Psychedelic and Electronic Songs
Starting with “Rain,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” and ending with “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” the Beatles created an amazing set of songs that far exceeded their rock-and-roll roots. In 1965 and 1966, John and Paul had discovered composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis and their electronic music compositions. Stockhausen and Xenakis composed avant-garde music that had absolutely nothing to do with rock and roll or pop music. Their compositions consisted of electronic music, musique concrète—also known as sound collages—and contemporary orchestral music. Given John and Paul’s curiosity and experimental tendencies, they were intrigued by Stockhausen’s and Xenakis’s compositions and were inspired to incorporate electronic music and sound collages into some of their songs. This was accomplished by using tape loops—a short piece of recording tape with music, voices, or sound effects on them which are looped/repeated. Using these electronic music techniques, the Beatles created a new genre and exposed their massive record-buying populace to a wave of unprecedented new songs.
As mentioned in chapter 2, the rock song “Rain” has backward vocals at the end of the song. Recorded in April 1966 when the Beatles were experimenting in the recording studio, the backward vocals happened by accident. Confirmed by engineer Geoff Emerick, John claimed that he had mistakenly played a recording of the song on his tape recorder after threading the tape with the end instead of rewinding it to the beginning. That explains how he heard his vocals backward and why his voice is backward at the end of the song. This accident opened the door for the Beatles to explore and develop backward recording techniques with songs on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and the White Album.
“I’m Only Sleeping,” on the U.S. Yesterday and Today album, is one of the first psychedelic Beatles songs to feature backward lead guitar parts. Backward guitars give the song a psychedelic character, and they gave audiences a new sound experience. The backward sounds are akin to an altered state of consciousness or a subconscious, dreamlike state of being, and it was easy for listeners to float away while listening to “I’m Only Sleeping.” Six weeks following the Yesterday and Today album, in August 1966, the mind-blowing Revolver album was released.
This is what it was like to experience the Revolver album for the first time. . . . Local AM radio stations have been playing selections from the new Beatles album, and you rush out to buy Revolver. You look at the album cover for a long time and see a black ink drawing of the Beatles’ faces with superimposed images of the Beatles in varying sizes. At the very beginning of the album, you hear George’s cool voice saying, “One, two, three, four, one, two . . .” After hearing “Taxman,” you think someone mysteriously put a different album on the turntable. Sure, you recognize Paul’s singing voice, but the song sounds like classical music. There are no guitars, basses, or drums on “Eleanor Rigby.” How strange. How different. Then you hear the next song, and you think that maybe you’re not listening to a Beatles album. Maybe you’re listening to a foreign group of musicians playing strange instruments? You are relieved to hear George singing, albeit in a low voice, about life being short and a new life that can’t be bought. “Love You To” intrigues you, and you have an entirely new Beatles experience. You are fascinated hearing the new songs, and then you listen to the last song, “Tomorrow Never Knows.” What in the world are the Beatles doing? You think that you’re high on drugs, but it’s not drugs; you are high listening to this unprecedented Beatles song.
