Revolver
Studio album by The Beatles
Released	5 August 1966
Recorded	6 April – 21 June 1966
Studio	EMI Studios, London
Genre	Psychedelic rock
Length	35:13
Label	Parlophone
Producer	George Martin
The Beatles chronology
Rubber Soul (1965) Revolver (1966) A Collection of Beatles Oldies (1966)
The Beatles North American chronology
Yesterday and Today (1966) Revolver (1966) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Singles from Revolver
“Yellow Submarine“/”Eleanor Rigby“ Released: 5 August 1966

Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 5 August 1966 in the United Kingdom and three days later in the United States. The album was produced byGeorge Martin and features many tracks with an electric guitar-rock sound that contrasts with their previous LP, the folk rock-inspired Rubber Soul (1965).

In the UK, Revolver ’​s 14 tracks were released to radio stations throughout July 1966, with the music signifying what author Ian MacDonald later described as “a radical new phase in the group’s recording career”.^[1] The album spent 34 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, reaching the number one spot on 13 August.^[2] It also topped the Billboard Top LPs listings in America, staying there for six weeks.

Revolver was ranked first in the book All-Time Top 1000 Albums and third in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.^[3] A remastered CD of the album was released on 9 September 2009. This was Revolver’s first remastering since its 1987 digital compact disc release. In 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, the album was declared as having goneplatinum.^[4]

Background[edit]

In December 1965 the Beatles‘ album Rubber Soul was released to wide critical acclaim.^[5] According to author Robert Rodriguez, it was seen as a “major breakthrough beyond the Merseybeat sound of their previous five LPs”.^[5] Early the following year, the band carried out overdubs on live recordings taken from their summer 1965 US tour,^[6] for inclusion in the concert film The Beatles at Shea Stadium.^[7] Aside from this activity, the four band members had no professional commitments for three full months – the longest period of leisure they had experienced since 1962.^[8]

The group’s manager, Brian Epstein, had planned for the Beatles to begin work in April 1966 on what would be their third feature film, but when the band members failed to agree on a suitable script, the plans were scrapped in favour of recording a newLP.^[9] While Epstein rushed to book touring dates for the summer months, in an effort to fill what had become an empty schedule, the extended layoff allowed the Beatles further time to prepare for their follow-up to Rubber Soul.^[10] On 1 May they performed before a crowd of 10,000 during the NME ’​s annual Poll-Winners Concert at Empire Pool, in Wembley – their last concert before a paying audience in the United Kingdom.^[11] Already one month into recording sessions for Revolver, the Beatles played a lacklustre set that conveyed their increasing lack of interest in live performance.^[5] According to Rodriguez, there was an almost continuous series of rumours circulating in 1966 that they had decided to break up.^[12]

John Lennon had been the Beatles’ dominant creative force through 1965, when Paul McCartney began to exert his influence in the group beyond sharing the songwriting, musical accompaniment and assisting with arrangement.^[13] By 1966 McCartney had attained an approximately equal position with Lennon, who had to that point contributed the lead vocal for the majority of their singles, album openers, and closers.^[14] The recording of Revolver marks the midpoint between the period of the Beatles’ career that was dominated by Lennon – who was by this time growing increasingly disinterested in his life as a Beatle – and the period dominated by McCartney, who would provide the group’s artistic direction for every post-Revolver project.^[15] In addition,George Harrison‘s newfound interest in the music and culture of India had inspired him as a composer;^[16] with the release of Revolver, author Nicholas Schaffner later wrote, “there were now three prolific songwriting Beatles”.^[17]

Music and lyrics[edit]

In Rodriguez’s view, whereas Sgt. Pepper is a “period piece” that is “inextricably tied to its time”, Revolver is “crackling with potent immediacy”.^[19] He credits the album with influencing the development of a diversity of music genres, including electronica,punk rock, and world music. In his opinion the album’s “eclecticism … is seen by many as its most appealing quality”.^[19] Kenneth Womack identifies “I’m Only Sleeping“ ’​s preoccupation with dreams, and the references to death found in the lyric to “Tomorrow Never Knows” as examples of the Beatles’ exploration of “phenomenologies of consciousness” on Revolver.^[20] The songs represent two important elements of the human life cycle that are “philosophical opposites”.^[20]

