FEATURE:
I Want to Tell You
The Seven Best Tracks from The Beatles’ 1966 Album, Revolver
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AS 6th April…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in Washington D.C. on 13th August, 1966
marks fifty-five years since the first session of what would become The Beatles’ album, Revolver, started, this feature commemorates that. The iconic foursome started in the evening at Abbey Road Studios, with the recording of the basic track of a new John Lennon song, Tomorrow Never Knows. In terms of ambition, they were going in with the most complex and highly-regarded song! Here is some more information regarding a hugely important date:
“Recording 'Mark I' (working title of `Tomorrow Never Knows')(takes 1-3). Studio 3. Abbey Road.
"John showed up with a song after we'd had a couple of days off. I remember being in Brian Epstein's house in Chapel Street in Belgravia. We met up and John had a song that was all on the chord of C, which in our minds was a perfectly good idea.
I was wondering how George Martin was going to take it, because it was a radical departure; we'd always had at least three chords, and maybe a change for the middle eight. Suddenly this was John just strumming on C rather earnestly - 'Lay down your mind…' And the words were all very deep and meaningful - certainly not 'Thank You Girl'; a bit of a change from all that.
George Martin took it very well. He said, 'Rather interesting, John. Jolly interesting!' So we got in and recorded it as a fairly straightforward rock'n'roll band thing." - Paul, from The Beatles Anthology”.
The fourteen-track album is not only one of the best from The Beatles; it is one of the very best albums that has ever been released. To mark the first Revolver recording session, I have selected the seven best tracks from the album. It is hard to cut the album in half like that, such is the quality throughout! Here are my seven favourite cuts from a hugely influential album. On 6th April, it will be fifty-five years since The Beatles started work on…
A timeless masterpiece.
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Eleanor Rigby
Main Songwriter: Paul McCartney
Recorded: 28th–29th April and 6th June, 1966
Length: 2:07
Paul McCartney: vocals
John Lennon: harmony vocals
George Harrison: harmony vocals
Tony Gilbert, Sidney Sax, John Sharpe, Jurgen Hess: violin
Stephen Shingles, John Underwood: viola
Derek Simpson, Norman Jones: cello
“Paul McCartney came up with the initial idea in the music room in the basement of Jane Asher’s family home in Wimpole Street, London.
I wrote it at the piano, just vamping an E minor chord; letting that stay as a vamp and putting a melody over it, just danced over the top of it. It has almost Asian Indian rhythms.
Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now, Barry Miles” – The Beatles Bible
Here, There and Everywhere
Main Songwriter: Paul McCartney
Recorded: 14th, 16th and 17th June, 1966
Length: 2:25
Paul McCartney: vocals, acoustic guitar, bass, finger clicks
John Lennon: backing vocals, finger clicks
George Harrison: backing vocals, lead guitar, finger clicks
Ringo Starr: drums, finger clicks
“Interestingly, McCartney claims to have had a demo version in March 1965, while The Beatles filmed Help! in Obertauern, Austria.
John and I shared a room and we were taking off our heavy ski boots after a day’s filming, ready to have a shower and get ready for the nice bit, the evening meal and the drinks. We were playing a cassette of our new recordings and my song ‘Here, There And Everywhere’ was on. And I remember John saying, ‘You know, I probably like that better than any of my songs on the tape.’ Coming from John, that was high praise indeed.
Paul McCartney, Anthology” – The Beatles Bible
Yellow Submarine
Main Songwriter: Paul McCartney
Recorded: 26th May and 1st June, 1966
Length: 2:39
Ringo Starr: vocals, drums
John Lennon: backing vocals, acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney: backing vocals, bass
George Harrison: backing vocals, tambourine
Mal Evans: backing vocals, bass drum
Neil Aspinall, George Martin, Geoff Emerick, Pattie Harrison, Brian Jones, Marianne Faithfull, Alf Bicknell: backing vocals
“Released as a double a-side with ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Yellow Submarine’ has become a divisive song among Beatles fans. To many it’s a charming singalong for all ages; for others, it’s one of the band’s weakest moments, and an unnecessary bout of whimsy on the otherwise flawless Revolver.
I don’t actually know where they got the idea for it; I just felt it was a really interesting track for me to do. I’d been doing a lot of covers. At that time I did either covers or something they wrote specifically for me.
Ringo Starr, Anthology
I remember lying in bed one night, in that moment before you’re falling asleep – that little twilight moment when a silly idea comes into your head – and thinking of ‘Yellow Submarine’: ‘We all live in a yellow submarine…’
I quite like children’s things; I like children’s minds and imagination. So it didn’t seem uncool to me to have a pretty surreal idea that was also a children’s idea. I thought also, with Ringo being so good with children – a knockabout uncle type – it might not be a bad idea for him to have a children’s song, rather than a very serious song. He wasn’t that keen on singing.
Paul McCartney, Anthology” – The Beatles Bible
She Said She Said
Main Songwriter: John Lennon
Recorded: 21st June, 1966
Length: 2:36
John Lennon: vocals, rhythm guitar, Hammond organ
George Harrison: backing vocals, lead guitar, bass guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, shaker
“The final track recorded for Revolver, ‘She Said She Said’ was inspired by an LSD-influenced conversation between John Lennon and actor Peter Fonda.
During The Beatles’ US tour in the summer of 1965, they rented a house in Los Angeles’ Mulholland Drive. On 24 August they played host to Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of The Byrds, and the two parties, apart from Paul McCartney, spent the day tripping on LSD.
