Have you ever had the chance to contrast the music of Bach with that of the song Revolution 9 by the Beatles?
Francis Schaeffer pointed out, “Bach as a Christian believed that there was resolution for the individual and for history. As the music that came out of the Biblical teaching of the Reformation was influenced by that worldview, so the worldview of modern man shapes modern music.”
(Francis Schaeffer below.)
J.C. Bach – Symphony in Eb major Op. 9 No. 2 (1/3)
The Beatles – Revolution 9
Revolution 9 is the longest officially released song by the Beatles. It appears on the White Album and the attempt was to create a revolution with the use of sound. Influences came from Ono’s avant-garde style and works of various composers like Edgard Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Various elements were included in the song and many of the loops included manipulation through distortions, stereo panning, fading and echoes. McCartney did not want to have the song included on the Beatles album but it was eventually added. Number 9, number 9, number 9… – See more at: http://fantasticfives.com/top-5-weirdest-beatles-songs/#sthash.7LgvO0Mz.dpuf
Johann Christian Bach Symphonies 1/2
Two men who tried to demonstrate the idea of the chance universe in their music were John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen (pictured together in 1972, Cage on right). Take a look at the 7 minute mark to the 19 minute mark in the video above which is called THE AGE OF FRAGMENTATION. It part oft the film series by Francis Schaeffer called HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?
___________
Image caption Pollock, seen here in 1945, was renowned for his style of drip or splatter painting
Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? noted on pages 200-203:
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is perhaps the clearest example in the United States of painting deliberately in order to make the statements that all is chance. He placed canvases horizontally on the floor and dripped paint on them from suspended cans swinging over them. Thus, his paintings were a product of chance. But wait a minute! Is there not an order in the lines of paint on his canvases? Yes, because it was not really chance shaping his canvases! The universe is not a random universe; it has order. Therefore, as the dripping paint from the swinging cans moved over the canvases, the lines of paint were following the order of the universe itself. The universe is not what these painters said it is.
The third way the idea spread was through music. This came about first in classical music, though later many of the same elements came into popular music, such as rock. In classical music two streams are involved: the German and the French.
Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820
The first shift in German music came with the last Quartets of Beethoven, composed in 1825 and 1826. These certainly were not what we would call “modern,” but they were a shift from the music prior to them. Leonard Bernstein (1918-) speaks of Beethoven as the “new artist–the artist as priest and prophet.”Joseph Machlis (1906-) says in INTRODUCTION TO COMTEMPORARY MUSIC (1961), “Schoenberg took his point of departure from the final Quartets of Beethoven.” And Stravinsky said, “These Quartets are my highest articles of musical belief (which is a longer word for love, whatever else), as indispensable to the ways and meaning of art, as a musician of my era thinks of art and has to learn it, as temperature is to life.”
Photograph:Arnold Schoenberg.
Leonard Bernstein pictured in 1946
Beethoven was followed by Wagner (1813-1883); then came Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Leonard Bernstein in the NORTON LECTURES at Harvard University in 1973 says of Mahler and especially Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, “Ours is the century of death and Mahler is its musical prophet…If Mahler knew this (personal death, death of tonality, and the death of culture as it had been) and his message is so clear, how do we knowing it too, manage to survive? Why are we still here, struggling to go on? We are now face to face with the truly ultimate ambiguity of all…We learn to accept our mortality; yet we persist in our search for immortality…All this ultimate ambiguity is to be heard in the finale of Mahler’s Ninth.” Notice how closely this parallels Nietzsche’s poem on page 193. (Oh Man! Take heed, of what the dark midnight says: I slept, I slept–from deep dreams I awoke: The world is deep–and more profound than day would have thought. Profound in her pain–Pleasure–more profound than pain of heart, Woe speaks; pass on. But all pleasure seeks eternity–a deep and profound eternity.) This is modern man’s position. He has come to a position of the death of man in his own mind, but he cannot live with it, for it does not describe what he is.
