FEATURE:
Magnum '66
IMAGE CREDIT: Klaus Voormann
Revolver at Fifty-Two: The Beatles’ Greatest Work and Its Endless, Mind-Bending Firepower
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IF you think the title of this piece is a little unwieldy…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles recording Revolver at Abbey Road Studios (1966)/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
then you’ll forgive me going for baroque! Although The Beatles’ Revolver arrived fifty-two years ago to the day in America – it arrived a few days earlier here in the U.K. - I felt it ripe for new spotlight and appreciation. There are so many revolver/gun-related lines one can go down when it comes to America but, rather than go off on an armoury tangent; it is a great opportunity to focus on an album whose legacy and potency continues to exert and stun. This year, in November, we will all witness the fiftieth anniversary of The Beatles' eponymous album (better known as 'The White Album'). That record, like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, was created at a time of great interpersonal stress and strain within the band. Whereas Fleetwood Mac’s resulting album floored critics with its consistency and incredible cohesiveness; The Beatles proved to be a more scattershot and expansive album. It is the sound of four musicians, at once bonded, now headed in different directions – even if the album itself remains extraordinary and fascinating. I feel The Beatles’ last real year of togetherness and harmony was in 1966. Maybe there were cracks starting to appear but there were definite strains by 1967. It is no surprise, therefore, many feel Revolver is the height of their critical power. My favourite Beatles album is Rubber Soul (which came a year before Revolver) but many see the two albums as part of the same – Revolver is the more daring and experimental brother.
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles travelling through Europe by train in 1966/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
If The Beatles were forging their own path as unique songwriters and a band reshaping Pop by 1965; only a year later they were upping their game and, yet again, taking music in new directions. Those who feel Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) is The Beatles’ finest hour must remember a few things. I love the album but feel it is more influential than quality-laden. It seems more a Paul McCartney project – he devised the concept and has most of the songwriting credit – and the album has one or two weak moments (George Harrison’s Within Without You is among them). Whereas that was a case of an album signifying a time in history and a movement of free love and colour; Revolver is a much more focused, nuanced and crack-free (or should that be weed?!) effort that showed what promise there was on Rubber Soul. The writing is a bit more balanced in terms of the band’s contributions – Lennon and McCartney, I think, wrote five songs each; Harrison takes three (Taxman, Love You To and I Want to Tell You) whilst there is a co-write in Yellow Submarine – maybe more in the McCartney camp. The fact that Harrison’s Taxman opens the album – and has that immense McCartney bass work on it! – proves there was greater equality and boldness in the group. It is, in fact, the perfect way to start the album. Revolver has perfect programming; some of their earlier work suffered from the odd track being in the wrong place – I feel Rubber Soul and A Hard Day’s Night could have done with a reshuffle.
The sort of studio experimentation and effects that would mark Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was coming through on Revolver. Backwards effects and tape loops – personified on the closer, Tomorrow Never Knows – added another dimension to the band’s exceptional work. If the band were still indulging in substances – LSD was taking more of a role in their creative meetings than other drugs – the fact they had taken a break from professional commitments meant there were free to write at their peace and not be hurried into touring. You can hear the band pulling together and still very much a unit. If there were slight signs things were not as rosy as their beginnings; the material does not show the strain that would define albums like The Beatles and Let It Be (1970). The extraordinary Rain and Paperback Writer were also penned during that time (non-album singles in the same way Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were created, but not released, when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was taking shape) and the band were moving from a more traditional, if ground-breaking Pop band, to the psychedelia and mind-bend that would take their sound in new directions. One of the reasons Revolver deserves big acclaim and birthday (if a couple of days late) is how it changed Pop music in 1966 – it is advanced and rare today, even! There is nothing in modern music, or has been, that pushed music as far; nothing from a Pop band that garnered such a huge reaction.
