The Beatles - Revolver

Revolver turns 50 tomorrow!  Shit, I'm old... 

My favorite Beatles album has always been Abbey Road. A close second is Revolver. Many critics have cited Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as the Beatles’ creative peak. I argue that Revolver is their finest body of work because all the Beatles were still engaged. Paul McCartney produced some of his finest songs. He was beginning to show he was becoming the Beatles’ musical director. George Harrison finally emerged from the songwriting shadow of Lennon & McCartney. John Lennon had not yet mentally checked out of the Beatles and was still writing prolifically. Of all the experimentation that occurred on Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour, it all started with Revolver. Sgt Pepper, Strawberry Fields Forever and I Am the Walrus probably would not have happened had it not been for Revolver. In addition to the fourteen songs that make up Revolver, let’s not forget the single [recorded during the Revolver sessions] that wasn’t included – Paperback Writer/Rain. I think of Revolver and the Paperback Writer/Rain together as a single work. As Neil Young said, "it's all the same song!" The previous album, Rubber Soul, was the quiet acoustic album. The Dylan influence was definitely there. Revolver brought in other elements to include Stax, classical Indian music and a children's song, in addition to orchestral instrumentation and elements of musique concrète. John Lennon and Paul McCartney still got the lion’s share of the songwriting with six songs each. George Harrison normally got to contribute two songs to each Beatles album. On Revolver, he got three, including the lead-off song – Taxman. Ringo got his one song to sing as usual. The Beatles were getting to the stage in their career where they were looking past a life of record/tour/record/tour. Of all the songs recorded during this period, only Paperback Writer was performed live. They had definitely gotten past the “boy/girl” songs of 1963-1965 [well, John and George did anyway]. 

The songs:  The single: Paperback Writer [Paul]/Rain [John] 

John’s songs: I’m Only Sleeping/She Said She Said/And Your Bird Can Sing/Doctor Robert/Tomorrow Never Knows 

Paul’s songs: Eleanor Rigby/Here, There and Everywhere/Good Day Sunshine/For No One/Got To Get You Into My Life 

George’s songs: Taxman/Love You To/I Want To Tell You 

Ringo’s song [written by Lennon/McCartney]: Yellow Submarine 

Taxman – George’s ode to Britain’s Inland Revenue [our version of the IRS]. In the Anthology series, George explained his motivation for writing Taxman:

“It was in April 1966 that we started recording Revolver. Taxman was on Revolver. I had discovered I was paying a huge amount of money to the taxman. You are so happy that you’ve finally started earning money – and then you find out about tax. In those days we paid nineteen shillings and sixpence out of every pound (there were twenty shillings in the pound), and with the supertax and surtax and tax-tax it was ridiculous – a heavy penalty for making money. That was the big turn-off for Britain. Anybody who ever made any money moved to America or somewhere else.” A couple of notes - John came up with the lines “And my advice for those who die/Declare the pennies on your eye” and suggested adding the names of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath when George sings “Don't ask me what I want it for (ah-ah, Mister Wilson)/If you don't want to pay some more (ah-ah, Mister Heath).” Guitar solos courtesy of Paul McCartney, rhythm guitar by George.  In his book Here, There and Everywhere, engineer Geoff Emerick made the claim that George Harrison couldn't play the guitar because he couldn't come up with a guitar solo off the cuff like Paul could.  What a dumb thing to assert.  He may be a brilliant sound guy, but he's an idiot.

Eleanor Rigby – no Beatle plays an instrument on this tale of an elderly spinster. It’s just the voices of John, Paul and George with a string octet. Paul started the song, but others put bits in as well. George came up with the hook "Ah, look at all the lonely people," Ringo suggested Father McKenzie be "darning his socks in the night". John Lennon’s friend Pete Shotton suggested Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie be united at her funeral, then Paul finished the words. 

I’m Only Sleeping – John had no routine away from the road, enjoyed being lazy while at home, usually under the influence of some illicit substance [usually LSD]. When he wasn’t tripping, he loved sleeping.  George plays backwards guitar solos that sound like someone is yawning. They got that idea when a tape operator played something backwards by mistake. 

Love You To – George does his first Indian song. Electric guitars, sitars, and tablas. John Lennon is nowhere to be found. It shows his growing interest in Indian philosophy. It had the working title “Granny Smith.” 