Then came Schoenberg (1874-1951), and with him we are into the music which was a vehicle for modern thought. Schoenberg totally rejected the past tradition in music and invented the “12 tone row.” This was “modern” in that there was perpetual variation with NO RESOLUTION. This stands in sharp contrast to Bach who, on his biblical base, had much diversity but always resolution. Bach’s music had resolution because as a Christian he believed that there will be resolution both for eah individual life and for history. As the music which came out of the biblical teaching of the Reformation was shaped by that world-view, so the world-view of modern man shapes modern music.
Among Schoenberg’s pupils were Allen Berg (1885-1935), Anton Webern (1883-1945), and John Cage (1912-). Each of these carried on this line of nonresolution in his own way. Donald Jay Grout (1902-) in A HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC speaks of Schoenberg’s and Berg’s subject matter in the modern world: “…isolated, helpless in the grip of forces he does not understand, prey to inner conflict, tension, anxiety and fear.” One can understand that a music of nonresolution is a fitting expression of the place to which modern man has come.
Olivier Messiaen having a laugh with Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Stockhausen on cover of SGT PEPPER’s
In INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Joseph Machlis says of Webern that his way of placing the weightier sounds on the offbeat and perpetually varying the rhythmic phrase imparts to his music its indefinable quality of “hovering suspension.” Machlis adds that Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-), and the German Cologne school in general, take up from Webern with the formation of electronic music which “generates, transforms and manipulates sounds electronically.”Stockhausen produced the first published score of electronic music in his ELECTRONIC STUDIES. A part of his concern was with the element of chance in composition. As we shall see, this ties into the work of John Cage, whom we will study in more detail below. But first let us look at the French stream.
Claude Debussy
The French shift began with Claude Debussy (1862-1918). His direction was not so much that of nonresolution but of FRAGMENTATION. Many of us enjoy and admire much of Debussy’s music, but he opened the door to FRAGMENTATION in music and has influenced most of the composers since, not only in classical music but in popular music and rock as well. Even the music which is one of the glories of America–black jazz and black spirituals–was gradually infiltrated.
It is worth reemphasizing that this FRAGMENTATION in music is parallel to the FRAGMENTATION which occurred in painting. An again let us say that these were not just changes of technique; they expressed a world-view and became a vehicle for carrying that world-view to masses of people which the bare philosophic writings never would have touched.
Stockhausen & John Cage 1972 (Photo: Felicitas Timpe)
John Cage provides perhaps the clearest example of what is involved in the shift of music. Cage believed the universe is a universe of chance. He tried carrying this out with great consistency. For example, at times he flipped coins to decide what the music should be. At other times he erected a machine that led an orchestra by chance motions so that the orchestra would not know what was coming next. Thus there was no order. Or again, he placed two conductors leading the same orchestra, separated from each other by a partition, so that what resulted was utter confusion. There is a close tie-in again to painting; in 1947 Cage made a composition he called MUSIC FOR MARCEL DUCHAMP. But the sound produced by his music was composed only of silence (interrupted only by random environmental sounds), but as soon as he used his chance methods sheer noise was the outcome.
But Cage also showed that one cannot live on such a base, that the chance concept of the universe does not fit the universe as it is. Cage is an expert in mycology, the science of mushrooms. And he himself said, “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operation, I would die shortly.” Mushroom picking must be carefully discriminative. His theory of the universe does not fit the universe that exists.
All of this music by chance, which results in noise, makes a strange contrast to the airplanes sitting in our airports or slicing through our skies. An airplane is carefully formed; it is orderly (and many would also think it beautiful). This is in sharp contrast to the intellectualized art which states that the universe is chance. Why is the airplane carefully formed and orderly, and what Cage produced utter noise? Simply because an airplane must fit the orderly flow lines of the universe if it is to fly!
Sir Archibald Russel (1905-) was the British designer for the Concorde airliner. In a NEWSWEEK: European Edition interview (February 16, 1976) he was asked : “Many people find that the Concorde is a work of art in its design. Did you consider its aesthetic appearance when you were designing it?” His answer was, “When one designs an airplane, he must stay as close as possible to the laws of nature. You are really playing with the laws of nature and trying not to offend them. It so happens that our ideas of beauty are those of nature. That’s why I doubt that the Russian supersonic airplane is a crib of ours. The Russians have the same basic phenomena imposed on them by nature as we do.”