IN THIS PHOTO: John Lennon during Revolver's recording/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
The band were not only talking about love and leaning on lyrical themes that defined their earliest work. The guys were representing the countercultural movement and addressing Tibetan Buddhist ceremony practice and, with Harrison making his first foray into Asian/Indian music, sounds beyond the U.K. and U.S. Rubber Soul gained a fantastic critical wave and, it seems, gave The Beatles the confidence to take their music to the next level. Creative control pre-Revolver was more in favour of Lennon – that would change after only one album – and it might be the only Beatles album since their start where the two lead songwriters had equal billing. New styles and genres were coming into their work; the boys were almost inventing and developing their own movements; the studio was less a place to record and more a temple where they could tamper, wonder and change the rules of popular music. With George Martin, of course, in the producer’s chair; The Beatles were vibing from the swing and cultural reputation of London. The band would often visit plays and shows and take inspiration from them; the buzzing streets and wave of art that was flooding the city fed into their blood. It was a moment when the band were completely together and there was no ego control – although an argument during the recording of Lennon’s She Said She Said saw McCartney walk out of the studio – and Martin was given more trust and a bigger role (often adding new elements to songs and realising their full potential).
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: David Mcenery/REX/Shutterstock
Compression and tonal equalisation added fresh nuanced into the band’s music; a greater range of instruments was brought into the mix – from Harrison’s locker of Asian instruments to sound effects and horns – and The Beatles were taking more risks. The backwards effects one hears on I’m Only Sleeping – the backmasked guitar solo – was new to Pop music; McCartney’s bass was given more prominence and influence on the recordings; the closed-mic orchestrations on Eleanor Rigby and the biting horns on Got to Get You Into My Life were all new to the band – they were breaking from the past and almost reinventing themselves. Lyrics, as such, rarely touched on love and, instead, looked at death, dreams and spirituality. Maybe drugs and the culture of the time had a big role in that decision: the fact the band were confidently together and as hungry as ever meant another Rubber Soul was not on the cards! From Harrison’s protest at increased taxes by Labour P.M. Harold Wilson (Taxman) to Eleanor Rigby’s perils of loneliness – after only two songs, The Beatles have subverted expectations and introduced their fans to subjects they were not used to hearing. Although some of the subject matter deals with deal and isolation; there is a lot of beauty and fizz to be found. Revolver is a more expressive statement than any work they had done to that point.
IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney during the recording of Revolver/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Got to Get You into My Life has jubilant horns and Stax/Motown-like qualities (certainly, there is an air of America) whereas Here, There and Everywhere and nods to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds – Brian Wilson, in turn, was inspired to write that album after marvelling at Rubber Soul! There was the old (love and tender songs) but a more expansive and brash Beatles. Bob Dylan, the English summer and Tibet influenced the album’s second-half. In fact, that extra-terrestrial closer (Tomorrow Never Knows) remains the band’s most progressive and astonishing offering. Not only had The Beatles never produced anything as radical and progressive: look around music and it sounds like an alien from another planet! It was the moment that closed an album that took The Beatles to new heights. The title came from a typical Ringo Starr malapropism (in the same way A Hard Day’s Night and Eight Days a Week came to be) but the composition seemed to take from sources all around the musical and physical world. There is the spiritualism and haunt of the lyrics: the physicality and audio head-fu*k of the composition creates a balance that is uneasy, eye-watering and psychotropic. McCartney’s laughter was magnified and sped to sound like seagulls; Lennon wanted his voice to sound like the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a mountain – the band were on a different plain and, in yet another way, was changing music forever.
The fact Revolver has shifted critical and public opinion this century is because of the way it has influenced music today – in terms of the studio experimentation, genre-hopping and lyrical themes. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was always considered the master and most important Beatles moment. Many say the album is only as revered because of the epic closer, A Day in the Life. Revolver is a more complete work and it is hard to pick out any weaknesses. It was only natural the band would take another leap from Revolver to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band but the shift they took from Rubber Soul to Revolver is immense. This article (written to celebrate the album’s fiftieth anniversary) – drills down to the essence and brilliance of the album/period:
“But in and of itself, Revolver is quite an achievement, a testament to the collaborative power of what was, essentially, a simple four-piece rock band. The Beatles were always a collective—even when they were at their most frayed in the late ‘60s, the band’s chemistry shone through on their best recordings. And on Revolver, the complementary dynamic between John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr reaches its creative zenith, buoyed by an eclectic set of songs and, in George Martin, a producer eager to realize his proteges’ ever-expanding creative vision.
