Beatle Blog - Revolver

"Revolver" is the first of the "later era" Beatles albums and it was a crossroads for the band: after tinkering with new musical sounds on their last effort, "Rubber Soul," The Fab Four began to really dig deep on Revolver, culminating in their months-long recording and mixing of their tour de force next album, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Revolver was a transition, not only for them, but for the music world. It was one of the first albums in which a band cared as much about the musical composition of the album as they did about touring.

As I said in my review of "Help!," albums were things that were made so that they could be sold at concerts. They weren't nearly as musically important as they are now. People didn't put nearly as much time into them. "Please Please Me," the Beatles' first album, was recorded in a single day. The album was about rock and roll alone. Musical innovation was saved for later.

So, how did this album make music history? Well now...

Let's start with the drugs. While many point to Sgt. Pepper's as the Beatles' obligatory drug-induced album, I would point to Revolver as the album in which drugs played a more influential role. Consider that Sgt. Pepper had one song that was about pot ("Fixing a Hole") that might have been (although the band denied it) about LSD, with a few rumored drug references in some of the other songs.

Revolver, on the other hand, has four songs that are about or directly inspired by drugs of different kinds ("She Said, She Said," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "Got To Get You Into My Life" and "Dr. Robert"). Once again, the Beatles helped usher a new musical element-the drug song-into the mainstream musical consciousness.

That wasn't the only druggy part of the album, either. One night, while Paul was significantly stoned, he accidentally threaded some tape backwards and was giddily delighted to discover the odd and frenetic sounds that came out of his tape player. Thus, backmasking, recording some of the elements of a song backwards, was born. Backmasking has been a huge element in recording since the time of Revolver, so I guess we have pot to thank for it.

Another huge innovation that appeared for the first time on this album was double tracking voices. Previously, if you wanted your voice to be accompanied or echoed a little by the same voice, you would have to record an entirely new track to do so. New technology allowed the Beatles to simply layer their voices over, saving lots of time and helping to enrich the musical atmosphere. Enough about how groundbreaking this stuff was though, let's get to the music.

The album starts out a rockin' tune: the first George Harrison track to be really good, Taxman. This was as close to political as the band ever got, with Harrison complaining about how both sides of the political aisle are responsible for oppressively high taxes. The lyrics are witty, but the highlight of the track is a blistering guitar riff by Paul McCartney.

The Beatles were foraying across all kind of musical territory with this release, and they followed up the rocky Taxman with the urgent, string laden ballad "Eleanor Rigby." This was one of their #1 singles, and it's one of the saddest songs in the Beatles' catalog.

The third track, "I'm Only Sleeping," was one of the songs in which musical innovation played a key role. In order to get a wispy, dreamlike feel for the song, the band supplemented the casual bassline and light drumming with a guitar solo by Harrison. The twist? Harrison practiced playing the solo backwards, and he recorded it backwards onto a forward recording tape. He then rethreaded the tape so that the tape was playing backwards, thus playing the guitar solo forwards yet giving it an altogether different sound. It works, too.

After I'm Only Sleeping comes "Love You To," one of George's more unfortunate attempts to sound Indian, and "Here, There, and Everywhere," one of Paul's more popular melodic pieces. Now, before I go any further, let me say a brief word about what might be the Beatles' most maligned track, "Yellow Submarine."

First of all, the song is meant to be a nursery rhyme. John and Paul wrote it as such, and they wrote it for Ringo to sing, which explains the voice. So, while to criticize it as a normal song is unfair, it actually holds up rather well in musical complexity. Laden with submarine clips and a bridge with a nautically-placed on-board conversation, the song also conveys its party atmosphere quite well, with a large, raucous, laughing chorus to sing the last part of the song. So don't be hating on the Beatles because of this song. That would, quite honestly, be a bit ignorant of you.

Following Yellow Submarine is "She Said, She Said," a song that Lennon wrote about an experience during a bad trip. It has one of Ringo's more admired drum tracks on it, providing an atmospheric shell to the song, while the guitar riffs echo the vocal lines.

After this, we enter the "Paul is really awesome" section of the album with "Good Day Sunshine." While the chorus is repeated a bit too much, his cheerful, upbeat voice and one of the happiest pianos you'll ever hear combine to make a song you can't help but be charmed by. After this is "And Your Bird Can Sing," a John song with a really good guitar riff and energetic vocals.

Paul hits you with some more awesome on "For No One," a song with piano and string bits emphasizing the beautifully sad vocals. It used to bother me that this song ends relatively abruptly, but I think that perhaps Paul meant it to sound that way. It seems to mirror the lyrics, about a love that was cut off too soon.

"Dr. Robert" follows For No One. It's a standard rock song, not a lot standing out. After that is George's "I Want to Tell You," which is pretty interesting. The song is about how George has trouble expressing himself in words to people. While the lyrics are rather simplistic, the most noticeable part of the song is a few notes played repetitively throughout the piece. They are mildly dissonant the entire time, making the listener uncomfortable and allowing George's point about his verbal discomfort to be illustrated aurally. It's a good effect.

Now we come to the album's standout track, Paul's "Got To Get You Into My Life," an ode to marijuana (although its vagueness initially led some to believe it was a love song). Paul styled this album in the ways of the Motown and soul genres, and the main instruments on the track are horns. The star of the track is Paul's voice, however, as he tears through this track with some of his best reaches in any of the Fab Four's albums. This is a must-hear.

The album ends with an odd, yet influential, John creation: "Tomorrow Never Knows." Not content with inventing world music on Rubber Soul and backmasking on this album, John decides here to invent psychedelic music. Inspired by LSD and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, John created this trippy song's lyrics. The music, however, was supplied by all of the members. While it is notable for Ringo's drumming, which fits the song while somehow being separate from it, it is most noted for two musical innovations: tape loops and the echo on John's voice.

Paul discovered that a weird saturation effect occurred when you messed with tape loops in a certain way. The loops kept on running over themselves, giving anything you recorded an infinite loop sound. The band looped several different instruments and sounds, then edited them before putting them into the song. The sounds make for a distinct, surreal atmosphere.

The voice came from John's desire to sound like a monk singing from a mountaintop. He told his producer, George Martin, that perhaps they could hang him by a rope from the studio ceiling and then swing him around the microphone. Martin wisely nixed this idea, telling John he'd look into it. What they ended up doing was routing John's voice through a Leslie speaker cabinet, a speaker usually used for the vibrato electric organs heard on so many 60s rock tracks. The vibrato is transferred to his voice.

In short, Revolver is one of the most influential albums of all time. It is ranked as the number one album of all time by some music sources, and it is home to some of the Beatles' best work.

What it did for the Beatles: Helped George emerge more as a songwriter, established their desire to make truly innovative studio work, started their psychedelic phase, established the artistic freedom they needed to make Sgt. Pepper, etc.

What it did for the music world: Hard to overemphasize this. Introduced backmasking, one of the first psychedelically-tinged albums, showed nearly unprecedented craftsmanship in album-making, introduced double tracking and editing voice through Leslie speakers, probably some other stuff that I don't know. Seriously folks, this is a big one.

Album Highlights: Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, Good Day Sunshine, And Your Bird Can Sing, For No One, Got To Get You Into My Life, Tomorrow Never Knows. Yes, I know that that's half of the album.

Ryan's Beatle Ranking: #3 out of 12, just behind Sgt. Pepper's and Abby Road.

Next on Blogging the Beatles: Rubber Soul