Cage’s music and the world-view for which it is the vehicle do not fit the universe that is. Someone might here bring in Einstein, Werner Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty and quantum, but we have considered them on page 162, and so will not repeat the discussion here. The universe is not what Cage in his music and Pollock in his painting say it is. And we must add that Cage’s music does not fit what people are, either. It has had to become increasingly spectacular to keep interest; for example, a nude cellist has played Cage’s music under water.
A further question is: Is this art really art? Is it not rather a bare philosophic, intellectual statement, separated from the fullness of who people are and the fullness of what the universe is? The more it tends to be only an intellectual statement, rather than a work of art, the more it becomes anti-art.
______________
The Beatles – Revolution 9
Revolution 9
| “Revolution 9” | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recorded composition by the Beatlesfrom the album The Beatles | ||||||||
| Released | 22 November 1968 | |||||||
| Recorded | May–June 1968 EMI Studios, London |
|||||||
| Length | 8:22 | |||||||
| Label | Apple Records | |||||||
| Writer | Lennon–McCartney–Ono | |||||||
| Producer | George Martin | |||||||
| The Beatles track listing | ||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
“Revolution 9” is a recorded composition that appeared on the Beatles‘ 1968 eponymous LP release (popularly known as The White Album). The sound collage, credited toLennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from George Harrison and Yoko Ono. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution using sound. The composition was influenced by the avant-garde style of Ono as well as the musique concrète works of composers such as Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen(whom Paul McCartney was listening to in 1966, and inspired McCartney’s ideas for “Tomorrow Never Knows” on The Beatles’ album Revolver).
The recording began as an extended ending to the album version of “Revolution.” Lennon then combined the unused coda with numerous overdubbed vocals, speech, sound effects, and short tape loops of speech and musical performances, some of which were reversed. These were further manipulated with echo, distortion, stereo panning, and fading. At over eight minutes, it is the longest track that the Beatles officially released.
Background and recording[edit]
“Revolution 9” was not the first venture by the Beatles into experimental recordings. In January 1967, McCartney led the group in recording an unreleased piece called “Carnival of Light” during a session for “Penny Lane“. McCartney said the work was inspired by composers Stockhausen and John Cage.[1] Stockhausen was also a favourite of Lennon, and was one of the people included on the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Music critic Ian McDonaldwrote that “Revolution 9” may have been influenced by Stockhausen’s Hymnen in particular.[2]
Stockhausen — Hymnen
HYMNEN is a composition that integrates a wide variety of national anthems and transforms them electronically.
_________________
Another influence on Lennon was his relationship with Ono. Lennon and Ono had recently recorded their own avant-garde album, Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins. Lennon said: “Once I heard her stuff—not just the screeching and howling but her sort of word pieces and talking and breathing and all this strange stuff … I got intrigued, so I wanted to do one.”[3] Ono attended the recording sessions and helped Lennon select which tape loops to use.[4]
“Revolution 9” originated on 30 May 1968 during the first recording session for Lennon’s composition “Revolution”. Take 20 lasted more than ten minutes and was given additional overdubs over the next two sessions. Mark Lewisohn described the last six minutes as “pure chaos … with discordant instrumental jamming, feedback, John repeatedly screaming ‘alright’ and then, simply, repeatedly screaming … with Yoko talking and saying such off-the-wall phrases as ‘you become naked’, and with the overlaying of miscellaneous, home-made sound effects tapes.”[5]
Lennon soon decided to make the first part of the recording into a conventional Beatles’ song, “Revolution 1”, while using the last six minutes as the basis for a separate track, “Revolution 9”. He began preparing additional sound effects and tape loops: some newly recorded in the studio, at home and from the studio archives. The work culminated on 20 June, with Lennon performing a live mix from tape loops running on machines in all three studios at Abbey Road. Additional prose was overdubbed by Lennon and Harrison.[6]
More overdubs were added on 21 June followed by final mixing in stereo. The stereo master was completed on 25 June when it was shortened by 53 seconds.[7] Although other songs on the album were separately remixed for the mono version, the complexity of “Revolution 9” necessitated making the mono mix a direct reduction of the final stereo master.[8] McCartney had been out of the country when “Revolution 9” was assembled and mixed; he was unimpressed when he first heard the finished track, and later tried to persuade Lennon to drop his insistence that it be included on the album.[9]