The philosophical title of John’s song “Tomorrow Never Knows” was a sign that Beatles fans would not know what to expect from the Beatles going forward. Certainly, no one other than the Beatles could have known that a song of this unprecedented magnitude, filled with an orgy of seemingly unrelated material, would be created in 1966. When you hear the tambura at the very beginning of the song, you’re led to think it’s another Indian-influenced George song. Without warning, Ringo plays a thundering repetitive drum pattern, a pattern he had never played before. Paul plays a continuous bass line, which locks in with Ringo’s close-miked drum track. And what is that sound before John’s opening lead vocals? Seagulls? Actually, it’s recorded laughter played at a very fast speed. After the high-pitched laughter flies by, John asks you to turn off your mind and float downstream. How do you turn off your mind? By meditating and going within one’s self. The esoteric lyrics “lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void” are soul searching and yearn for inner self-awareness. John wanted his vocals to sound unlike anything he had ever sung before and told George Martin that he wanted his voice to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks. George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick went to great lengths to try and accommodate John. Double-tracked recording techniques were applied to John’s voice in the first three verses. During the last four verses, John’s voice was recorded through a Leslie speaker cabinet, giving his voice a swirling effect. Even though he was initially pleased, John was not satisfied with his processed vocals. In the 1968 book The Beatles, written by Hunter Davies, John had said, “Often the backing I think of early on never comes off. With ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ I’d imagined in my head that in the background you would hear thousands of monks chanting. That was impractical of course and we did something different. It was a bit of a drag and I didn’t really like it. I should have tried to get near my original idea, the monks singing. I realize now that was what it wanted.” Fragmented orchestral sounds and high-pitched laughter are interspersed around John’s vocals. Fast descending and ascending sitar-like arpeggios come racing into the soundscape, followed by a backward lead guitar solo played by Paul. The guitar solo sounds like the same lead guitar solo that Paul played on “Taxman”; however, on “Tomorrow Never Knows,” it’s slowed down, backwards, and fragmented. Abstractly, that guitar solo ties Revolver’s opening song, “Taxman,” together with the last song, “Tomorrow Never Knows.” After the guitar solo, immediately following John singing “that love is all . . . ,” a high-pitched feedback occurs. More than likely it was accidental, and keeping it in the recording added to the electronic fabric of the song.
Influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul asked John, George, and Ringo to create tape loops. The origin of the tape-loop sounds are a brief section from a symphony by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, backward electric guitars sped up, backward and high-speed rapid sitar-like passages, and a laughing voice at double speed. With the working title “Mark 1,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” is an outstanding Beatles creation that uses backward recording techniques, experimentation, electronic music, Indian music, rock music, and a pounding, unrelenting drum pattern. This new mixed-genre song is trance-like, filled with sensational electronic sounds that fly around John’s hypnotic vocals. No one other than the Beatles could have created such a mind-expanding masterpiece in 1966. The title of the song is not in the lyrics, and the song isn’t about tomorrow. “Tomorrow Never Knows” is timeless. It’s about living in the moment; it’s about now.
With the title “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the Beatles were not kidding around. About five months after the release of the Revolver album, after months of group inactivity and rumors that the Beatles had broken up, “Strawberry Fields Forever” exploded onto the singles record charts.
With the February 1967 release of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the Beatles had transformed and reinvented themselves not only musically but also physically. I remember buying the new single and was astonished when I looked at the record sleeve. On one side of the sleeve is a photograph of the Beatles placed in an elaborate golden frame. This striking backlit photograph of the Beatles didn’t look like the Beatles I had known for three years. None of the Beatles are smiling. They have serious expressions on their faces, and they have grown mustaches, plus George has whiskers on his chin. He wears a long Indian jacket and looks away from the camera. John is wearing wire-rimmed glasses for the first time. Paul, John, and Ringo look indifferent, almost sad. On the other side of the single sleeve are baby photos, some upside down and some sideways, that look like they were taken from a page in a scrapbook. The song titles are printed on the baby-photo side, but there’s no “The Beatles” name on either side. The Beatles had always been clean shaven, so why are mustaches on their young faces? George grew a mustache before traveling to India, hoping to disguise himself and not be recognized. Paul had a motorcycle accident in December 1965 in which he chipped his tooth and split his lip. He waited almost a year before growing a mustache to cover up the scar on his lip. In the autumn of 1966, while George was in India, John was in Spain, acting in the movie How I Won the War, playing the part of a soldier named Musketeer Gripweed. Taking on the rugged look of a soldier, John had stubble on his face, and later that year he grew a mustache.
John had conceived the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” when he was in Spain and developed it on his return to England. He wants to take you to a place where nothing is real. What does John mean when he sings “nothing is real” and “living is easy with eyes closed”? These existential lyrics beg for an explanation. He goes on to say it’s high or low, and I think I know, I mean yes, but disagree. It sounds like these are confusing strawberry fields. John had said in a 1980 Playboy interview that the song is about a place that he used to visit as a child. The abstract lyrics were his attempt of an introspective self-analysis. “No one is in my tree” is his way of saying that he was alone, by himself, and not like anyone else. Strawberry Fields is a very real place. It’s the name of an orphanage in Liverpool that was run by the Salvation Army, close to where John lived with his aunt Mimi. When John was a young boy, he would play in the fields on the orphanage property and hear the Salvation Army’s marching band.
