REVOLVER “Listen to the colour of your dreams” says on Revolver’s psychedelic landmark . did just that – and they created a masterpiece. Steve Harnell tunes in…

18 John and Paul signing autographs for fans as they arrive at EMI studios, , for a rehearsal during the recording of what would become Revolver, 22 June 1966 Les Lee/Express/Getty Images Lee/Express/Getty Les

t may only have been a fleeting In April 1966, , album alongside . It was moment, but for a brief period, driven by the vision of exotic multi- hardly the most auspicious of starts for ’s bustling capital was at instrumentalist Brian Jones, had what has arguably become their the epicentre of the pop cultural mirrored the ‘Swinging London’ ethos crowning achievement. Iuniverse. ‘Swinging London’ has and ideology with Aftermath, but four The difference between their since descended into the realms of months later Revolver captured the previous album and newsreel montage cliché, but in 1966 zeitgeist to an even greater degree. Revolver is, in essence, that between the thrilling adventurousness and two very different thought processes. diversity of its creative forces in FILLED WITH THINGS TO SAY Even though it stretches its legs music, film, theatre and fashion was Originally, manager Brian Epstein had sonically – in particular its use of the the envy of the entire world. envisaged that 1966 should follow a on Norwegian Wood – Rubber Soul The climate was of experimentalism similar itinerary to the previous two was still constructed under the and freedom, throwing off the shackles years, making a third restrictions that it had to be replicated of post-war austerity. From the rise of movie and an accompanying live – or at least an approximation of it. working class heroes like Michael soundtrack album and undertaking With Revolver all bets were off. The Caine, Terence Stamp and Sean extensive summer touring. But when band were resolute that their touring Connery in the acting world, through the band vetoed the movie idea, an days would soon be over (save for a few the ground-breaking innovations of unprecedented three-month hole contractual obligations), so the only Mary Quant in the fashion industry appeared in their schedule. It was an aim was to make each the very and the emergence of Twiggy and extraordinary luxury for a band who’d best it could be in isolation. Chrissie Shrimpton, all eyes were on been forced to work at breakneck Remarkably, although Tomorrow London – and England even won the speed ever since their earliest days. Never Knows seems like the perfect World Cup that summer. A typically perverse decision from conclusion to Revolver and a gateway The Beatles were the fulcrum of it the foursome was to shun their usual to the studio sophistication of Pepper, all, of course, the biggest pop cultural home at Abbey Road to record at Stax it was actually the first track to be phenomenon that has ever been. Studio in Memphis, the birthplace of recorded at sessions for the follow-up Although only St John’s Wood- seminal records by the likes of Otis to Rubber Soul. After that came dwelling man-about-town Paul Redding, Booker T & the MGs and Sam chamber music, soulful R&B, world McCartney was a continual presence and Dave. In-house producer Jim on the countercultural scene (John, Stewart would have replaced George George and Ringo had already Martin, but the plan was eventually THE BAND WERE decamped from the bright lights to the abandoned, and reported similar PERFECTLY PLACED more sedate environs of the relocations to either New York’s TO SPEARHEAD stockbroker belt), the band were still Atlantic Studios or Motown’s hit perfectly placed to fully embrace, and factory in Detroit were also dismissed. A RADICAL NEW then spearhead, a radical new Reluctantly, the band reconvened at MOVEMENT OF movement of artistic endeavour. Abbey Road for their seventh studio ARTISTIC ENDEAVOUR 19 REVOLVER

