no album was the Capitol Records butchering of the Beatles worse than on Revolver. Not only do the 3 songs that were pulled from Revolver and put on Yesterday and Today sound totally out of place, but they are 3 Lennon songs so it makes it seem like John didn’t do anything during Revolver. If you hear the Capitol Revolver in 1966, you didn’t get the whole story.  Thankfully, Revolver would be the last “butchered” album. 

Next....Taxman

 
Taxman…

Depending on who you ask, George was the most inquisitive about the money the Beatles were making (others say it was Paul).  But George found out the amount of taxes he had to pay on his money (like 90-something percent) and he didn’t want to pay. He was told, of course, that he had to.  So he wrote this song called Taxman about the unfair nature of taxation at that level. So you get several cool lines like “there’s one for you, 19 for me” and if you die you have to “declare the pennies on your eyes” (a John line) and a bunch of other things that gets taxed like a seat and feet.  They even immortalized two parliament members, Mr Wilson and Mr Heath.  Early takes of the song have John and Paul harmonizing “anybody got a bit of money” instead of Mr Wilson and Mr Heath. 

The most distinctive part of the song is the great guitar playing throughout. It’s been speculated that the main riff was George parodying the Batman theme.  There is evidence that George would have been aware of the show, but he never said either way. In any event, the fuzzed riff is super nasty and works with the sneering lyrics. 

The other cool thing is THAT solo. In my opinion, one of the best ones of the 60s.  Geoff Emerick, the Beatles engineer claimed in his book that George had trouble with it, so Paul knocked it out in one take leaving George pissed. The Beatles themselves tell a different story. Paul claims he told George he had an idea for a wild solo that would use Eastern scales instead of Western scales and George said “have a go.”  George claimed that he was pleased to have Paul play it and even noticed the Indian bit on it and loved it. 

Whatever the story, the solo is totally bad ###. It was so good, they even flew it in to end the song. Crank it up!!!  I always do.

Another cool thing is the countdown at the beginning of the song which is actually a false countdown and the real one is in the background, which hints at “I Saw Her Standing There” the opening song on their debut album Please Please Me.

Overall a great song and the first of 3 for George on Revolver. Giving George the opening song says it all about the quality of the song. 

Next...Eleanor Rigby

 
I love Revolver, but Taxman is a blah song.  Too generic for me.  The album is all great stuff from track 2 till the end fortunately! 

 
"Good Day Sunshine" is Paul at his twee worst. 

the absolute nadir. 

he takes an awful lot of flack for the show tunes and fluff, and rightfully so ... but i like most of 'em - ####### guy is quantum.

but "GDS" is dog#### ... hell, it's Candied Camel #### - just a foul and grating assault on all i hold to the holiest of holies regarding music. 

it ####### reeks - worst thing he ever did - and #### off to anyone who cares for it, 'cuz your taste is vacant. 

####### dreck. 

 
Eleanor Rigby…

The story for Eleanor Rigby really starts in 1965 with Yesterday.  When Paul brought Yesterday to George Martin and the other Beatles, for the first time, they agreed that nothing really could be added to it by the other members of the band.  No electric guitars, no drums, no electric bass, nothing else, but George Martin thought strings would be nice, but Paul didn’t want to get schmaltzy, so George Martin suggested a string quartet, which is two violins, a viola, and a cello.  Paul agreed and Yesterday was born.

Fast forward a year later and Paul has this song called Eleanor Rigby and they are looking for something similar, so they go with a double string quartet because this music would be more biting than Yesterday.

Eleanor Rigby in interesting in that it’s a song by Paul about loneliness and isolation, something Paul doesn’t often do.  There is some dispute about how much John contributed.  John said most of the lyrics were his in his 1980 Playboy interview.  Paul said John might have given half a line.  Pete Shotten, John’s childhood friend seems to agree more with Paul and says that it was his idea to have the two lonely people meet at the end, but too late.  George Harrison contributed the “ah, look at all the lonely people” line.