Musically, “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a major departure from previous Beatles songs and recordings. Starting with flute-sounding tape loops played on a mellotron, the slow path to strawberry fields begins. The mellotron was prominently showcased by the Beatles, and this electronic keyboard ushered in a bevy of new sounds on a Beatles single. Ringo’s style of drumming is new as he plays a wider variety of drum fills, along with the unusual sound of backward cymbals. There’s also the use of four trumpets replicating a Salvation Army marching band, sweeping cellos, and the Indian zither-like swarmandal. John’s voice guides you as he takes you down to strawberry fields, and the instrumentation, arrangement, and production of the song has you convinced that these fields are magical. Sliding guitars, a pulsating bass line, timpani drums, and prominent cellos take you away to John’s dreamlike world. The song fades out, and when you think the song is over, surprisingly it fades back in, and you hear scrambled drumming along with a backward mellotron part and a blaring trumpet. What does John say at the very end of the song? “I buried Paul”? “Cranberry sauce”? “I’m very bored”? Listen to John’s voice at the end of the fade-out and try to determine what he says.
To provide you with a historical perspective, here are some of the top-selling U.S. singles from January 1967: “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees; “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsman (the band’s name is the same name as a VOX amplifier model); “Tell It Like It Is” by Aaron Neville; “Good Thing” by Paul Revere and the Raiders; “Standing in the Shadows of Love” by the Four Tops; “Sugar Town” by Nancy Sinatra; “Nashville Cats” by the Lovin’ Spoonful; “Winchester Cathedral” by the New Vaudeville Band. These songs represent what pop songs sounded like prior to the release of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Even though the style of these hit songs varies from pop and rock to rhythm and blues and country rock, all of these songs are composed of elements from the standard song formation—verse, bridge, and chorus—and had common chord progressions. The songs were recorded with the basic guitar, keyboard, bass, and drum ensemble and are relatively simple compared to the complexity of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Listen to any of the songs listed above and then listen to “Strawberry Fields Forever” and you will hear how radically different the new Beatles single was at the time when it was released. “Strawberry Fields Forever” completely changed the recording industry standard and raised the creative bar to new heights.
No longer touring but still basking in the fame and fortune that Beatlemania had given them, the Beatles could indulge in spending lots of time in the recording studio and being inventive. “Strawberry Fields Forever” was the result of using the recording studio as the place where the Beatles unleashed their creativity. Songs on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album were created in that same innovative environment.
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” takes you on a psychedelic ride through looking-glass ties, marmalade skies, and marshmallow pies. But when you look for Lucy with kaleidoscope eyes, she’s gone, up to the sky, draped in diamonds. The song, written by John and with a few lyrics from Paul, begins with verses in three-four time then goes into a four-four-time chorus. After the chorus, it seamlessly returns to three-four-time verses. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” begins with a celestial-sounding organ played by Paul. The melody that Paul plays on the organ is harmonically complicated yet perfectly matches and supports John’s lead vocals. The pre-chorus instrumentation moves up just a notch to a new key. Bridging the pre-chorus to the chorus, Ringo pounds out three beats. During the verses, George plays the tambura, and on the choruses he plays lead guitar through a Leslie speaker. Getting even higher and closer to the “sky,” John and Paul sing the song’s title as the music peaks. The inspiration and song’s title came from a pastel painting that John’s son Julian had created. Julian had a crush on his nursery school friend Lucy. Four-year-old Julian told John that the painting was Lucy, in the sky with diamonds. The psychedelic lyrics filled with drug-drenched images and the initials in the song’s title led some people to believe that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was a song about LSD.