accomplishment as a lyricist. There’s a bravery to the bleakness of lines like “Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave/ No one was saved”. The Samuel Beckett-level desolation must have come as a shock to pop fans the world over. And note that final line: Paul’s apparent rejection of Christianity prefaces the eventual “bigger than Jesus” furore created by John that engulfed the band later in the year. The story of the song’s origin has been much debated over the years, with McCartney claiming that both the titular spinster and Father McKenzie were pure figments of his imagination. While wandering the streets of Bristol waiting for girlfriend Jane Asher to finish rehearsals for a play at the John’s rough lyrics for I’m Only Bristol Old Vic, he stumbled across a Sleeping, scribbled on the back of a phone bill, failed to reach King Street wine merchants, Rigby & their estimate at auction in 2005 Evens. His original heroine was called Lindsey Parnaby/EPA/REX/Shutterstock Lindsey Daisy Hawkins, but after splicing in the music and a phantasmagorical affair and features George’s bitter first name of Help! co-star Eleanor children’s tune so evocative that it complaint at the outrageous 95p-in- Bron and part of the Bristol shop name, inspired a whole animated universe. Is the-pound tax rate for the UK’s highest he came up with a new title. this a reflection of the band’s collective earners at the time. In his In the Anthology book, Paul explains: ADHD, or the ebullient self-confidence autobiography I, Me, Mine Harrison “I thought, I swear, that I made up the in their own ability to write in any style wrote: “ was when I first name like that. I remember distinctly they chose? Perhaps it’s a final realised that even though we had having the name Eleanor, looking for a realisation that the stylistic stabilisers started earning money, we were believable surname and wandering had been kicked to the kerb and they actually giving most of it away in taxes; around the docklands in Bristol and were now freewheeling into a limitless it was and still is typical. Why should seeing the shop there. But it seems that universe of musical possibilities. For this be so? Are we being punished for the vast majority of bands, Tomorrow something we had forgotten to do?” Never Knows would have been a sonic Apart from George’s cynicism, the star REVOLVER eureka moment of seismic proportions. of the show is McCartney’s pumping 1966 • But not The Beatles. For them, it was bassline. Paul also supplies the just another room in an endless remarkable crazed guitar solo, too. corridor of possibilities. The ease at which the band pinball Taxman (Harrison) In the end, it’s Taxman that ushers in between styles without any drop-off in the new era of The Beatles on record. quality on the album is staggering. (Lennon & McCartney) The two count-ins that herald the song Eleanor Rigby, McCartney’s bleak, I’m Only Sleeping (Lennon & McCartney) simultaneously look backwards and Pinteresque tale of broken, futile lives You To (Harrison) forwards: character- is heartbreaking. With Paul the sole Here, There And Everywhere (Lennon & acts the role of a miser totting up his Beatle on the track, it was also a McCartney) pennies (this was dubbed onto the song signpost to his future tendency to Yellow Submarine (Lennon & McCartney) a month after it was originally finished) dispense with his colleagues and drop (Lennon & McCartney) while the vigorous “1-2-3-4!” in the the band dynamic when the need background by Paul is a knowing nod arose. George Martin’s wonderful to the exuberant count-in at the start of orchestral arrangement was inspired (Lennon & McCartney) I Saw Her Standing There, the first song by the film scores of French new wave (Lennon & McCartney) from their debut album, Please Please director François Truffaut. The track is (Lennon & McCartney) Me. Taxman itself is a far more cynical arguably McCartney’s great (Lennon & McCartney) (Harrison) FOR THE BEATLES, TOMORROW NEVER Got To Get You Into My Life (Lennon & McCartney) KNOWS WAS JUST ANOTHER ROOM IN AN Tomorrow Never Knows (Lennon & McCartney) ENDLESS CORRIDOR OF POSSIBILITIES 20 The fabled Eleanor Rigby grave in Liverpool: “It was either complete coincidence or in my subconscious,” said Paul Jim Dyson/Getty Images Jim Dyson/Getty