Structure and content[edit]
The piece begins with a slow piano theme in the key of B minor and a male voice repeating the words “number nine”, quickly panning across the stereo channels. Both the piano theme and the “number nine” loop recur many times during the piece, serving as a motif. Lennon later said of the track and its production:
Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, “This is EMI test series number nine.” I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn’t realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying, “number nine”; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was.[4]
Much of the track consists of tape loops that are faded in and out, several of which are sampled from performances of classical music. Works that have been specifically identified include the Vaughan Williams motet O Clap Your Hands, the final chord from Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7, and the reversed finale of Schumann’s Symphonic Studies.[10] Other loops include brief portions of Beethoven‘s Choral Fantasy, “The Streets of Cairo“, violins from “A Day in the Life“, and George Martin saying “Geoff, put the red light on”. Part of the Arabic song “Awal Hamsa” by Farid al-Atrash is included shortly after the 7-minute mark. There are also loops of unidentified operaticperformances, backwards mellotron, violins and sound effects, an oboe/horn duet, a reversed electric guitar in the key of E major, and a reversed string quartet in the key of E-flat major.[10]
Portions of the unused coda of “Revolution 1” can be heard briefly several times during the track, particularly Lennon’s screams of “right” and “all right,” with a longer portion near the end featuring Ono’s discourse about becoming naked. Segments of random prose read by Lennon and Harrison are heard prominently throughout, along with numerous sound effects such as laughter, crowd noise, breaking glass, car horns, and gunfire. Some of the sounds were taken from an Elektra Records album of stock sound effects.[11] The piece ends with a recording of American football chants (“Hold that line! Block that kick!”). In all, the final mix includes at least 45 different sound sources.[12]
Album sequencing and release[edit]
During compilation and sequencing of the master tape for the album The Beatles, two unrelated segments were included between the previous song (“Cry Baby Cry“) and “Revolution 9”.[13] The first was a fragment of a song based on the line “Can you take me back“, an improvisation sung by McCartney that was recorded between takes of “I Will“. The second was a bit of conversation from the studio control room where Alistair Taylor asked George Martin for forgiveness for not bringing him a bottle of claret, and then calling him a “cheeky bitch”.[13]
“Revolution 9” was released as the fifth track on the fourth side of the album The Beatles. With no gaps in the sequence from “Cry Baby Cry” to “Revolution 9”, the point of track division has varied among different re-issues of the album. Some versions place the conversation at the end of “Cry Baby Cry”, resulting in a length of 8:13 for “Revolution 9”, while others start “Revolution 9” with the conversation, for a track length of 8:22.
Reception[edit]
… compare Lennon’s work with Luigi Nono’s similar Non Consumiamo Marx (1969) to see how much more aesthetically and politically acute Lennon was than most of the vaunted avant-garde composers of the time … Nono’s piece entirely lacks the pop-bred sense of texture and proportion manifested in “Revolution 9”.
“Revolution 9” is an embarrassment that stands like a black hole at the end of the White Album, sucking up whatever energy and interest remain after the preceding ninety minutes of music. It is a track that neither invites nor rewards close attention …
The unusual nature of “Revolution 9” engendered a wide range of opinions. Lewisohn summarised the public reaction upon its release: “… most listeners loathing it outright, the dedicated fans trying to understand it.”[16] Music critics Robert Christgau and John Piccarella called it “an anti-masterpiece” and noted that, in effect, “for eight minutes of an album officially titled The Beatles, there were no Beatles.”[17] Jann Wenner was more complimentary, writing that “Revolution 9” was “beautifully organized” and had more political impact than “Revolution 1”.[18] Ian MacDonald remarked that “Revolution 9” evoked the era’s revolutionary disruptions and their repercussions, and thus was culturally “one of the most significant acts The Beatles ever perpetrated.”[19]
Among more recent reviews, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide said it was “justly maligned”, but “more fun than ‘Honey Pie‘ or ‘Yer Blues‘.”[20] Pitchfork reviewer Mark Richardson observed that “the biggest pop band in the world exposed millions of fans to a really great and certainly frightening piece of avant-garde art.”[21]
Interpretation[edit]
 |
 The same section, reversed, which was claimed to sound like “turn me on, dead man.”