Paul’s song “Getting Better” bursts with positive energy, juxtaposed with John’s “it can’t get no worse” lyrics. The first two verses address anger and cruel teachers; the third verse is about beating a woman. Unfortunately, these lyrics were autobiographical for John, who had a violent side and used to lash out and hit some of the women in his life. Positive Paul washes away all that negativity with “it’s getting better, all the time.” Paul’s brilliant bass playing is syncopated, dancing around the punchy, consistent staccato downbeats from the guitars and keyboards. George Martin joins in on a virginal, a small keyboard instrument similar to the harpsichord but with only one string per key. He also adds to the percussive sound by hitting the strings of a pianet with mallets. Paul’s lead vocals are surrounded by John and George singing background vocals. On the lyrics in the chorus, “better, better, better,” the arching background vocals get higher as “better” is repeated. The title of the song came about when Jimmie Nicol was drumming with the Beatles in 1964, filling in for Ringo, who was having his tonsils removed. After the Beatles played a concert, Paul asked Jimmie, “How’s it going?” Jimmie responded by saying, “It’s getting better.” The song is a prime example of how Paul’s and John’s lyric writing contrasted and complemented each other, one expressing anger and violence and the other hope of better times.
In January 1967, when the Beatles were in Kent, England, filming a promotional video for their “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” single, John stopped in a local antique shop and bought an old circus poster. The nineteenth-century poster was the inspiration for John’s song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” Most of the lyrics to the song were taken from the poster, though John changed the name of the horse from Zanthus to Henry. Paul claims to have written the song with John; however, John had suggested that he wrote the entire song. In Hunter Davies’s book The Beatles, John said, “I had all the words staring me in the face . . . from this old poster I’d bought. I hardly made up a word just connecting the lists together. I was just going through the motions because we needed a new song for Sgt. Pepper at that moment.” In a 2013 Rolling Stone interview, Paul said, “I have great memories of writing it with John. I read occasionally, people say, ‘Oh, John wrote that one.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute, what was that afternoon I spent with him, then, looking at that poster?’” It’s fascinating what the Beatles created based on the words from the poster. To give “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” a circus-sounding atmosphere, John asked George Martin to create carnival sounds. Martin played the organ, piano, harmonium, and glockenspiel and created the magical electronic collage in the instrumental section. He gathered a collection of carnival, organ, and calliope tape recordings and instructed Geoff Emerick to cut the tapes into pieces and arbitrarily splice them together. The result is dizzying and sensational. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” begins with a burst of harmonicas played by John, George, and Ringo, followed by Ringo’s drumroll introducing the first verse. John sings the lead vocals and harmonizes with himself when he sings “challenge the world,” “Henry the horse,” and “Mr. Kite is topping the bill.” Ringo’s drumming in the song is minimal, so it doesn’t obscure the sonic collage sounds. During the verses, Ringo hits his hi-hat on the second and fourth beats and he kicks his bass drum on the first and third beats, playing along with Paul’s bass line. Then he replaces his hi-hat hits with tom-toms for the chorus. The song is in four-four time, but after John sings “waltz,” the middle instrumental section is in three-four time so Henry the horse can dance a waltz. Ringo switches to hitting his hi-hat on the second and third beats for the waltz section, and George Martin plays the swirling keyboard instruments in three-four time. Getting back to the four-four-time verse, a pounding rhythm and cymbal crash announces the last verse. Mr. Kite was probably a rich man, but not as rich as the Beatles.