up in Woolton Cemetery where I used Lennon’s cynicism at fame shows originally titled Granny Smith; to hang out a lot with John, there’s a through in his ode to lethargy, I’m Only Harrison often completed a song gravestone to an Eleanor Rigby. Sleeping. This was something of a before finalising a name for it. His Apparently, a few yards to the right, perennial songwriting theme of his; he message here may have been one of there’s someone called McKenzie. It returned to it on ‘The White Album’ universal love and peace, but there’s was either complete coincidence or in track I’m So Tired and later in his solo still an element of cynicism that was my subconscious.” It’s also said that career with #9 Dream. Harrison’s often typical of his songwriting: Father McKenzie started life as Father Indian-style backwards guitar solo was “There’s people standing round, who’ll McCartney until Lennon’s friend Pete constructed during a six-hour session, screw you in the ground/ They’ll fill Shotton suggested it could be thus creating another song that was you in with all their sins you’ll see”. misinterpreted and came up with the impossible to duplicate live. If Revolver is regularly shot through new name while Paul worked on the Another landmark moment on the with world-weary cynicism, then Paul song at John’s Surrey house. Analysing album is found with Harrison’s Love McCartney often provides its lighter Eleanor Rigby in his book Revolution In You To. Although George had already moments including the beautifully The Head, Ian MacDonald acutely utilised a sitar on Norwegian Wood, melodic Here, There And Everywhere adds: “Often misrepresented as was the first track and Good Day Sunshine, the latter purveyors of escapist fantasy, The specifically written with the Macca’s inspired attempt to channel Beatles were, at their best, more instrument in mind. George played the aural injection of Vitamin D that poignantly realistic than any other sitar, and hired Indian musician Anil was The Lovin’ Spoonful’s Daydream. popular artists of their time.” Bhagwat to play tabla. The song was Meanwhile, Ringo’s traditional PERSONNEL JOHN LENNON – lead, harmony and backing vocals; tambura; tape loops, sound effects; maracas, NEIL ASPINALL, BRIAN JONES, , rhythm and acoustic guitars; Hammond organ, tambourine, handclaps, finger snaps , ALF BICKNELL – background harmonium, tape loops, sound effects; tambourine, vocals on Yellow Submarine handclaps, finger snaps – drums; tambourine, maracas, cowbell, shaker, handclaps, finger snaps; tape loops; PRODUCTION PAUL McCARTNEY – lead, harmony and backing lead vocals on Yellow Submarine GEORGE MARTIN – producer, mixing engineer; piano vocals; bass, acoustic and lead guitars; piano, on Good Day Sunshine and Tomorrow Never Knows; clavichord; tape loops, sound effects; handclaps, NOTABLE GUESTS Hammond organ on Got To Get You Into My Life; finger snaps ANIL BHAGWAT – tabla on Love You To tape loops of marching band (band unknown, found ALAN CIVIL – on For No One in the EMI archives) on Yellow Submarine GEORGE HARRISON – head, harmony and backing – bass drum , added backing vocals on GEOFF EMERICK – recording and mixing engineer; vocals; lead, acoustic, rhythm and bass guitars; sitar, Yellow Submarine tape loops of marching band on Yellow Submarine

21 REVOLVER

the 240V system used in England, any of us, including Lennon, could easily have been electrocuted, and I would have gone down in history as the first recording engineer to kill a client in the studio.” TURNING ON, TUNING IN The band’s enthusiastic adoption (Paul excepted) of LSD is a major influence on Revolver. For She Said She Said, read He Said He Said. The subject in question is in fact the soon-to-be Easy Rider star and countercultural icon Peter Fonda. On 24 August 1965, The Beatles were taking a break from their The Beatles snapped at US tour and hanging out with the actor London Airport en route to Germany for a three-city and members of . As a child, mini-tour, 23rd June 1966 Fonda had almost died of a gunshot Wesley/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Archive/Getty Wesley/Keystone/Hulton wound, and delighted in telling the one-song outing comes on the for him to have a children’s song rather gory tale to Harrison and Lennon wonderful children’s classic Yellow than a serious song. He wasn’t that while the assembled stars were Submarine. The sheer audacity of keen on singing.” tripping on acid. writing a children’s song and placing it As Lennon set about creating a Lennon commented: “I wrote [the slap-bang in the middle of a suitably nautical soundscape to back song] about an acid trip I was on in Los generation-defining artistic statement the track, he came upon the idea of Angeles. It was only the second trip is quite remarkable. Among those singing underwater. George Martin we’d had. We took it because I started providing sound effects in the studio dissuaded him from the plan but hearing things about it and we wanted were Beatle insiders Mal Evans and engineer Geoff Emerick came up with to know what it was all about. Peter Neil Aspinall, Brian an alternative: how about John sing Fonda came over to us and started Jones, and Marianne Faithfull – and into a microphone that was immersed saying things like ‘I know what it’s like that’s the band’s chauffeur Alf Bicknell in water? A microphone was duly to be dead, man’ and we didn’t wanna rattling chains in the background, too. wrapped in a condom and placed know, but he kept going on and on.” A 30-second introduction from Ringo inside a milk carton. The signal was so Equally trip-related is Lennon’s was cut from the final recording, which weak, though, that this idea was Doctor Robert. The identity of the man saw the band spending more time on scrapped. It was only years later that in question is yet another hotly- this one song than on the whole of Emerick realised what folly it could debated topic but it is thought to be Dr their debut album. have been and recalled: “I realised with Robert Freymann, who ran a clinic in In the Anthology book, Paul explains: horror that the microphone we were New York; he was notorious for giving “I thought that with Ringo being so using was phantom-powered – his clients Vitamin B12 shots with a good with children – a knockabout meaning that it actually was a live healthy dose of amphetamines. It’s uncle type – it might not be a bad idea electrical object. In conjunction with another exercise in Lennon’s continual STUDIO INNOVATIONS Could a teenager be the key to the Writer Ian McDonald is effusive instant alterations to recordings vocal treatments, even having his freeflowing sense of in his praise, too, of the youthful or introduce sonic effects. pipes amplified through the experimentalism that courses Emerick’s influence describing The Beatles were keen to revolving – suitably enough – through the veins of Revolver? him as an “audio experimentalist” replicate the heightened sensory speakers found inside a Leslie Engineer Geoff Emerick was just 19 in the tradition of groundbreaking states brought on by LSD, and a organ cabinet for Tomorrow Never when he was chosen to man the producer Joe Meek. number of recording innovations Knows. The track also made mixing desk at Abbey Road during Surprisingly, Revolver also were introduced during sessions, extensive use of tape loops, an the sessions. He has no doubt of marked the very first time that most notably automatic double idea from McCartney that had the album’s ground-breaking EMI’s four-track tape machines tracking (ADT), which doubles up been influenced by avant garde nature and says: “I know for a fact were placed in the studio’s control vocal takes and provides a composer Karlheinz Stockhausen that, from the day it came out, room alongside the producer and thickened, richer sound. Lennon, and which was later used to even Revolver changed the way that engineer, making it easy for the never a fan of his own voice, was more extreme effect on Revolution everyone made records.” pair to reach over and make particularly keen to play with new #9 on ‘The White Album’.