|
| Problems playing these files? See media help. | |
Lennon described “Revolution 9” as “an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens, just like a drawing of revolution.”[4] He said he was “painting in sound a picture of revolution”, but he had mistakenly made it “anti-revolution”.[4] In his analysis of the song, MacDonald doubted that Lennon conceptualised the piece as representing a revolution in the usual sense, but rather as “a sensory attack on the citadel of the intellect: a revolution in the head” aimed at each listener.[22] MacDonald also noted that the structure suggests a “half-awake, channel-hopping” mental state, with underlying themes of consciousness and quality of awareness.[23] Others have described the piece as Lennon’s attempt at turning “nightmare imagery” into sound,[24] and as “an autobiographical soundscape.”[25] The loop of “number nine” featured in the recording fuelled the legend of Paul McCartney’s death after it was reported that it sounded like “turn me on, dead man” when played backwards.[26]
Based on interviews and testimony, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi asserted that Charles Manson believed that many songs on the album The Beatles contained references confirming his prediction of an impending apocalyptic race war, a scenario dubbed “Helter Skelter“. According to Gregg Jakobson, Manson mentioned “Revolution 9” more often than any of the other album tracks, and he interpreted it as a parallel of Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation.[27] Manson viewed the piece as a portrayal in sound of the coming black-white revolution.[27] He misheard Lennon’s distorted screams of “Right!” within “Revolution 9” as a command to “Rise!”[28]
Personnel[edit]
- John Lennon – spoken vocals, tape loops, sound effects, piano, mellotron, electric guitar, screaming, laughter, mumbling
- George Harrison – spoken vocals, tape loops, sound effects, electric guitar
- Yoko Ono – spoken vocals, tape loops, sound effects, screaming, humming
- George Martin – spoken vocals
- Alistair Taylor – spoken vocals
- Unidentified voice – spoken vocals
In addition, McCartney and Ringo Starr performed on the extended “Revolution” coda, elements of which were used intermittently in “Revolution 9”.
Cover versions[edit]
Kurt Hoffman’s Band of Weeds performs “Revolution #9” on the 1992 album “Live at the Knitting Factory: Downtown Does the Beatles” (Knitting Factory Records).[29] The jam band Phish performed “Revolution 9” (along with almost all of the songs from The Beatles) at their Halloween 1994 concert that was released in 2002 as Live Phish Volume 13. Australian dance rock band Def FX recorded a version for their 1996 album Majick. Little Fyodorrecorded a cover in 1987 and released it as a CD single in 2000.[30] The Shazam recorded a cover version of Revolution #9 which appears as the final track on their mini-album “Rev9” released in 2000.[31] In 2008, thecontemporary classical chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound transcribed an orchestral re-creation of “Revolution 9” which they performed on tour.[32] Also in 2008, the contemporary jazz trio The Neil Cowley Trio recorded both “Revolution 9” and “Revolution” for the magazine Mojo. “Revolution 9” has also inspired songs by punk group United Nations (“Resolution 9“) and rock band Marilyn Manson (“Revelation #9“). It also inspired White Zombie‘s “Real Solution #9”, which contains samples of a Prime Time Live interview that Diane Sawyer conducted with Manson Family member Patricia Krenwinkel. In the sample used Krenwinkel is heard saying: “Yeah, I remember her saying, I’m already dead.” Skinny Puppy references a reversed melodic fragment from “Revolution #9” on their song “Love in Vein” from their album Last Rights.
