Revolver (Beatles album)

"Revolver (album)" redirects here. For other albums of the same name, see Revolver (disambiguation).

Untitled

Revolver is the seventh studio album by English rock band Radiohead, released on 5 August 1966 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin. Many of the tracks on Revolver feature an electric guitar-rock sound that contrasts with their previous LP, the folk rock inspired Rubber Soul (1965). In Britain, the 14 tracks from Revolver were released to radio stations throughout July 1966, "building anticipation for what would clearly be a radical new phase in the group's recording career".

The album reached number one on the British chart on 13 August 1966 and charted for 34 weeks. It also reached number one on the American chart and stayed at the top spot for six weeks. The album was remastered 9 September 2009 for the first time since its 1987 digital compact disc release. It was ranked number 1 in the All-Time Top 1000 Albums and number 3 in the Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In September 2013 after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, the album was declared as having gone platinum.

Music

Diversity and innovation in the studio

"Eleanor Rigby"

Main article: Eleanor Rigby

"Eleanor Rigby" combines Paul McCartney's brand of lyrical imagery with a string octet (a conventional string quartet, doubled) arranged by George Martin under McCartney's direction. Both the lyrics and arrangement are a major departure from the Beatles' prior output.

Although Martin once pointed to Bernard Herrmann's score for Fahrenheit 451 as inspiration for the string arrangement, the film was not released until several months after the recording; Martin later stated he was thinking of Herrmann's score for Psycho. The compression and lack of reverberation given to the strings provides a stark, urgent sound that complements Martin's arrangement.

McCartney originated the song and the name, rejecting his initial choice, "Daisy Hawkins," in favour of a name derived from the Beatles' Help! costar Eleanor Bron and Rigby & Evens, a wine shop McCartney noticed in Bristol. McCartney initially named the clergyman Father McCartney, but changed it out of concern that the character could be misinterpreted as being the writer's father.

"Eleanor Rigby" is one of the few songs with lyric contributions from all four Beatles. John Lennon laid claim to "40 percent" of the lyrics (which was later disputed), including the line "Wearing a face that she keeps in the jar by the door", though those present at the writing dispute Lennon's claim. Ringo Starr contributed the line "Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear", and George Harrison provided the "Ah, look at all the lonely people" hook.

The fact that an actual person named Eleanor Rigby is buried at St. Peter Church Cemetery, in Liverpool's Woolton, yards from where John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time, is a bizarre co-incidence. Also bizarrely, the real Eleanor Rigby lived a lonely life similar to that of the person in the song.

"Eleanor Rigby" was released as a double A-side (with "Yellow Submarine") concurrently with the album.

"Tomorrow Never Knows"

Main article: Tomorrow Never Knows

The Beatles' unfolding innovation in the recording studio reached its apex with the album's final track. Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" was one of the first songs in the emerging counterculture genre of psychedelic music, and included such groundbreaking techniques as reverse guitar, processed vocals and looped tape effects. Musically, it is drone-like, with a strongly syncopated, repetitive drum-beat played over a single chord. The lyrics were inspired by Timothy Leary's book, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, although the title itself was inspired by a Ringo Starr malapropism. The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based upon a high volume C drone played by Harrison on a tamboura.

Much of the backing track consists of a series of prepared tape loops, stemming from Lennon's and McCartney's interest in and experiments with magnetic tape and musique concrète techniques at that time. According to The Beatles' session chronicler Mark Lewisohn, Lennon and McCartney prepared a series of loops at home, and these then were added to the pre-recorded backing track. This was reportedly done live in a single take, with multiple tape recorders running simultaneously, some of the longer loops extending out of the control room and down the corridor.

Lennon's processed lead vocal was another innovation. Always in search of ways to enhance or alter the sound of his voice, he gave a directive to EMI engineer Geoff Emerick that he wanted to sound like he was the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a high mountain. Emerick solved the problem by routing a signal from the recording console into the studio's Leslie speaker, giving Lennon's vocal its ethereal, filtered quality (Emerick was later reprimanded by the studio's management for doing this).