In Womack’s opinion, Harrison’s overdubbed opening count-in of “Taxman” is deliberately off rhythm and out of tempo.^[22] Riley credits the contrived atmosphere with establishing the “new studio aesthetic of Revolver“.^[23] He describes Harrison’s vocals, which were treated with heavy compression and ADT, as “angry” and “poisoned with acridity”.^[24] McCartney’s active bassline features glissandi that are reminiscent of Motown ’​s James Jamerson. He also performed the song’s Indian-styled lead guitar solo, which spans two octaves and uses the Dorian mode.^[25] The track was intended as a protest against the high marginal tax rates paid by top earners like the Beatles, which were sometimes as much as 95 percent of their income; hence: “Should five percent appear too small, be thankful I don’t take it all.”^[26] Lennon helped Harrison finish the song’s lyrics, contributing the line: “My advice for those who die: declare the pennies on your eyes.”^[26] The lyric mentions “Mr Wilson” and “Mr Heath”, referring toHarold Wilson and Edward Heath, who were, respectively, the British Labour Prime Minister and Conservative Leader of the Opposition at the time.^[27] Rodriguez credits “Taxman” as the first Beatles song written about “topical concerns”.^[28] The author Shaugn O’Donnell describes it as a “frame or doorway, a boundary between reality and the mystical world” of the album.^[22]

Womack describes “Eleanor Rigby” as a “narrative about the perils of loneliness”, including the track among the Beatles’ “most fully realized songs”.^[29] The story involves the title character, who is an aging spinster, and a lonely priest named Father McKenzie who writes “sermon[s] that no one will hear”.^[30] He presides over Rigby’s funeral and acknowledges that despite his efforts, “no one was saved”.^[31]The lyric was the product of a group effort, with Harrison, Starr, and Lennon contributing to McCartney’s song.^{[32][nb 1]} Martin arranged the track’s string octet, drawing inspiration from Bernard Herrmann‘s 1960 film score for Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho.^[34]Everett describes the recording’s timbre as “dry” and “gritty”, which he finds “particularly effective when the cellos double the melody as the priest wipes dirt from his hands”.^[35] McCartney added a vocal countermelody to the song’s last refrain that was treated with ADT and channelled through a Leslie speaker.^[36] The musicologist Ian MacDonald notes that, because most pop songs avoid the topic of death, “Eleanor Rigby” ’​s embrace of the taboo subject “came as quite a shock” to listeners in 1966.^[37] In Riley’s opinion, “the corruption of ‘Taxman’ and the utter finality of Eleanor’s fate makes the world of Revolver more ominous than any other pair of opening songs could.”^{[38][nb 2]}

In the opinion of Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould, the backward guitar solo on “I’m Only Sleeping” seems to “suspend the laws of time and motion to simulate the half-coherence of the state between wakefulness and sleep”.^[41] According to MacDonald, Lennon wanted his vocal to sound like a “papery old man’s voice”, so it was treated with ADT and subjected to varispeeding until a desirable sound was achieved, leaving the vocal at E minor, one semitone lower than the original.^[40] Everett notes that the song’s unstructured melody never commits to the tonic, instead favouring the dominant.^[42] He praises the recording’s “unusual timbres”, describing the song as a “particularly expressive text painting”.^[42] Womack credits the combination of Lennon’s airy vocals, McCartney’s “pensive bassline”, and Harrison’s “otherworldly backward guitar solo” with “establish[ing] an appropriately ethereal mood” that urges the listener to embrace the “dreamworld of sleep”.^[20] Riley identifies the song as Revolver ’​s first allusion toescapism.^[38]

“Love You To” marks Harrison’s first foray into Hindustani classical music. The song’s melody is based on the five highest notes of C minor in Dorian mode.^[43] With minimal input from the other Beatles,^[44]Harrison recorded the track with musicians from the north London-based Asian Music Circle, who provided instrumentation such as tabla, swarmandal and tambura.^[45] While the identity of the sitarist on the track has been the subject of debate among commentators,^[46] Peter Lavezzoli, author of The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, is among those who credit the part to Harrison. Lavezzoli describes Harrison’s playing as “the most accomplished performance on sitar by any rock musician” and recognises the song as “the first conscious attempt in pop to emulate a non-Western form of music in structure and instrumentation”.^[47] Everett identifies the track’s change of metre as its most salient feature, a characteristic that was without precedent in the Beatles’ catalogue thus far, but would influence Lennon “within weeks” before going on to feature prominently on the band’s subsequent album, Sgt. Pepper.^[48] Written during a period when Harrison was heavily influenced by his experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD,^[49][50] the lyrics to “Love You To” address the singer’s desire for “immediate sexual gratification”, Womack writes, and serve as a “rallying call to accept our inner hedonism and release our worldly inhibitions”.^[51]