Paul was trying to come up with a name that didn’t sound fake.  So he got Eleanor from Eleanor Braun, who starred in Help with them and saw the name Rigby on a store window.  But later, someone found a tombstone with the name Eleanor Rigby in St Peter’s Churchyard in Woolton where John and Paul first met, so Paul either subconsciously remembered the name or it’s a coincidence.  The grave of Eleanor Rigby has now become a stop of the Beatles Liverpool tour, for sure.

The other thing is the other character in the song, Father McKenzie, was originally Father McCartney, but Paul didn’t want to upset his Dad, so he found a name that had the same number of syllables and there you go.

Other lyrics I like are “no one was saved”, which lends to the sadness of the song and “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” and “darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there.”

My overall impression of the song is that it’s kind of dark and unsettling.  The strings aren’t sweet like on Yesterday.  They almost scrape against the strings.  Geoff Emerick put the mics right next to the string players making them quite uncomfortable.  They kept moving back and Geoff kept moving the mics up.  That’s the sound they were after and it worked quite well.

This is one of those songs that I think the Beatles will always be known for. I think it’ll be around 100 years from now.  It’s timeless.

Next….I’m Only Sleeping

 
I’m Only Sleeping

John never hid from his own laziness.  In fact, he seems to relish in it at times.  He always knew something would come along and he’d be OK.  I guess if you are a world class songwriter, that would be true.

So it’s no surprise that he would write songs about his laziness.  My absolute favorite is the one on Revolver called I’m Only Sleeping.

The Beatles made heavy use of vari speed tapes on this track which is why John’s vocal kind of sounds like he is just waking up.  In fact, I love the way the song jumps directly in, almost like he just woke up from a dream.  And the end of the song sounds like John kind of going back to sleep (at least that’s the way I hear it).

Another interesting thing is the backwards guitar solo, which George took great pains to figure out what he wanted it to sound like backwards, so figuring out the solo forward so when it’s played back it sounds a certain way.  Much was made by Geoff Emerick about how long it took George to work this solo out, but personally, I respect George’s work ethic and patience to get this done and the results speak for themselves.

This is one of the songs that ended up on Capitol’s Yesterday and Today and sounds totally out of place with most of the other older songs on the album.  On no planet should this song be on the same record as Yesterday.  Fits perfectly on Revolver, however.

A side note, I especially like the version of this song from Anthology 2.  Love John’s dreamy vocal and you can really hear Paul’s harmony.  Obviously a demo, but they sound like they know where the song needs to go rather quickly.

Next....Love You To

 
Love You To

George Harrison became really fascinated with Indian music during the filming of the Help movie.  He purchased a sitar and when Norwegian Wood needed something a little different, otherwise, it’s just a Dylan song, he found the melody and played it and it added something cool and exotic to the song that made it different.  This was George dipping his toe into Indian music, but from that moment, George wanted to learn how to play the sitar.. He would start instruction with his hero Ravi Shankar.

When recording Revolver, George wanted to go a bit further and record an Indian song for the record.  So he came up with a song that he didn’t know what to call it.  So with a working title of Granny Smith (after the brand of apple), he started working on Love You To.

Love You To is a true mix of eastern and western music.  George plays the sitar on the record, although I am not specifically sure the difference completely, you can tell that it’s George because he plays it more like someone familiar with Western music than Eastern.  Considering George’s relatively new interest in the sitar, however, it sounds pretty good to me.  Pretty impressive that he can play that well,.  Other than that, however, it is all Indian musicians on the record with little (maybe no) contributions from the other Beatles.  You’d have to imagine with George’s place in the band at the time, he rather enjoyed having this sort of thing where he would be in charge, for once.

The song is very droning, as is often a thing with Indian music.  To my ears, it sounds like all on one chord, which is also common.  The lyrics talking about “people standing round who’ll screw you in the ground” some have heard as George talking about his own bandmates, but I have my doubts.  All indications is that Rubber Soul and Revolver were very enjoyable for the Beatles.  To me, the lyrics are more a statement of the counter culture which were definitely in line with the Beatles attitudes in 1966.