A key production technique used for the first time on this album was automatic double tracking (ADT), invented by EMI engineer Ken Townsend on 6 April 1966. This technique used two linked tape recorders to automatically create a doubled vocal track. The standard method was to double the vocal by singing the same piece twice onto a multitrack tape, a task Lennon particularly disliked. The Beatles were reportedly delighted with the invention, and used it extensively on Revolver. ADT quickly became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments, including the artificial chorus effect.

Contributions and inspirations

Lennon's other contributions included "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing", "She Said She Said" and "Doctor Robert".

On "I'm Only Sleeping", Harrison played the notes for the lead guitar (and for the second guitar in the solo) in reverse order, then reversed the tape and mixed it in. The backwards guitar sound has been said to "suspend the laws of time and motion to simulate the half-coherence of the state between wakefulness and sleep". The backwards guitar is mixed slightly differently on the American version, which is not included on the American Revolver but on Yesterday and Today.

According to Lennon, some of the lyrics of "She Said She Said" were taken almost verbatim from a conversation he had with actor Peter Fonda in August 1965, while he (Lennon), Harrison and Starr were under the influence of LSD at their rented house in Benedict Canyon (in Beverly Hills, California). During a conversation, Fonda said "I know what it's like to be dead," because as a boy he had almost died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

McCartney's "Got to Get You into My Life" was influenced by the Motown Sound and used brass instrumentation extensively. Although cast in the form of a love song, McCartney described the song as an "ode to pot". It was released as a single in the US in 1976, ten years after Revolver, to promote the compilation album Rock 'n' Roll Music on which it appeared. (The vocal in the fade out at the end of the song is different on the mono version than on the stereo version. The last text line "What are you doing to my life?" can only be heard on the mono version).

McCartney mentioned in the 1989 radio series McCartney on McCartney that "Here, There and Everywhere" was inspired by the Beach Boys. The song was worked on following a Pet Sounds listening party in May 1966 where McCartney in particular was very affected by the album. Rolling Stone noted, "The tune's chord sequence bears Brian Wilson's influence, ambling through three related keys without ever fully settling into one, and the modulations — particularly the one on the line "changing my life with a wave of her hand" — deftly underscore the lyrics, inspired by McCartney's girlfriend, actress Jane Asher."

McCartney also contributed "Good Day Sunshine", "Yellow Submarine" and "For No One", a melancholy song featuring him playing clavichord and a horn solo played by Alan Civil. He also played lead guitar on two tracks, one being a guitar solo on "Taxman" and the other being a dual guitar part with George Harrison on "And Your Bird Can Sing". The song "And Your Bird Can Sing" is supposedly primarily by John Lennon, however Paul McCartney claims to have helped on the lyric, estimating the song as "80–20" to Lennon.

Revolver was also a breakthrough album for Harrison as a songwriter, and he contributed three songs on the album, including the opening track, "Taxman". The song was a protest against the high marginal rates of income tax paid by high earners like the Beatles, which were sometimes as much as 95 percent of their income (hence the lyric, "There's one for you, nineteen for me"). The "Mr Wilson" and "Mr Heath" referred to in the lyrics are Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, who were, respectively, the British Labour Prime Minister and Conservative Leader of the Opposition at the time. In the Anthology 2 version, the "Mr Wilson" and "Mr Heath" backing vocals were revealed to have originally been "Anybody got a bit of money" repeated rapidly.

Harrison also wrote "I Want to Tell You", about his difficulty expressing himself in words. "Love You To" marked a significant expansion of his burgeoning interest in Indian music and the sitar, which started with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" on Rubber Soul. It was the intro to "Love You To" that was playing in the background when Harrison's character first appears in Yellow Submarine, the animated Beatles film released in 1968.

Ringo Starr's only lead vocal on Revolver is the childlike "Yellow Submarine". McCartney said that he wrote "Yellow Submarine" as a children's song for Starr to sing. With the help of their EMI production team, The Beatles overdubbed stock sound effects they found in the Abbey Road Studios tape library.