“Here, There and Everywhere” was inspired by the Beach Boys‘ song “God Only Knows“.^{[51][nb 3]} McCartney’s double-tracked vocal was treated with varispeeding, resulting in a higher pitch at playback than the original.^[53] Womack notes the introductory vocals, which shift from 9/8 to 7/8 to 4/4 within the span of twelve words.^[51] According to Everett, “nowhere else does a Beatles introduction so well prepare a listener for the most striking and expressive tonal events that lie ahead.”^[54] Womack characterises the song as a romantic ballad “about living in the here and now” and “fully experiencing the conscious moment”.^[51] He notes that, with the preceding track, “Love You To”, the album expresses “corresponding examinations of the human experience of physical and romantic love”.^[51] Riley describes “Here, There and Everywhere” as “the most perfect song” that McCartney has ever written.^[55] In his opinion, the track “domesticates” the “eroticisms” of “Love You To”, drawing comparison with the concise writing of Rodgers and Hart.^[56] McCartney wrote the song in early June 1966, toward the end of the Revolver sessions, and as the Beatles were under pressure to complete the album before their scheduled flight to Germany on 23 June for a European tour.^{[57][nb 4]}

Womack describes “Yellow Submarine” as “a simple tune about the joys of carefree living”.^[59] McCartney wrote the song, which he characterises as a “kid’s story”, as a vehicle for Starr’s limited vocal range.^[59] With the help of Martin and Emerick, as well asthe Rolling Stones‘ Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and the roadies Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, the Beatles attempted to create a nautical atmosphere by mixing the sounds of various instruments, including gongs, whistles, and bells with an assortment of Studio Two’s sound effect units.^[59] Lennon recorded the track’s superimposed voices in Abbey Road’s echo chamber, recalling what Womack describes as “a forgotten vestige of a Liverpudlian, seafaring past”.^[60] In Riley’s opinion, the juxtaposition of McCartney’s graceful tenor vocals in “Here, There and Everywhere” with Starr’s “throaty” baritone croon in “Yellow Submarine” provides an element of comic relief that only the Beatles could successfully achieve.^[61] He describes the song as “exactly suited” to Starr’s “humble charm”, noting the track’s clever mix of comedy in the style of The Goon Show with satire inspired by Spike Jones.^[62] According to Riley, “‘Yellow Submarine’ doesn’t subvert Revolver ’​s darker moods; it provides joyous distraction from them.”^{[62][nb 5]}

The light atmosphere of “Yellow Submarine” is broken by what Riley describes as “the outwardly harnessed, but inwardly raging guitar” that introduces “She Said She Said“.^[62] He praises the song’s expression of the “primal urge” for innocence, which imbues the lyric with “complexity”, as the speaker suffers through feelings of “inadequacy”, “helplessness” and “profound fear”.^[62] In his opinion, the track’s “intensity is palpable” and “the music is a direct connection to [Lennon’s] psyche”.^{[62][nb 6]} “She Said She Said” marks the second time that a Beatles arrangement used a shifting metre, as the foundation of 4/4 briefly switches to 3/4 with the lyrics: “when I was a boy, everything was right”, before settling back into 4/4.^[65] Harrison later recalled that he helped Lennon finish the composition, which involved joining together three separate fragments of song.^[66] The track was recorded during a single nine-hour session on 21 June, one day before the album’s completion deadline.^[67] MacDonald characterises “She Said She Said” as “the antithesis of McCartney’s impeccable neatness” and “one of the most irregular things that Lennon ever wrote”.^[68] Owing to an argument in the studio, McCartney did not contribute to the recording, leaving Harrison to perform the bassline in addition to the lead guitar and harmony vocals.^[69] The lyric was inspired in part by a conversation that Lennon and Harrison had with actor Peter Fonda in Los Angeles in August 1965, while all three were under the influence of LSD.^[49] During the conversation, Fonda commented: “I know what it’s like to be dead”, because as a child he had technically died during an operation.^[58] Lennon, fearing that the sombre tone of the story might lead to a bad trip, asked Fonda to leave the party.^[68] Riley notes that by ending the first side of Revolver with “She Said She Said”, the Beatles return to the ominous mood established by the album’s first two songs.^[70]

Side two[edit]

“Good Day Sunshine” was written mainly by McCartney. In a review of the song, for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger describes it as “an appropriate soundtrack” for “one of the first fine days of spring, just after you’ve fallen in love or started a vacation”. The verses reflect aspects of vaudeville, while McCartney has also acknowledged the influence of the Lovin’ Spoonful on the composition.^[71]

The song “And Your Bird Can Sing” was written primarily by Lennon, with McCartney claiming to have helped on the lyric, estimating the song as “80–20” to Lennon.^[72] Harrison and McCartney played the dual lead-guitar parts on the recording.^[73]