This is a song I actually took a bit to warm up to.  I used to skip it, but slowly it sunk in.  It’s such a radical departure for a rock band to play this.  If you think about it, it’s almost as big a leap as Tomorrow Never Knows.  I have never heard anything THIS Indian on a pop record, at least up to this point in history.  I’ve heard the sitar used as window dressing, but this is something else entirely.  As a result, this song can be seen as a very influential piece of music with regard to world music.  It is seen as one of the first, if not the first, true mixture of Indian music with pop music and I think it’s great and it very much fits with the experimental nature of Revolver.

One thing to note, however, is that George was losing interest in the guitar at this point because of his interest in Indian music.  He would change his mind (thank God) in the next year or so, but for Revolver and especially Pepper, Paul probably plays more lead guitar than he ever had before and probably ever would again as a Beatle.

Next…..Here, There and Everywhere

 
Here There and Everywhere

It’s no secret that the Beatles and Brian Wilson were constantly influencing each other.  In 1965, Brian heard Rubber Soul and was determined to top it.  In 1966 he released Pet Sounds and Paul, especially, was paying attention.

Here, There and Everywhere is one of Paul’s greatest, if not his greatest love song.  One verse in the song covers “Here”, one verse covers “There” and the bridges talk about “Everywhere.”  A very “Tin Pan Alley” way of writing a song.

But most distinctive are the block harmonies which were absolutely influenced by Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys.  Paul was absolutely floored by God Only Knows and that’s what he’s trying to capture here, especially in the intro.

I love the sound of the guitar and Ringo’s drums and obviously the vocal.  I have also always been knocked out by the little bass run that Paul plays over “each one believing that love never dies” after the first bridge.  He doesn't do that anywhere else in the song and it is a cool little detail.  Also the detail of the finger snaps at the end of the song which don’t appear elsewhere.

John, never one to really dish out compliments told Paul that “that’s the best one on the album.”

This song holds a special place in my heart.  Always has.  This was the song my Mom led me to when I asked her about “album cuts” early in my Beatle fandom.  Boy was she right.  What a great song.

Next.....Yellow Submarine

 
Thanks for doing this review.  I was part of the second wave of Beatlemania in the mid-70's and they were my #1 thing right up into HS. I did a presentation in a college speech class about the Paul is Dead phenomenon, and it went over the allotted 15 minutes into the whole 50 of the class and then some.  The teacher didn't cut me off, as he was a bit of a hippie himself and really enjoyed it.

Rubber Soul is still my favorite, and my friends who liked them preferred Revolver.  While I'm not as crazy about them as I used to be, Rubber Soul and Revolver are my 1a and 1b, and I'd consider them the band's creative apex.

I know I'm jumping ahead here, but even though I've always liked Tomorrow Never Knows, I got an extra jolt out of it when it appeared in an episode of Mad Men.

 
Thanks for doing this review.  I was part of the second wave of Beatlemania in the mid-70's and they were my #1 thing right up into HS. I did a presentation in a college speech class about the Paul is Dead phenomenon, and it went over the allotted 15 minutes into the whole 50 of the class and then some.  The teacher didn't cut me off, as he was a bit of a hippie himself and really enjoyed it.

Rubber Soul is still my favorite, and my friends who liked them preferred Revolver.  While I'm not as crazy about them as I used to be, Rubber Soul and Revolver are my 1a and 1b, and I'd consider them the band's creative apex.

I know I'm jumping ahead here, but even though I've always liked Tomorrow Never Knows, I got an extra jolt out of it when it appeared in an episode of Mad Men.
Yeah.  I heard they paid 250k to use it in the episode....