The actor Peter Fonda arrived at the house, also on acid. He attempted to comfort Harrison, who thought he was dying.
I told him there was nothing to be afraid of and that all he needed to do was relax. I said that I knew what it was like to be dead because when I was 10 years old I’d accidentally shot myself in the stomach and my heart stopped beating three times while I was on the operating table because I’d lost so much blood.
John was passing at the time and heard me saying ‘I know what it’s like to be dead’. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born. Who put all that shit in your head?’
Peter Fonda
Lennon recounted the incident in 1980 in one of his final interviews, speaking to a journalist from Playboy magazine.
It’s an interesting track. The guitars are great on it. That was written after an acid trip in LA during a break in The Beatles’ tour where we were having fun with The Byrds and lots of girls. Some from Playboy, I believe. Peter Fonda came in when we were on acid and he kept coming up to me and sitting next to me and whispering, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead.’
He was describing an acid trip he’d been on. We didn’t want to hear about that! We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties, and this guy – who I really didn’t know; he hadn’t made Easy Rider or anything – kept coming over, wearing shades, saying, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead,’ and we kept leaving him because he was so boring! And I used it for the song, but I changed it to ‘she’ instead of ‘he’. It was scary. You know, a guy… when you’re flying high and [whispers] ‘I know what it’s like to be dead, man.’ I remembered the incident. Don’t tell me about it! I don’t want to know what it’s like to be dead!
John Lennon, All We Are Saying, David Sheff” – The Beatles Bible
And Your Bird Can Sing
Main Songwriter: John Lennon
Recorded: 20th and 26th April, 1966
Length: 2:00
John Lennon: vocals, rhythm guitar, handclaps
Paul McCartney: backing vocals, lead guitar, bass, handclaps
George Harrison: backing vocals, lead guitar, handclaps
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine, handclaps
“Written primarily by John Lennon, ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ is notable mainly for its cryptic lyrics and the twin guitar riffs – played by Paul McCartney and George Harrison – that drive the song.
While Lennon never revealed the inspiration behind the song, it is believed to refer to the rivalry between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Although the two groups were friends, Lennon saw the Stones as Beatles copyists, and the titular ‘bird’ may have been Marianne Faithfull.
Like ‘Rain’, ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ hinted at knowledge denied to all but the enlightened, showing the influence of LSD. It is also likely that the oblique lyrics were an attempt at writing something akin to the wordplay of Bob Dylan, whose songs Lennon greatly admired.
Lennon was later dismissive of ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’, describing it as “a horror” and “throwaway”. Paul McCartney claims to have helped Lennon write the song.
‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ was John’s song. I suspect that I helped with the verses because the songs were nearly always written without second and third verses. I seem to remember working on that middle eight with him but it’s John’s song, 80-20 to John.
Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now, Barry Miles” – The Beatles Bible
For No One
Main Songwriter: Paul McCartney
Recorded: 9th, 16th and 19th May, 1966
Length: 2:00
Paul McCartney: vocals, bass, piano, clavichord
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine, maracas
Alan Civil: horn
“‘For No One’, Paul McCartney’s meditation on the end of a love affair, was one of the highlights of the Revolver album.
The song was written in March 1966 while McCartney was on holiday with Jane Asher in Switzerland. It was originally called ‘Why Did It Die?’
I was in Switzerland on my first skiing holiday. I’d done a bit of skiing in Help! and quite liked it, so I went back and ended up in a little bathroom in a Swiss chalet writing ‘For No One’. I remember the descending bassline trick that it’s based on, and I remember the character in the song – the girl putting on her make-up.
Occasionally we’d have an idea for some new kind of instrumentation, particularly for solos… On ‘For No One’ I was interested in the French horn, because it was an instrument I’d always loved from when I was a kid. It’s a beautiful sound, so I went to George Martin and said, ‘How can we go about this?’ And he said, ‘Well, let me get the very finest.’
Paul McCartney, Anthology” – The Beatles Bible
Tomorrow Never Knows
Main Songwriter: John Lennon
Recorded: 6th, 7th and 22nd April, 1966
Length: 3:00
John Lennon: vocals, organ, tape loops
Paul McCartney: lead guitar, bass guitar, tape loops
George Harrison: guitar, sitar, tambura, tape loops
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine, tape loops
George Martin: piano
“‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the monumental closing track on Revolver, was also the first song to be recorded for the album.
While the title, like ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, was a Ringoism particularly liked by John Lennon, the lyrics were largely taken from The Psychedelic Experience, a 1964 book written by Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, which contained an adaptation of the ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Lennon discovered The Psychedelic Experience at the Indica bookshop, co-owned by Barry Miles. On 1 April 1966 Lennon and Paul McCartney visited the bookshop.
John wanted a book by what sounded like ‘Nitz Ga’. It took Miles a few minutes to realise that he was looking for the German philosopher Nietzsche, long enough for John to become convinced that he was being ridiculed. He launched into an attack on intellectuals and university students and was only mollified when Paul told him that he had not understood what John was asking for either, and that Miles was not a university graduate but had been to art college, just like him. Immediately friendly again, John talked about Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, laughing about his school magazine the Daily Howl: ‘Tell Ginsberg I did it first!’ Miles found him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and John began to scan the shelves. His eyes soon alighted upon a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, Dr Timothy Leary’s psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. John was delighted and settled down on the settee with the book. Right away, on page 14 in Leary’s introduction, he read, ‘Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.’ He had found the first line of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, one of the Beatles’ most innovative songs.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles” – The Beatles Bible