Who keeps money in a big brown bag? Who is the rich man? In the summer of 1967, the Beatles were rich men, and Brian Epstein was a rich man, too. As their manager, Brian traveled on tours with the Beatles. Back in those wild touring days, Brian collected the Beatles’ performing fees, and invariably, Brian was paid cash in brown paper bags. Getting paid in cash was a way to avoid having to pay taxes on the unreported earned money. Brian’s management fee was on the high side, as much as 25 percent, compared with average fess that ranged from 10 to 15 percent. Not only was Brian receiving money from the Beatles, but he was also earning money from the other performing/recording artists he managed. Those artists included Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Cyrkle, Sounds Incorporated, and Cilla Black. The Beatles reveled in their riches, but they also liked to poke fun at Brian for having made so much money off them. “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” the B-side to the “All You Need Is Love” single, is actually two different songs combined together in a perfect juxtaposition. John wrote the verse section using the working title “One of the Beautiful People.” Paul wrote the “Baby You’re a Rich Man” chorus. “Beautiful People” was a 1967 summer of love phrase used to describe people who were “hip” and turned on to drugs. Riches were often the antithesis of the hippie drug culture, but the Beatles managed to benefit from the best of both worlds. The song begins with pianos played by John and Paul, and Ringo sets the rhythm by playing drums, tambourine, and maracas. Paul comes in with a melodious bass line, followed by John playing the clavioline, an electronic keyboard instrument. During the verses, the clavioline sounds like a drippy oboe. Ringo’s drum fills in the second and third verses are exceptional sweeps across his snare and tom-tom drums. George’s electric guitar chug-a-chug part sounds muted and processed. When listening to the ending chorus, you will hear a non-Beatle voice. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones chimed in, singing the song’s title and “too.” At the end of the chorus, before it fades out, you will hear something rude. John sang “a rich fag Jew,” mixed in with Paul and George singing “a rich man, too.” Brian, being a homosexual Jew, could not have been pleased with John’s personal jab. But Brian knew that John often made off-the-cuff remarks and probably knew not to take him too seriously.
In one of the most innovative Beatles songs, John said he was the walrus, and in the song “Glass Onion,” John said “the walrus is Paul,” referring to Paul wearing a walrus costume on the cover of the Magical Mystery Tour album. In any event, these walruses are otherworldly. The lyrics in John’s song “I Am the Walrus” are unlike any other lyrics in the Beatles’ catalog of songs. John had received a letter from a student in Liverpool who was analyzing Beatles lyrics in an English class. Intrigued, John was inspired to write a song with the most confusing lyrics possible. Highly abstract to the degree of sounding absurd, some of the lyrics in the verses are “sitting on a cornflake,” “kicking Edgar Allan Poe,” “custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye,” and “pornographic priestess.” Some of the lyrics are based on a nursery rhyme that John was familiar with when he was a child. John’s walrus was inspired by the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” written by Lewis Carroll, from the book Through the Looking-Glass. John wrote some of the lyrics while on acid trips. The piercing tone of John’s vocals are intensely bright with a cutting edge. The repetitive two-note melody in the verses is based on John hearing a European siren wailing outside his home in England. When John sings “policemen sitting pretty little policemen,” the lyrics are appropriately matched with the two-note siren melody. This two-note melody is a variation of John singing “nobody was really sure if he was from the house of Lords” in “A Day in the Life.” The chords in “I Am the Walrus” are based on the seven notes in the musical alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, and John chose to use all major chords. John sang the orchestral parts to George Martin to guide George as he wrote the string, brass, and woodwind arrangement. The song begins with an electric piano played by John and tambourine played by Paul, followed by low-register violins and cellos. Then Ringo plays an explosive drum rhythm that introduces John’s haunting lead vocals. During the verses, cellos mimic the vocal melody. After John sings “I am the egg man” and “they are the egg men,” background voices sing a glissando whoo. Although John said that he is the egg man, Eric Burdon, who was the lead singer of the British rock band the Animals, claims to be the real egg man. Eric was known to break eggs on the bodies of naked women before having sex with them, and John had witnessed such a “happening.” After the lyrics “see how they run,” the cellos play a series of rapid, syncopated descending notes. Then John sings a sustained, high-pitched “crying” backed by even higher background voices. Cellos play the song’s opening two-note siren melody, followed by another ascending “crying” with sweeping whoos. After the “yellow matter custard” lyrics, French horns play a countermelody to John’s vocals. Immediately following the nonsensical lyrics “goo goo g’joob,” the song is rudely interrupted with a blast of scrambled radio noises and voices. Isolated strings play a melody that introduces a new section of the song. John sings “sitting in an English garden” with a different melody from the rest of the song, and then the arrangement quickly returns to the “I am the egg man” chorus. After the lyrics “the joker laughs at you,” sixteen vocalists from the Mike Sammes Singers chime in with, “ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee, ha, ha, ha.” Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder from the Moody Blues also sing some of the background vocals. John sings a series of j’oobs, and then the song begins a long end chorus, with ascending strings climbing to their upper register. Mixed in with the ending arrangement are spoken excerpts from Shakespeare’s play King Lear. It just so happened that John had turned on a radio and heard King Lear being broadcast on a BBC program and wanted to include some of it in “I Am the Walrus.” It’s during the long ending and fade-out of the song where you can hear lines from the play interspersed with the music and chorus. The addition of the King Lear lines contribute to making “I Am the Walrus” an experimental, psychedelic song. During the long fade-out, the background voices are so obscured that their actual content is open for interpretation. Layered multiple voices sing a variety of phrases, making it difficult to hear exactly what they are saying. “Oomph, oomph, stick it up your jumper,” “everybody’s got one,” and “everybody smokes pot” are possibilities. While John was singing about the walrus and eggs, Paul was interested in honey pies.