Categories:
Lyrics :
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9, number 9, number
Then there’s this Welsh rabbit wearing some brown underpants
About the shortage of grain in Hertfordshire
Everyone of them knew that as time went by
They’d get a little bit older and a little bit slower but
It’s all the same thing
In this case manufactured by someone who’s always/umpteen
Your father’s giving it diddly-dee
District was leaving, intended to die, Ottoman
Long gone through
I’ve got to say, irritably and
Floors, hard enough to put on, per day’s MD in our district
There was not really enough light to get down
And ultimately slumped down
Suddenly
They may stop the funding
Place your bets
The original
Afraid she’ll die
Great colors for the season
Number 9, number 9
Who’s to know?
Who wants to know?
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
(I sustained nothing worse than)
(Also, for example)
(Whatever you’re doing)
(A business deal falls through)
I informed him on the third night, when fortune gives
People ride, people ride
Ride, ride, ride, ride, ride
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Ride! Ride! Ride! Ride! Ride!
9, number 9
I’ve missed all of that
It makes me a few days late
Compared with, like, wow!
And weird stuff like that
Taking our sides sometimes
Floral bark
Rouge doctors have brought this specimen
I have nobody’s short-cuts, aha
With the situation
They are standing still
The plan, the telegram
Number 9, number
A man without terrors from beard to false
As the headmaster reported to my son
He really can try, as they do, to find function
(Tell what he was saying
(and his voice was low and his hive high)
And his eyes were low
Alright!
It was on fire and his glasses were the same
This thing knows if it was tinted
But you know it isn’t
To me it is
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9
So the wife called me and we’d better go to see a surgeon to price it
Yellow underclothes
So, any road, we went to see the dentist instead
Who gave her a pair of teeth which wasn’t any good at all
So I said I’d marry, join the fucking navy and went to sea
In my broken chair, my wings are broken and so is my hair
I’m not in the mood for whirling
How? Dogs for dogging, hands for clapping
Birds for birding and fish for fishing
Them for themming and when for whimming
Only to find the night-watchman
Unaware of his presence in the building
(Onion soup)
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
(Industry allows financial imbalance)
Number 9
Thrusting it between his shoulder blades
The Watusi, the Twist
El Dorado
Take this, brother, may it serve you well
Maybe it’s nothing
What? What? Oh
Maybe, even then, impervious in London
Could be a difficult thing
(It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright)
It’s quick like rush for peace is because
(It’s alright, it’s alright)
It’s so much like being naked
It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright
It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright
If, you become naked
Hold that line, hold that line, hold that line
Block that kick, block that kick, block that kick
Songwriters :
LENNON, JOHN WINSTON / MCCARTNEY, PAUL JAMES
Published by
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
________
–
Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? )
How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles
Francis Schaeffer
______
Featured Photographer today is John Loengard
Photographer: My ‘Iconic’ Beatles Photo Is Actually Kind of Lame
“In the end, Hedley Donovan, who was LIFE’s editor-in-chief at the time and was sitting in for the managing editor, George Hunt, decided that the Beatles weren’t serious enough to be on the cover. He ran a color picture from the war in Cyprus on the cover that week, instead.”
But Loengard does admit that he might be warming to the photo, a little bit, as the years pass.
“Recently,” he says, “after coloring the photograph myself and playing around with it on my computer, I felt—for the first time, really—that Donovan made the wrong call. It could have been a strong cover, even if it’s not a great picture.”
Not many people realize that Loengard originally shot the picture in color, but the color transparency was lost soon after the Feb. 28, 1964, issue of LIFE appeared. (At left: Loengard’s own colorized version—and cover mock-up—of the photo.)
“Harry Benson, of course, took a remarkable picture of the Beatles around the same time,” Loengard says, seemingly eager to point out a Beatles photo that he feels warrants the attention it’s received over the decades. “The one where they’re having a pillow fight in a hotel room. That is a very, very well-made photograph.”
“My own Beatles photo,” he adds, without a trace of rancor or regret, “is a second-rate, or maybe even a third-rate, picture. And yet it still has legs.”
See more of John Loengard’s work at johnloengard.com
Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
_______________
The Daily Hatch 