Here, There and Everywhere – Paul’s best love song – period. This was written at John’s house while Paul was waiting for him to wake up. Great vocal harmonies - even John loved it. Perfect!  A note here: Paul reportedly wrote this after hearing God Only Knows from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. 

Yellow Submarine – This one is mostly written by Paul [with a little help from John]. Standard Beatle practice was to have Ringo sing one song on each album. Since they didn’t record covers anymore, they wrote this one for him. A novelty song? Absolutely, but if you ever need to sing a baby to sleep, this song is a good one. Both Mark and Greg fell asleep in self-defense whenever Carol or I sang it to them [yes, we’re that bad]. Regardless of its musical merits, the boys sounded like they had a lot of fun making it. “Sky of blue and sea of green” came from Donovan.  This song isn’t meant to be taken seriously.  I love it for the sound effects. 

She Said She Said – the genesis of this song came from an encounter the Beatles had with Peter Fonda at a party somewhere in LA. Everybody was tripping on LSD. Peter Fonda told the boys he knew what it was like to be dead because he had died on an operating table several times after accidentally shooting himself when he was a kid. John’s retort was “who put all that shit in your head.” But it was 1966 and you didn’t put such things on records then, so it became “who put all those things in your head.” Bass guitar is courtesy of George Harrison. Paul didn’t play this session. This was the last thing recorded for Revolver. 

Good Day Sunshine – a happy throwaway of a song from Paul. At least it gives one a lift after hearing John singing about knowing what it’s like to be dead.  A note here:  NASA astronauts love waking up to this song. 

And Your Bird Can Sing – Paul had his happy throwaway song, and this one is from John. Guitars [lots of them from John and George], bass and drums are all you hear on this one. I have no idea what this one’s about, but I like it anyway – always have.  A note:  I read an article where Frank Sinatra used to refer to his manhood as his "bird", and maybe this is what John Lennon had in mind when he wrote the song.  If you listen to an earlier version on Anthology 2, John and Paul kept cracking up while trying to sing the song.  Perhaps a bit of marijuana and the "subject matter" was too much for them to concentrate on their work. 

For No One – an unhappy but excellent song from Paul about the end of a love affair and denial. The lyrics are right on the money. This one features a French horn solo from Alan Civil, who actually got a credit on the album.  This is one of Paul's sharpest lyric efforts. 

Doctor Robert – another drug song from John about a New York doctor who had a reputation for administering amphetamines to his patients. I always thought it was about the London dentist who gave John and George their first dose of LSD in 1965. 

I Want To Tell You – a song from George about his inability to communicate. According to George, he later said, it’s "about the avalanche of thoughts that are so hard to write down or say or transmit." All guitars are from George, while Paul plays piano and bass. John bangs the tambourine and sings. It had the working title “Laxton’s Superb.” What was it with George and apples anyway? 

Got To Get You Into My Life – for the first time on a Beatles record…brass, Stax-style. I’m not sure who came up with the horn arrangement, but it’s a good one. For those who think this is another Paul song about a girl, it isn’t – it’s about marijuana. Imagine that – a drug song from Paul McCartney. Paul loved it [pot] then, and still loves it 45 years later. John thought it was about LSD.  A footnote:  Brian Epstein had looked into the Beatles recording at Stax in Memphis, but it never happened.  I wonder if this song is an homage to the Stax sound? 

Tomorrow Never Knows – the first song recorded for Revolver, and due to its highly experimental nature, the only place it could go on the album was last. This was as if the Beatles were saying goodbye to the “moptops” and hello to mind expansion, Eastern mysticism, and music one could not possibly play live. This one from John is my favorite from Revolver. The production of the music is the “everything including the kitchen sink” approach. The first half of the vocal track utilizes Automatic Double Tracking, known as ADT. John Lennon hated the process of singing overdubs to his own voice, so he prodded the Abbey Road staff to come up with a technical solution. John told producer George Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred monks chanting from the Himilayas. He suggested to Martin that he be suspended from a rope and [with a good push] sing into the microphone as he spun around it. George Martin thought that idea was unworkable, but recording engineer Geoff Emerick came up with an idea. He figured out how to route John’s vocal through a Hammond organ’s rotating Leslie speaker. You can hear the effect starting at 1:27 into the song […Love is all and love is everyone…], the second half of the vocal track. That’s just the vocals… The music itself was an Indian drone in C. Usually Western music has several chord changes, but not Tomorrow Never Knows. George Harrison plays a sitar and a tambura droning over the bass and drums. Then there are all the sound effects. These effects were created by utilizing tape loops. Paul McCartney had been listening to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic music, and thus inspired during this time he experimented on a home tape recorder. He discovered that by removing the erasure head from his tape recorder, he could keep recording over the same piece of tape, saturating it with sound. He brought a bag full of these tape loops for the session for Tomorrow Never Knows. During the session, the Beatles had about five of these loops playing at the same time while George Martin and Geoff Emerick moved the faders of each tape machine up and down at random. Since all the tapes were going at the same time, it was a “live” performance of the mix, which prompted George Martin to state that the finished mix of the song could never be duplicated. The effects ranged from a “seagull” [which is really Paul McCartney laughing, or so I've read], a Mellotron playing on the flute setting, another Mellotron playing on a ‘violin” setting, and an orchestral chord recorded from a Sibelius symphony. They mixed those with a tape of the guitar solo from Taxman, which was cut up, reversed and overdubbed onto Tomorrow Never Knows at a later date. 