“For No One” is a melancholy song featuring McCartney playing piano and clavichord, accompanied by Starr on hi-hat and various percussion. The horn solo was played by Alan Civil, who recalled having to “busk” his part, with little guidance from McCartney or Martin at the overdubbing session.^[73] While recognising McCartney’s “customary logic” in the song’s musical structure, MacDonald comments on the sense of detachment conveyed in the lyrics to this “curiously phlegmatic account of the end of an affair”. MacDonald suggests that McCartney was possibly attempting to employ in musical terms the same “dry cinematic eye” that director John Schlesinger had adopted in the 1965 film Darling.^[74]

“Doctor Robert” was written by Lennon and McCartney.^[75] McCartney stated: “The song was a joke about this fellow who cured everyone of everything with all these pills and tranquilizers. Doctor Robert,” he added, “just kept New York high.^[76] There’s some fellow in New York, and in the States we’d hear people say: ‘You can get everything off him; any pills you want.’ That’s what Dr. Robert is all about, just a pill doctor who sees you all right.”^[77]

Harrison said he wrote “I Want to Tell You” about “the avalanche of thoughts” that he found hard to express in words.^[78] The song opens with a descending guitar riff as the recording fades in, similar to the start of the Beatles’ 1964 track “Eight Days a Week“. Rolling Stone critic Mikal Gilmore has described Harrison’s incorporation of dissonance in the melody as being “revolutionary in popular music” in 1966, “and perhaps more originally creative than the avant-garde mannerisms that Lennon and McCartney borrowed from the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky in this same period”.^[79] According to musicologist Dominic Pedler, the E7♭9 chord used in the song is “one of the most legendary in the entire Beatles catalogue”.^[80]

McCartney’s “Got to Get You into My Life” was influenced by the Motown Sound^[81] and used brass instrumentation extensively. Although cast in the form of a love song, McCartney described the song as an “ode to pot”.^[82] 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?” is easier to hear on the mono version).

Rodriguez describes “Tomorrow Never Knows” as “the greatest leap into the future” that the Beatles “had yet taken”.^[9] The group’s innovation in the recording studio reached its apex with the Lennon composition, which was an early example in the emerging counterculture genre of psychedelic music,^[83] 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. The title was inspired by a Ringo Starr malapropism.^[84] 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.^[85] 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 andmusique concrète techniques at that time. According to the Beatles’ session chronicler Mark Lewisohn,^[86] 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.^[87] 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).

Legacy[edit]

According to Rodriguez, whereas Sgt. Pepper has been routinely identified as the Beatles’ greatest album – indeed, as arguably the finest rock album – Revolver has consistently contested and often surpassed it in lists of the group’s best work.^[111] He characterises Revolver as “the Beatles’ artistic high-water mark”, and notes that unlike Sgt. Pepper, it was the product of a collaborative effort, with “the group as a whole being fully vested in creating Beatle music”.^[18] In Riley’s view, Sgt. Pepper is the Beatles’ most notorious record for the wrong reasons – a flawed masterpiece that can only echo the strength of Revolver.”^[112] In the opinion of the musicologist Russell Reising: “However one defines and wherever one ranksRevolver, no one can deny that Revolver ’​s impact was, by any standard of measurement, massive and transformative.”^[110]

Rodriguez praises Martin and Emerick’s contribution to the album, suggesting that their talents were as essential to its success as the Beatles’.^[113] He describes Revolver as the album that marks the group’s waning interest in live performance “in favor of creating soundscapes without limitation”.^[114] In his opinion, whereas most contemporary music acts shy away from attempting a concept album in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, Revolver ’​s “eclectic collection of diverse songs” continues to influence modern popular music.^[114] According to the music critic Jim DeRogatis, Revolver represents a relic “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.”^[115] In the opinion of the musicologist Russell Reising, “Revolver remains a haunting, soothing, confusing, grandly complex and ambitious statement about the possibilities of popular music.”^[116]

In 1997 Revolver 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 50 Greatest British Albums Ever.^[117] 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.^[118] In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Revolver third on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.^[119] In 2006 the album was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time.^[120] In 2006, Guitar World readers chose it as the tenth best guitar album of all time.^[121] In 2010, Revolver was named the best pop album of all time by the official newspaper of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano.^[122] In 2013, Entertainment Weekly named Revolver the greatest album of all time.^[123]

Track listing[edit]

All songs written and composed by Lennon–McCartney, except “Taxman”, “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”, which were composed by George Harrison^[124].

Personnel[edit]

According to Mark Lewisohn:^[86]

The Beatles

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