“Wild Honey Pie,” one of the songs on the White Album, has Paul playing all of the instruments and singing the multitracked vocals. Less than a minute long, this peculiar experimental song was created on the spot. A series of chords descends and return to the first chord, and Paul screeches “Honey Pie.” This same pattern repeats, and at the very end of the song, Paul says, “I love you, honey pie.” As Paul had stated in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, the song “was a reference to the other song I had written called ‘Honey Pie.’” The Beatles weren’t sure if they wanted to include “Wild Honey Pie” on the album, but since Pattie Harrison liked it a lot, the song found its place as a filler between “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill.” “Wild Honey Pie” is a strange-sounding little ditty, psychedelic and funny.
“Wild Honey Pie” is a strange song, but compared to “Revolution 9” it’s not that strange. First of all, “Revolution 9” is not a song; it’s an electronic piece of music created in the style of musique concrète. A song has lyrics set to a melody and sung with a relatively short musical composition. Song elements are usually composed of melodic rhymed-lyric verses, sometimes with added harmony, and a wide variety of rhythms played on a number of different musical instruments. “Revolution 9” does not possess these elements, and more than likely you will not find it in any Beatles songbooks. Instead, it is a wild collage of mixed sounds composed of spoken words by John, George, and Yoko Ono; moaning; laughter; orchestral excerpts from classical music compositions; a choir of high-pitched singing voices; audience noises; instrumental fragments; a speeding car; gunfire; breaking glass; cheers from a soccer game; and extensive backward recording techniques. The majority of these sounds were on tape loops that were faded in and out during the mixing process. Hearing “Revolution 9” for the first time in late 1968 was a mind-boggling experience. Here, again, the Beatles had introduced something completely unlike their previous recordings. Ranked the fifth-worst song in Rolling Stone magazine’s “Readers’ Poll: The Worst Songs of the Sixties,” many Beatles fans at the time couldn’t bear to listen to this orgy of sounds. For them, it was far too radical and didn’t conform to a customary song’s structure. “Revolution 9” is John’s creation, along with Yoko’s and George’s input. Paul did not want “Revolution 9” to be on the White Album, and he and Ringo did not participate in the recording. The piece was influenced by Yoko Ono and her avant-garde conceptual artwork, plus musique concrète compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
“Revolution 9” begins with a repetitive voice that says “number nine,” bouncing from left to right speakers with a faint piano playing in the background. John liked the sound of the “number nine” voice and brought it in and out of the mix at various times throughout the piece. It just so happens that the number 9 has a lot of relevance to John’s life. His birthday is October 9, 1940; as a young boy, John lived at 9 Newcastle Road in the Wavertree section of Liverpool; Brian Epstein heard the Beatles for the first time at the Cavern Club in Liverpool on November 9, 1961; the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time on February 9, 1964; and John met Yoko at the Indica Gallery in London on November 9, 1966, where he first encountered her conceptual artwork. During the “Revolution 9” soundscape, backward and fast-rushing music flies by with cymbal crashes, a baby’s voice, and opera excerpts. The overall stereo panning travels from speaker to speaker and engulfs the listener. Like most people, you will probably be somewhat shocked when you listen to “Revolution 9.” John’s tape-loop creations peaked with “Revolution 9,” and going forward he no longer used this electronic music technique with any of his songs.