Paperback Writer - Paperback Writer is notable because this is the first Beatles song where you don’t have to strain to hear the bass. Credit John Lennon for demanding why American records had far more bass than their own records. At that time, British producers were loathe to record the bass at a high volume for fear that it would make the needle jump off the record during playback. According to Geoff Emerick [the guy responsible for getting the sounds the Beatles wanted], several things factored into the louder bass sound. First, Paul McCartney switched from his Hofner violin-shaped bass to a Rickenbacker. Emerick also used a loudspeaker placed directly in front of Paul McCartney’s amp as a microphone. Emerick stated that the Paperback Writer/Rain single was cut louder than any other Beatles record up to that time, due to a new piece of equipment used in the mastering process, referred to as "Automatic Transient Overload Control." Unlike Tomorrow Never Knows, the instrumentation on Paperback Writer is the standard two guitars/bass/drums. As such, it was the only new song from 1966 to be performed on the Beatles final tour. John Lennon described Paperback Writer thusly: “It's sort of Paul's version of Day Tripper, meaning a rock 'n' roll song with a guitar lick on a fuzzy, loud guitar - but it is Paul's song.” Indeed. It’s also their first single in the UK that wasn’t a “boy/girl” song [in the US, that honor went to Nowhere Man]. Paul McCartney’s reputation as very melodic bass player started with this song. One could make the case that he plays “lead bass” on the song. 

Rain – another favorite of mine from John, which was the B-side of Paperback Writer. According to John, Rain is “about people moaning about the weather all the time.” Like its A-side, Rain had the two guitars/bass/drums. The bass is very loud. It also is not a love song. That’s where the similarities with Paperback Writer end. During the recording of Tomorrow Never Knows, the Beatles discovered they could get different tonal qualities of their sounds if they sped up or slowed down the tape they recorded on. In this instance, they played the song at a fast tempo then slowed the tape to the tempo they wanted. This gave the song a hazy, murky kind of drugged-out quality. The vocals were recorded at a slower speed and sped up [go figure!]. The other feature of Rain is the backwards vocal. According to John Lennon, this innovation was discovered by accident. After a long recording session, John took home a tape of that day’s session. He was a bit stoned at the time and he threaded the tape on his machine backwards. He liked what he heard and wanted it on the record. During the outro, you can hear the words “rain,” “sunshine,” and "If the rain comes they run and hide their heads” all backwards. Ringo’s playing is especially good on this one. According to Ringo: "My favorite piece of me is what I did on Rain. I think I just played amazing. I was into the snare and hi-hat. I think it was the first time I used the trick of starting a break by hitting the hi-hat first instead of going directly to a drum off the hi-hat. I think it's the best out of all the records I've ever made. Rain blows me away. It's out in left field. I know me and I know my playing... and then there's Rain." As for me, I like to play Rain and Tomorrow Never Knows back-to-back.  

Even the cover for Revolver is great.  The cover was a collage created by Klaus Voorman.  He and his then-girlfriend Astrid Kircher met the Beatles in Hamburg.  He won a Grammy™ for his work. 