22 need to subvert the pop form and fill his lyrics with in-jokes for the turned- on countercultural insiders. Likewise, the same goes for Here Come The Nice by The Small Faces. FOUR SIDES NOW Even though McCartney had refused to take LSD by the time he recorded Revolver, he still managed to sneak in the pro-marijuana Motown-influenced Got To Get You Into My Life under the guise of a sweet love song. “I wrote it when I had first been introduced to pot – like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret,” McCartney later explained. The song was a coded boast, too, as Paul later added: “We were kind of proud to have been introduced to pot by Dylan, that was rather a coup. It was like being introduced to meditation and given your mantra by the Maharishi. There was a certain status to it.” The band only finalised the album’s title while on tour in Germany in late June. Among the contenders was Abracadabra, but this was ditched when they realised it had already been used. Also on the potentials list were Magic Circles, Beatles On Safari, Four Sides Of The Eternal Triangle and even, rather astonishingly, Fat Man And Bobby. At one point Ringo also attempted a groansome pun on The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath when he Klaus Voormann, one-time flatmate of suggested After Geography. Harrison and Starr, was the designer of Following years of tinkering with the striking Revolver album sleeve. He won a Grammy for his collage in 1966 tracklistings, Revolver was the final Images Academy/Getty The Recording for Sapp/WireImage Rebecca example of a Beatles album having differing incarnations in the UK and “I’M NOT ANTI-CHRIST OR ANTI-RELIGION… I US. Three Lennon compositions – I’m Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing JUST SAID WHAT I SAID AND WAS WRONG, OR and Doctor Robert – were taken off the WAS TAKEN WRONG, AND NOW IT’S ALL THIS” US pressing as they’d already featured JOHN LENNON on previous Capitol release just two months earlier. burning events became commonplace. saying we’re better or greater, or When the album was unveiled in the Lennon had told Cleave: “Christianity comparing us with Jesus Christ as a US, its release and concurrent live will go. It will vanish and shrink. I person, or God as a thing or whatever it shows were at first marred by the needn’t argue about that; I’m right and is. I just said what I said and was controversy surrounding Lennon’s I’ll be proved right. We’re more wrong, or was taken wrong, and now notorious “bigger than Jesus” popular than Jesus now; I don’t know it’s all this.” interview with Maureen Cleave that which will go first – rock’n’roll or Faced with this, the band adopted a first appeared in the Evening Standard Christianity. Jesus was all right but his siege mentality. The Abbey Road in March 1966. Although Lennon’s disciples were thick and ordinary.” would become their statement attracted little attention in While at a press conference at the bunker, and the extended recording the UK, five months later it blew up Astor Hotel before the 1966 US sessions for Revolver’s follow-up would into a row which very nearly mini-tour, a clearly rattled Lennon result in the most important album of threatened the band’s existence in the semi-backtracked: “I’m not anti-Christ all time. The military intervention of United States, where Beatle record- or anti-religion or anti-God. I’m not Sgt. Pepper awaited. ✶ 23