#46 The Beatles- Revolver

Black and white on the cover, glorious Technicolour inside…

(Parlophone)

Released: 5^th August 1966

Producer: George Martin

Topped the chart:

7^th August 1966 (for 7 weeks)

7 weeks total

In the 90s, George Harrison's memory wasn’t what it used to be. As he said in the Anthology TV series, “I don’t see too much difference between Rubber Soul and Revolver. To me, they could be Volume One and Volume Two.”

A strange take from our vantage point because musically there is a chasm between these two albums. As we explored last time, Rubber Soul uses an autumnal, folk-rock sound as a jumping off point. Revolver is the sound of the band without somewhere to start, untethered as they plummet into an unknown abyss of wonders and endless invention.

Aside from anything else, what The Beatles had for their new album was time. Where previous albums had been recorded in a blind panic, the band in 1966 took full advantage of a gap in their touring schedule set aside to make an unrealised third film. Sessions stretched into the wee small hours, and production heavy songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby could be worked on for days at a time.

Revolver is seen as the marker for the end of The Beatles’ touring years, and while this isn’t quite true—the album was released just under a month before their final concert in San Francisco—there is a sense of freedom here knowing that these songs would not be recreated live (in fact it wouldn’t be until 1979 that any of these songs would be played for a paying audience). The band sound free, employing a full brass band on Got To Get You Into My Life, a bevy of sound effects on Yellow Submarine and the randomised tape loops on Tomorrow Never Knows. All can (and have) been performed on stage now via synthesisers, but it would have been extremely difficult back in 1966.

On the subject of Tomorrow Never Knows, it was the song that kicked off the Revolver sessions, and was a sign of how they meant to go on. Enough has been written over the years of just what a turning point this song was, piling ideas upon idea and essentially creating 90s dance music 30 years early. What should be noted is the pioneering work of producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick, translating John Lennon’s reading of Timothy Leary Tibetan philosophy into a Sermon of the Mount, passing his voice through a rotating Leslie speaker, backed by a drone and cacophony of scissored tape loops. The result was like nothing that had been heard before, like a message from the afterlife and, despite the influence it had on the likes of Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, nothing since has quite come close to matching its daring and intensity.

While The Beatles were taking more control of their production, the support of Martin and Emerick is what elevates Revolver to new heights for 60s pop. Without Martin’s delicate hands, the world of Yellow Submarine would just be a mess of classroom instruments and random sound effects. His touch is all over Eleanor Rigby too, giving the song a Bernard Herman-style tension in the violins that makes it a vast step up from Yesterday, while essentially using the same instruments.

It would be amiss not to mention just how vast the bass sound is that the pair of them pull out of Paul McCartney. For British albums, this is the point when bass becomes a thing—reticent engineers worried about needles jumping out of grooves are thrown aside, and the result is like swallowing a California Reaper chilli, exploding in every organ as it works its way down. Revolver’s concurrent single Paperback Writer/Rain gets the credit for the bass sound but it’s here too in spades—She Said She Said, Taxman, I Want to Tell You, all do a great job of walking the speakers across the room. It helps that McCartney’s basslines find a whole new groove, this is the first time that he gets to be genuinely creative with the bass as a counter-melody, rather than simply walking up and down the chords as before.

For all the production nous that this album is deservedly praised for, it would be nothing without the songs, and all three songwriters hit it out the park. For Lennon-McCartney, this is the first time that they are genuinely equal as songwriters, the latter every bit as gifted as the former. It would be the first and only time this would be the case, with Lennon’s former dominance on the slide and McCartney on the ascendent towards his 67-71 golden era.

Both men share the experience of mind-expansion from the time (McCartney: literature and the avant-garde; Lennon: the impact of guzzling LSD at an alarming rate) and explore both the convention and unconventional in their songs. McCartney still holds on to the traditional ballad (Here, There and Everywhere), but with more sincerity than before with more than a few shades of The Beach Boys’ In My Room. But he also dives into character for the first time, sketching “all the lonely people” on Eleanor Rigby and a failing relationship on For No One, leaving his id behind…while also extoling the virtues of weed on the Stax-a-like Got To Get You Into My Life. Lennon, on the other hand, is all about that id, from his innate laziness on the evocative I’m Only Sleeping, confronting his feelings of death on Tomorrow Never Knows to recounting a brush with Peter Fonda and a bad trip on She Said She Said.

Out on his own, George Harrison proves that the quality of his work on Rubber Soul was no fluke, despite his hazy memories of the era. He’s allowed to spread his wings for the first time, given three tracks to show what he can do. I Want to Tell You is a fun if slightly disposable piece of mid-60s rock, but on the other two tracks, Harrison explores two of his great songwriting obsessions for the first time: Indian sounds and his bank balance.

Of the latter, Taxman is a crackling little number bolstered by a strong riff, energised solo and explosive bassline. Its references to “Mr Wilson” and “Mr Heath” are dated and will pass by younger listeners now, but it still has plenty of droll wit, from declaring “the pennies on your eyes” when you die to taxing “your feet” when you take a walk (walk). The strange, lysergic count in sets up the mad journey the listener is about to embark on, too.

Love You To is Harrison’s first real foray into Indian sounds after a practice run on Rubber Soul. That it’s the weakest of his three Beatles-era dives into the sub-continent shouldn’t count against it, being the first, and it’s refreshing to hear a 60s song treat the sitar seriously rather than as an affectation. It remains genuinely groundbreaking, bringing together Indian classical music with Western tendencies, and lyrically is the closest Harrison would get to the oblique poetry of Bob Dylan.

Really the only thing that holds Revolver back in The Beatles catalogue is that it doesn’t feel as unified as your Peppers or Abbey Roads, and is the last time until 1970 that the band would “just” put a collection of songs together. But it’s hard to criticise the approach when the standard of those songs is about as good as popular music can be. The Beatles and their listener's minds are open for the first time, and it’s a long trip out of here…

Score: 10/10

Tracklisting:

SIDE A

1.      Taxman

2.      Eleanor Rigby

3.      I’m Only Sleeping

4.      Love You To

5.      Here, There and Everywhere

6.      Yellow Submarine

7.      She Said She Said

SIDE B

8.      Good Day Sunshine

9.      And Your Bird Can Sing

10.  For No One

11.  Doctor Robert

12.  I Want to Tell You

13.  Got to Get You Into My Life

14.  Tomorrow Never Knows