 
Eleanor Rigby…

My overall impression of the song is that it’s kind of dark and unsettling.  The strings aren’t sweet like on Yesterday.  They almost scrape against the strings.  Geoff Emerick put the mics right next to the string players making them quite uncomfortable.  They kept moving back and Geoff kept moving the mics up.  That’s the sound they were after and it worked quite well.
According to George Martin his inspiration for the score was the soundtrack of the movie Psycho and it certainly sounds similar

 
"Good Day Sunshine" is Paul at his twee worst. 

the absolute nadir. 

he takes an awful lot of flack for the show tunes and fluff, and rightfully so ... but i like most of 'em - ####### guy is quantum.

but "GDS" is dog#### ... hell, it's Candied Camel #### - just a foul and grating assault on all i hold to the holiest of holies regarding music. 

it ####### reeks - worst thing he ever did - and #### off to anyone who cares for it, 'cuz your taste is vacant. 

####### dreck. 
I've always liked it.  :shrug:

 
Charlie Steiner said:
Thanks for doing this review.  I was part of the second wave of Beatlemania in the mid-70's and they were my #1 thing right up into HS. I did a presentation in a college speech class about the Paul is Dead phenomenon, and it went over the allotted 15 minutes into the whole 50 of the class and then some.  The teacher didn't cut me off, as he was a bit of a hippie himself and really enjoyed it.

Rubber Soul is still my favorite, and my friends who liked them preferred Revolver.  While I'm not as crazy about them as I used to be, Rubber Soul and Revolver are my 1a and 1b, and I'd consider them the band's creative apex.

I know I'm jumping ahead here, but even though I've always liked Tomorrow Never Knows, I got an extra jolt out of it when it appeared in an episode of Mad Men.
OK now I want somebody to photoshop the Always Sunny "Pepe Silvia" meme with "Paul is Dead"

 
This thread has me listening to Revolver on loop in the office this afternoon and sneaking peaks at Wikipedia for the album, songs, and the little bits of trivia you only find in a deep rabbit hole dive. Much appreciated.

 
Yellow Submarine

OK, so now for the most divisive song on Revolver.  I have had MANY people tell me that Revolver can’t be the greatest album of all time because Yellow Submarine sucks.  I mean, everyone has an opinion, I guess, but every album, even great ones, have some songs that I may not love.

There are two schools of thought on Yellow Submarine.  First, that it’s dreck and shouldn’t be done by a great rock band.  Second, that it’s an extremely clever recording with great sound effects and it’s super catchy.

Put me in the second category.  It’s not a song I obsess over, but I actually think it’s quite cool that, along with everything else the Beatles did on their way to being the greatest and most influential rock band ever, they also created a stone cold children’s classic along the way.  What other band has done that?  You might say “what other band would WANT to do that”, but still.  Paul absolutely intended to write a children’s song and he did.  Donovan and John helped a bit with the lyrics too.

So Ringo gets one song per album and since they weren’t covering things anymore, they struggled to find a song on Rubber Soul for him, resurrecting an old song they had for him to sing.  On Revolver, Paul had this idea of this children’s song with sound effects and Ringo singing.  Any other Beatles trying to sing this, let’s face it, ridiculous.

It’s a very interesting recording, however and to me fits with the experimentation of Revolver.  You have the Beatles using a bunch of sound effects such as chains running through a tub to have a water sound effect.  Glasses tinkling, horns, tapes of brass bands, etc.  They made the track come alive in the studio.  They even spent time on a spoken intro the Land O Groats intro with the sound of marching feet (John would use this later on Power to the People). They ended up dropping it, but you can hear it out there on Youtube.

I love John acting up on the “as we live a life of ease” part near the end (the mono version starts one line earlier, which I like much better).  I also love the sing a long quality of the chorus which, as I said above, almost sounds like a bar sing a long.  Apparently after the  overdubs were done, there was a conga line led by Mal Evans, the Beatles road manager.

To me, the song is a nice respite in the middle of much heavier material both musically and lyrically.  It fits Ringo perfectly and it’s an extremely clever recording.  It’s not one of my favorite Beatles songs, but also keep in mind, it was released as the B Side of Eleanor Rigby as a single and is very much in the Beatles wheelhouse in terms of liking kind of madcap and novelty songs as B Sides.  They would do similar later with You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) and their love of strange B Sides is well documented from before they became stars.  They looked for these kind of songs and loved them.