 

Sir George Martin [1926-2016] - RIP

As I look back on the past two or three months of this blog, it has come to resemble an obituary column.  Sadly, that trend continues here.  George Martin died on March 9, 2016.  He produced records for many people in a very long and storied career, but all you really need to know is this – he produced The Beatles.  He signed them to Parlaphone when all other record labels wouldn’t.  He was very different from record producers of his day.  He didn’t have a “signature sound” like Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.  He did not impose his own personal vision on the people with whom he worked.  He did not take for himself a cut of the Beatles’ songwriting royalties, which was a common practice for a long time.  He didn’t bring in studio pros to play their instruments [except for a different drummer on ‘Love Me Do’] – only the instruments the Beatles couldn’t play.  Only once did he try to get the Beatles to record something they didn’t write [he wanted ‘How Do You Do It’ – they held out for ‘Please Please Me’, their first #1 single].  In another move that was against type, he didn’t try to make the Beatles into a group of a front man and a bunch of sidemen, like Billy Haley and the Comets or Buddy Holly and the Crickets.  There was no ‘John Lennon and the Beatles’.  He encouraged Lennon & McCartney to keep writing their own songs when most artists at the time didn’t.  Not to be overlooked, he wasn’t a ‘my way or the highway’ kind of producer. While he would often make suggestions as to how to arrange a song, he also made their weirdness come true.  If they had a request to provide a certain sound they heard in their heads, more often than not George Martin made those requests become reality.  This final point will be the focus of today’s blog.  For this I lean heavily on two sources:  The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Anthology, and the webpage The Beatles Bible.  There are hundreds of interviews from the principals [John, Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin] from which I draw upon as well.

George Martin wrote many a string arrangement for the Beatles.  The exceptions were She’s Leaving Home. The Long and Winding Road, I Me Mine, and Across the Universe.  But some of those arrangements [string, vocal or otherwise] were such that one can’t imagine what the songs would sound like without George Martin’s contributions.  What are some of these magical moments?

Please Please Me [1963] – When Lennon & McCartney first brought this song to George Martin, it was a slow, bluesy song like what Roy Orbison would do.  Martin didn’t like it – he suggested they double the tempo.  The result – the Beatles’ second single, and their first-ever #1 in Britain.  "Congratulations, gentlemen," he told them, "You've just made your first number one."

A Hard Day’s Night [1964] – I’ve often said the opening chord to this song is like the sound of the Big Bang of the British Invasion.  There is more than meets the ear here.  Not only does George Harrison play a Fadd9 chord on his Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, John Lennon plays the same chord on his Gibson J-160 6-string acoustic guitar.  Paul McCartney played a simple D note [on the fifth fret of the A string on his Hofner violin bass], while George Martin played a Steinway grand piano [D2, G2, D3, G3 and C4].  To tell the difference, compare this to any live version where only George Harrison plays the chord.  The live versions are thin in comparison to what they did in the studio.  If you think you can do the whole thing on just a 12-string guitar, you can’t get there from here.

In My Life [1965] – That’s George Martin himself playing the baroque piano solo.  He played it at half speed and then sped the tape to make it sound like a harpsichord.

Yesterday [1965] - This was the first Beatles recording to feature only one Beatle; Paul McCartney and his acoustic guitar.  It was George Martin’s idea [and his arrangement] of adding a string quartet to the song.  The result is the most-covered song in history.

Rain [1966] - The backing track was recorded at a fast tempo, and then they slowed the tape playback to normal speed to drop to tone.  This gave the song a woozy, drugged-out feeling.  I found that if you want to play along it’s easiest to tune your guitar to Open G.  Standard G chords just don’t sound right otherwise.  John wanted the backwards signing at the end, and George Martin gave it to him.

Tomorrow Never Knows [1966] – Revolver [which I think is better than Sgt. Pepper] is the record with backwards guitar solos, tape loops, big thunderous drums, Indian instruments, just all kinds of crazy stuff.  Many tape loops were played simultaneously, and the sounds you hear are how the faders on the recording desk were moved.  It was a live performance mix-on-the-fly of tape loops instead of instruments that can’t be duplicated.  John wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting from a hilltop.  But instead of flying to Tibet to capture the sound, George Martin fed John’s voice through a rotating Leslie speaker, the kind that’s used in a Hammond organ.