But from the moment you hear that fake count-in that opens the ornery “Taxman,” along with it’s jagged guitar solo (played by McCartney, not Harrison), punchy rhythm, thumping bass and off-kilter backbeat, it’s clear that the Beatles weren’t just far away from their Beatlemania sound, they were also uninterested in rehashing what they’d so successfully mastered on Rubber Soul. That album was barely six months old when Revolver was released, and two albums have rarely been so close chronologically but so disparate sonically and musically”.
Greg Kot, writing for the BBC in 2016, stated why he felt Revolver exceeded Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s reputation:
“It does everything Sgt Pepper did, except it did it first and often better. It just wasn’t as well-packaged and marketed. The hype that preceded Sgt Pepper had a lot to do with the leaps in imagination, the studio-as-instrument adventurousness, that flourished on Revolver in half the time: the sessions for the 1966 album spanned two-and-a-half months whereas Sgt Pepper took an unprecedented five months to record”.
There are a couple of reasons why The Beatles’ magnum opus deserves year-in-year-out investigation and hoopla. For one, it is the creative and personal harmony/height of the greatest band in music. Pre-Revolver, there was a bit of rush and occasional creative disparity; post-Revolver, the band started to splinter and dissolve. Their 1966 masterpiece is them as a band with no leaders and bitterness: it is four friends taking everything music was about then and turning it on its head. I mentioned how modern Pop/music does not push boundaries like The Beatles did then. I have not heard anything in the last couple of decades that has pushed music to such an extent. Even though there is not an album to rival Revolver’s calibre; from its production and techniques to its musical and lyrical eclecticism, it is a record that is very much alive and well today – various acolytes, cousins and embers infused into all corners of the modern market.
IN THIS PHOTO: Recording of Revolver at Abbey Road Studios
If it were not for Revolver, who knows when we might have experienced something as giddy – outside of The Beatles’ minds, that is! Another reason why the album should be marked is how seamless and faultless it is. Many argue albums are irrelevant and people only listen to singles these days. That is a tragic thing to hear and maybe there are few albums you want to listen to from the start to end. Revolver offers no weaknesses and, instead, provides an emotional and sonic banquet that will leave you arrested and smiling. In fact, the album sort of whizzes by and you are compelled to put it on again – perfect in vinyl form when you need inspiration and calming. It is what albums were made for and, fifty-two years after its release, has yet to be equalled in terms of its sheer quality (many might argue but I would refute anyone).
You have that variety and musical variation; the incredible cover (by Klaus Voormann) and two world-class songwriters at their peak; the fact Yellow Submarine doesn’t sound out of place – you cannot forget the guys were experimenting with no instruments and felt their work growing stronger and more ambitious. The band spent longer on Yellow Submarine than the entirety of their debut, Please Please Me; most of the tracks are three minutes or under; all four band members contribute lyrics to Eleanor Rigby…Revolver seems ultra-complex and simple all at the same time! The guys knew Revolver was a big step (in the dark) but they were unafraid to shed the odd fan or two for making an album that did not repeat or conform. They wanted to blow minds, change music and stand ahead of all competitors – they did all of that and some! I hope Revolver’s fifty-second (and-a-bit) birthday means younger fans discover the album and those who are familiar pick up their copy and play it to death! It was a record that surpassed anything The Beatles had created (and would go on to create) and, in many people’s mind, it’s an L.P. whose innovations, wonderful songs and sheer brilliance…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in Washington, D.C. on 13th August, 1966/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
HAS not been equalled since!