Next…..She Said She Said

 
She Said She Said

It is well documented that John and George had started acid by this time.  Their first time taking LSD, apparently their tea was spiked by their dentist at a party.  In any event, from that time on, they developed a taste for it.

They were at a party and Peter Fonda was there.  This was before Easy Rider, so he really wasn’t a star yet.  But he kept whispering in John’s ear “I know what it’s like to be dead” because apparently he had a near death experience. John, enjoying the party which was very 60s and girls everywhere didn’t want to know what it was like to be dead so he kept moving away from Fonda. But from this experience, John got the line to a song that he called He Said He Said at first, before changing it to a female saying the line “I know what it’s like to be dead.”

This track is unique in that its one of the few that Paul McCartney seems to had very little to do with.  In fact, George is the one that helped John put the track together.  Neither Paul, George, or John ever said why this was the case.  Paul said “maybe it was a fight in the studio and I just left.”  It has been speculated that John and George were getting on Paul that day because he hadn’t taken acid yet, which they did do often, but that’s speculation.  So either they don’t remember or they don’t want to say, but it’s one of the few Beatles recordings that Paul McCartney had nothing to do with.

So without Paul, George and John worked on the track with George helping John meld together like 3 different songs.  There are both 3/4 and 4/4 time on the recording when it switches from the main part of the song to the “when I was a boy…” part.  George played bass (something that has been disputed, but it doesn’t sound like Paul to me) and both Lennon and George played those great fuzzed guitars.  Ringo’s drumming on this song is some of the best of his career also in an unusually busy style for him.  It does fit with the chaos of the recording, though. 

This is a very heavy recording.  Every bit as heavy as anything in that period by The Who or anybody else.  This would later become termed “acid rock”.  Great song and a great way to end Side One of Revolver (if you are listening on vinyl).

Next....Good Day Sunshine

 
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Good Day Sunshine

Whereas Side A of Revolver opens with some sneering and loud guitar, Side B opens with the happy, piano driven Paul song Good Day Sunshine.  It seems that Paul was going after the same sort of ethos as Daydream by the Lovin’ Spoonful, an ode to a sunny day.  Next to the other darker material, just like Yellow Submarine, it is a nice contrast.

Recording for this one seems to have been relatively straight forward.  There are no guitars on the track, which is unusual for a Beatles song.  Paul plays piano except for the solo, played at half speed, played by George Martin.  John said he may have thrown a line or two in, but it was mostly Paul’s song.

My favorite bit is the end.  It sort of ends like She Said She Said with the layered vocals on top of each other.  An interesting effect.

Other than that, there is really nothing else to say.  Paul seems to like this one himself as he has played it often on tour.

Next....And Your Bird Can Sing

 
And Your Bird Can Sing

One of my favorites on the album, And Your Bird Can Sing was extremely influential in southern rock and metal.  Why??  If you listen closely to the guitar solo, Paul and George are playing a harmonized guitar solo which is a very common thing in hard rock and metal.  Joe Walsh, not realizing that the solo was harmonized, learned how to play it on one guitar, so he’s probably the only person in the world that can do that.  He had no idea that it was two people playing the solo until he became Ringo's brother in law.

Early takes on And Your Bird Can Sing sound very much like the Byrds.  If you listen to Anthology 2, you can hear this.  They decided to go heavier, so you end up with the heavy guitars on the finished record.  Paul’s bass is also amazing on this song.  Also love the harmonies.

As far as the lyrics, much speculation on that from John singing to Cynthia who didn’t get him, or Frank Sinatra’s “bird” that can get anything it wants.  John hated the song thinking the lyrics were nonsense.  The line about “seven wonders” could be referring to Paul being under the influence of pot thinking the key to existence was “7 levels”, whatever that means.

This is one of the three songs that ended up on Yesterday and Today.  I love the sound of this one.  Especially the way the song just kind of jumps out of the speakers from the first moment and really doesn’t let go until the end.    One of my favorites, and probably one of the most influential songs by the Beatles that many people do not know.

Next......For No One

 

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