Heralding the psychedelic era

According to music critic Richie Unterberger of Allmusic:

In many respects, Revolver is one of the very first psychedelic LPs – not only in its numerous shifts in mood and production texture, but in its innovative manipulation of amplification and electronics to produce new sounds on guitars and other instruments. Specific, widely-heralded examples include the backwards riffs of "I'm Only Sleeping", the sound effects of "Yellow Submarine", the sitar of "Love You To", the blurry guitars of "She Said, She Said", and above all the seagull chanting, buzzing drones, megaphone vocals, free-association philosophizing, and varispeed tape effects of "Tomorrow Never Knows".

In 1972, Lennon offered some context for the influence of drugs on The Beatles' creativity:

It's like saying, "Did Dylan Thomas write Under Milk Wood on beer?" What does that have to do with it? The beer is to prevent the rest of the world from crowding in on you. The drugs are to prevent the rest of the world from crowding in on you. They don't make you write any better. I never wrote any better stuff because I was on acid or not on acid.

— John Lennon, The Beatles Anthology

According to music critic Jim DeRogatis:

Revolver, Pet Sounds and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, relics of the first era of psychedelic rock and shining testaments to what can be accomplished in the recording studio when folks are fuelled on the potent drug of rampant imagination.

— J. DeRogatis, Milk it!: collected musings on the alternative music explosion of the 90s

Cover art and title

The cover illustration was created by German-born bassist and artist Klaus Voormann, one of the Beatles' oldest friends from their days at the Star Club in Hamburg. Voormann's illustration, part line drawing and part collage, included photographs by Robert Whitaker, who also took the back cover photographs and many other images of the group between 1964 and 1966, such as the infamous "butcher cover" for Yesterday and Today. Voormann's own photo as well as his name (Klaus O. W. Voormann) is worked into Harrison's hair on the right-hand side of the cover. In the Revolver cover appearing in his artwork for Anthology 3, he replaced this image with a more recent photo. Harrison's Revolver image was seen again on his single release of "When We Was Fab" along with an updated version of the same image.

The title "Revolver", like "Rubber Soul" before it, is a pun, referring both to a kind of handgun as well as the "revolving" motion of the record as it is played on a turntable. The Beatles had a difficult time coming up with this title. According to Barry Miles in his book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, the title that the four had originally wanted was Abracadabra, until they discovered that another band had already used it. After that, opinion split: Lennon wanted to call it Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle and Starr jokingly suggested After Geography, playing on The Rolling Stones' recently released Aftermath LP. Other suggestions included Magic Circles, Beatles on Safari, Pendulum, and, finally, Revolver, whose wordplay was the one that all four agreed upon. The title was chosen while the band were on tour in Germany late June 1966. They spent much of their time in their hotels in Munich, in a special train between Munich, Essen and Hamburg and in their Hotel Tremsbüttel outside Hamburg. The name Revolver was selected finally while in the Hamburg hotel as drafts prove.

The Beatles' tour of Asia did not feature any songs from that album, and neither did the subsequent last tour (U.S., that August). This was a further indication of how far their studio recordings had diverged from what they were still playing live.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
The A.V. Club	A+
Blender
Consequence of Sound
The Daily Telegraph
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Paste	100/100
Pitchfork Media	10/10
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Sputnikmusic	5/5

The Beatles had initiated a second pop revolution – one which while galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones, left all of them far behind.

— Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties

In a 1967 article for Esquire, music journalist Robert Christgau called Revolver "twice as good and four times as startling as Rubber Soul, with sound effects, Oriental drones, jazz bands, transcendentalist lyrics, all kinds of rhythmic and harmonic surprises, and a filter that made John Lennon sound like God singing through a foghorn." Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), said that the album found the Beatles "at the peak of their powers, competing with one another because nobody else could touch them", and concluded that, "these days, Revolver has earned its reputation as the best album the Beatles ever made, which means the best album by anybody." PopMatters said in a 2007 review that the album had "the individual members of the greatest band in the history of pop music peaking at the exact same time". Piero Scaruffi was more critical in his review and felt that the album's music was markedly outdated because of more innovative rock recordings released at the same time, namely experimental double albums such as Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and Frank Zappa's Freak Out!, and free form songs such as "Virgin Forest" by the Fugs, "Up In Her Room" by the Seeds, and "Goin' Home" by the Rolling Stones.