Strawberry Fields Forever [1967] – According to Lewisohn, this one took 55 hours to record.  There were two versions of Strawberry Fields.  The first was closest to the tempo you would recognize today.  It has the Mellotron opening and George’s slide guitar.  John wanted to do it again, only he wanted brass and strings and stuff.  After doing both of them, he told George Martin he liked the first part of the first version, and the second part of the second version, and oh by the way could he join the two parts?  It was easier said than done because ProTools didn’t exist.  Everything had to be done manually – cut tape at the right time, join them together.  The two versions were in different tempos and different keys.  John didn’t have a clue how this sort of thing worked, so he placed all his faith in George Martin – “you can fix it!”  He sped up the first, slowed the second and got it to work.  The edit is at 57 seconds if you’re interested.  Listen closely and John’s vocals sound just a tad more drugged out after the edit.

I Am the Walrus [1967] – If you listen to the early version of this song, there’s really not much to it.  There’s electric piano, a barely-heard guitar, bass and drums.  Then George Martin scored it for a sixteen-piece ensemble.  He also added the Mike Sammes Singers [eight males, eight females], whom he got to do stuff like "ho ho ho, he he he, ha ha ha", "Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper" and "Got one, got one, everybody's got one".  He never did drugs, but you’d never know it when listening to this.  Add John’s most sneering vocal, and you have an acid-drenched nightmare.  This is what an acid trip sounds like [I don’t know from personal experience, but I have a good imagination…].  This is the Beatles song I listen to the most.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite [1967] – Inspiration for this song by John Lennon came from a circus poster.  Most of the words from the poster are in the song.  John wasn’t musically articulate.  He told George Martin he wanted a circus atmosphere, so he could “smell the sawdust.”  He got some of EMI’s calliope tapes, cut them into 12-inch sections, flung them into the air and reassembled them at random.  Add to this a Lowery organ, a harmonium, a Hammond organ, and harmonicas of various sizes, and there’s your carnival.

A Day in the Life [1967] – Paul McCartney was very much into the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.  It was from Stockhausen that Paul got the idea to put the orchestral bits into this song.  George Martin described how he made it happen:

At the very beginning I put into the musical score the lowest note each instrument could play, ending with an E major chord. And at the beginning of each of the 24 bars I put a note showing roughly where they should be at that point. Then I had to instruct them. 'We're going to start very very quietly and end up very very loud. We're to start very low in pitch and end up very high. You've got to make your own way up there, as slidey as possible so that the clarinets slurp, trombones gliss, violins slide without fingering any notes. And whatever you do, don't listen to the fellow next to you because I don't want you to be doing the same thing.' Of course they all looked at me as though I was mad...

I Want You [She’s So Heavy] [1969] – George Martin once told John Lennon about the power of silence in recording music.  John internalized that lesson.  Three minutes of a mass of overdubbed guitars, white noise created by a Moog synthesizer, and a wind machine played by Ringo created a trance, only to be ended suddenly by John telling engineer Geoff Emerick to cut the tape in mid-bar instead of letting the music fade.  If John had it his way, that’s how Abbey Road would have ended.  George Martin planted the seed for this song’s ending.

All You Need Is Love [1967] - George Martin's orchestral arrangement, for which he was paid £15, contained elements from one of Bach's Brandenburg concertos, Greensleeves, and Glenn Miller's arrangement of In The Mood, in addition to the distinctive introduction of La Marseillaise.

Good Morning, Good Morning [1967] – After all the animals have finished chasing each other, a chicken clucks at the very end, which morphed into the first guitar part of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Reprise].

Because [1969] – The three-part vocal harmony was arranged by George Martin.  He had them do it three times, so there are nine voices on the song.

Abbey Road Side Two Medley [1969] – George Martin had always been telling the Beatles to ‘think symphonically.’  Paul McCartney took the idea and ran with it.  Both he and John had bits of unfinished songs.  Why not stitch them together into one, long operatic-type piece?  Lennon didn’t like the medley idea, but somehow he got talked into contributing three parts – Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, and Polythene Pam.

Eleanor Rigby [1966] – George Martin wrote the score.  Given that no Beatles play any instruments on the song, one could make the case for this being a McCartney/Martin song.  The vocals are stripped away for the version that appears on Anthology 2.

Good Night [1968] – John Lennon wrote this as a lullaby to his son Julian for Ringo to sing. As with Eleanor Rigby from 1966, no Beatles play on this – just a string section scored by George Martin.  When he asked John Lennon how he wanted the score to sound, John said he wanted it to sound “Hollywood”.  After the chaos and disorder of Revolution #9, Good Night closes the White Album.

RIP George Martin, the real Fifth Beatle