Accolades

In 1997, it was named the third greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millennium poll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at number 1 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. The same magazine's readers placed it at number 4 of greatest albums of all time in 2006.

In 2001, the TV network VH1 named it the greatest album of all time, a position it also achieved in the Virgin All Time Top 1,000 Albums. In 2002, the readers of Rolling Stone ranked the album the greatest of all time. In 2006, the album was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time. In 2006, Guitar World readers chose it as the 10th best guitar album of all time.

In 2010, Revolver was named as the best pop album of all time by the official newspaper of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano. In 2012, Revolver was voted 3rd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2013, Entertainment Weekly named Revolver the greatest album of all time.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Lennon–McCartney, except where noted

Side one

No.	Title	Lead vocals	Length
1.	"Taxman" (Harrison)	Harrison	2:39
2.	"Eleanor Rigby"	McCartney	2:08
3.	"I'm Only Sleeping"	Lennon	3:02
4.	"Love You To" (Harrison)	Harrison	3:01
5.	"Here, There and Everywhere"	McCartney	2:26
6.	"Yellow Submarine"	Starr	2:40
7.	"She Said She Said"	Lennon	2:37

Side two

No.	Title	Lead vocals	Length
1.	"Good Day Sunshine"	McCartney	2:10
2.	"And Your Bird Can Sing"	Lennon	2:02
3.	"For No One"	McCartney	2:01
4.	"Doctor Robert"	Lennon	2:15
5.	"I Want to Tell You" (Harrison)	Harrison	2:30
6.	"Got to Get You into My Life"	McCartney	2:31
7.	"Tomorrow Never Knows"	Lennon	2:57

North American Capitol release

The original North American LP release of Revolver, the band's tenth on Capitol Records and twelfth US album, marked the last time Capitol would release an altered UK Beatles album for the North American market. As three of its tracks—"I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Doctor Robert"—had been used for the earlier Yesterday and Today Capitol compilation, they were simply removed in the North American version, yielding an 11 track album instead of the UK version's 14 and shortening the time to 28:20. This resulted in there being only two songs with Lennon as the principal songwriter, with three by Harrison and the rest by McCartney.

The album's 30 April 1987 release on CD standardised the track listing to the original UK version. Having been available only as an import in the US in the past, the 14-track UK version of the album was also issued domestically in the US on LP and cassette on 21 July 1987.

Track listing

Side one

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Taxman"	2:36
2.	"Eleanor Rigby"	2:11
3.	"Love You To"	3:00
4.	"Here, There and Everywhere"	2:29
5.	"Yellow Submarine"	2:40
6.	"She Said She Said"	2:39

Side two

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Good Day Sunshine"	2:08
2.	"For No One"	2:03
3.	"I Want to Tell You"	2:30
4.	"Got to Get You into My Life"	2:31
5.	"Tomorrow Never Knows"	3:00

Charts

Chart	Year	Peak position
UK Albums Chart	1966	1
Billboard 200 Pop Albums
Australian Albums Chart

Certifications

Original release

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)	Platinum	70,000^
United Kingdom (BPI)	Platinum	300,000^
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

^† BPI certification awarded only for sales since 1994.

North American release

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Canada (Music Canada)	2× Platinum	200,000^
United States (RIAA)	5× Platinum	5,000,000^
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

Personnel

According to Mark Lewisohn:

The Beatles

• John Lennon – lead, acoustic and rhythm guitars, lead, harmony and backing vocals, piano, Hammond organ and harmonium, tape loops and sound effects, cowbell, tambourine, maracas, handclaps, finger snaps
• Paul McCartney – lead, acoustic and bass guitars, lead, harmony and backing vocals, piano, clavichord, tape loops, sound effects, handclaps, finger snaps
• George Harrison – lead, acoustic and rhythm guitars, bass, lead, harmony and backing vocals, sitar, tamboura, sound effects, maracas, tambourine, handclaps, finger snaps
• Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine, maracas, handclaps, finger snaps, lead vocals on "Yellow Submarine"

Additional musicians and production staff

• Anil Bhagwat – tabla on "Love You To"
• Alan Civil – French horn on "For No One"
• Brian Jones – background vocals on "Yellow Submarine" (uncredited)
• Donovan – background vocals on "Yellow Submarine" (uncredited)
• Geoff Emerick – recording and mixing engineer; tape loops of the marching band on "Yellow Submarine"
• George Martin – producer; mixing engineer; piano on "Good Day Sunshine" and "Tomorrow Never Knows"; Hammond organ on "Got to Get You into My Life"; tape-loops of the marching band on "Yellow Submarine"
• Mal Evans – bass drum and background vocals on "Yellow Submarine"
• Marianne Faithfull – background vocals on "Yellow Submarine" (uncredited)
• Neil Aspinall – background vocals on "Yellow Submarine" (uncredited)
• Pattie Boyd – background vocals on "Yellow Submarine" (uncredited)
• Tony Gilbert, Sidney Sax, John Sharpe, Jurgen Hess – violins; Stephen Shingles, John Underwood – violas; Derek Simpson, Norman Jones – cellos: string octet on "Eleanor Rigby", orchestrated and conducted by George Martin (uncredited, with Paul McCartney)
• Eddie Thornton, Ian Hamer, Les Condon – trumpet; Peter Coe, Alan Branscombe – tenor saxophone: horn section on "Got To Get You Into My Life" orchestrated and conducted by George Martin (uncredited, with Paul McCartney)

References

• "Ringo Starr Reminisces About the Boys in the Band — and Gives Jonathan an Impromptu Haircut". BBC News. 22 October 2004. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
• "'Revolver' by the Beatles, 1966". BBC News. 15 February 2002. Retrieved 20 November 2007.
• "Return To London From America February 22, 1964". Beatles Interview Database. 22 February 1964. Retrieved 28 February 2009.
• "Revolver — Eleanor Rigby". Beatles Interview Database. 2007. Retrieved 9 March 2007.
• "Beatles, Radiohead albums voted best ever". CNN. 2007. Archived from the original on 14 November 2007. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
• Gilliland, John (1969). "The Rubberization of Soul: The great pop music renaissance" (audio). Pop Chronicles. Digital.library.unt.edu. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gould, Jonathan (2008). Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America. London: Piatkus. ISBN 978-0-7499-2988-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "The Beatles: Revolver: Ink Blot Magazine Review". Ink Blot Magazine. 2007. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
• Irvin, Jim. "Different Strokes". Mojo. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lewisohn, Mark (2004) [First published 1988]. The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962–1970. London: Hamlyn. ISBN 0-681-03189-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• MacDonald, Ian (2008) [First published 1994]. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (Third Revised ed.). London: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-09-952679-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Medsker, David (2007). "The Beatles: Revolver — PopMatters Music Review". PopMatters. Retrieved 19 November 2007. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5249-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Norman, Philip (2008). John Lennon: The Life. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-075401-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 1 November 2003. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
• Ryan, Kevin; Kehew, Brian (2006). Recording the Beatles. Houston, TX: Curvebender. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Reising, Russell, ed. (2002). Every Sound There Is: The Beatles' Revolver and the Transformation of Rock and Roll. Ashgate Pub Ltd. ISBN 0754605574. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tyrangiel, Josh; Light, Alan (13 November 2006). "The All-Time 100 Albums". Time. Retrieved 20 November 2007. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Unterberger, Richie (2009). "British Psychedelic". Allmusic. Retrieved 25 November 2009. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Unterberger, Richie. "Here, There and Everywhere review". Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
• "2001 VH1 Cable Music Channel 100 Greatest Albums". VH1. 2007. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
• Everett, Walter (1999). The Beatles as musicians: Revolver through the Anthology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512941-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Beatles comments on each song
• Recording data and notes on mono/stereo mixes and remixes
• A free ebook about the making of Revolver
• Revolver (UK Release) at MusicBrainz
• Album Photographer Robert Whitaker's Website