In the cellar of the house where I lived with my father during the summer of 1968, there was a reel-to-reel, two-track tape recorder I used to record my band the Pandemoniums when we rehearsed. I had a collection of old hubcaps, bells, some tools, and there was an old radio on a Formica table. There was also a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, and a sink and toilet in the nearby bathroom. One evening, on track one I recorded a bunch of sounds composed of hitting the hubcaps, ringing the bells, switching on the radio and twisting the dial, turning the vacuum cleaner and washing machine on and off, and flushing the toilet and running water in the sink. While not listening to what I had recorded on track one, on track two I recited lyrics that I had not set to music, made noises with my voice processed through a Fender Echoplex, and made sliding electric guitar sounds by running the strings up and down a microphone stand. When I played the tape, I was fascinated with hearing the arbitrary mix of the two tracks together. While I was recording a musique concrète composition, the Beatles were working on “Revolution 9.” Months later when I heard “Revolution 9,” I thought that the Beatles and I had a psychic connection, having created similar pieces.
“Revolution 9” is entirely different from previous Beatles recordings, and the White Album cover is an extreme, radical departure from the two previous Beatles album covers. The album covers for Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are loaded with dynamic, vivid colors, the Beatles dressed in animal costumes, and dozens of faces and flowers. While it’s logical to think that the White Album’s cover design was John and Yoko’s idea, it was actually Paul who wanted to come up with something entirely different. Pop artist Richard Hamilton designed the blank white album cover with the name “The Beatles” in raised print in the lower-right corner and numbers stamped nearby. Replicating numbers assigned to limited editions of artwork, the stamped numbers on the cover gave the White Album an art collector’s prestigious status. The “limited edition” concept is clever but funny given the fact that approximately five million copies of the album were made. Inside the double album were four detached photos of the Beatles. John, Paul, George, and Ringo do not look happy, and Paul hadn’t shaved for a number of days. The four separate photos depict the Beatles as individuals, unlike earlier photos when they were together as a group. The individual photos also parallel the fact that many of the songs on the White Album are not recorded by all four Beatles. The splintering signs of the band were visible, but no one really noticed the Beatles coming apart.
John had a fascination with tape loops and backward recording techniques, but it was George whose interest with electronic music led him to buy a synthesizer. When George was in Los Angeles in November 1968, he met with Bernie Krause, who was an expert with the synthesizer. George was producing Jackie Lomax’s album, and Bernie played the synthesizer on some of the album’s songs. Intrigued with the instrument, George asked Bernie to demonstrate the varied sounds the instrument could make. George recorded Bernie’s demonstration and purchased a Moog synthesizer. In England, George experimented with the synthesizer, and in May 1969 he released a solo album titled Electronic Sound on Zapple Records, a division of the Beatles’ Apple Records company. Unfortunately, the album was not well received and was buried with scathing reviews. To add insult to injury, “No Time or Space” on the entire second side of the album, was an edited version of Bernie’s recorded demonstration, of which George claimed to be the composer. On the original recording, George did give an “assisted by Bernie Krause” credit on “No Time or Space.” But George’s preoccupation with electronic music occurred before his solo Electronic Sound album.
George’s first electronic song had been “Only a Northern Song” on the Yellow Submarine album. George, John, and Paul created a bed of sound made up of forward and backward tape loops. The instrumental sections are filled with studio effects, discordant trumpet blasts played by Paul, spoken voices, and an ever-present Hammond organ played by George. The ending section of the song is akin to the kind of sound collage that John would later develop in “Revolution 9.” George sings, “It’s only a northern song,” but as an electronic, psychedelic sonic creation, it’s much more than just another northern song.
“It’s All Too Much” was written by George, who sings lead vocals and plays an organ. The song is loaded with guitar feedback played by George and John, and Ringo’s drumming is unusually busy. George, John, and Paul overdubbed heavy handclaps on the second and fourth beats throughout the long six-minute, twenty-eight-second recording. Written and recorded in 1967, a few months before the summer of love, the song embodies the spirit of that ideological summer with the lyrics “love that’s shining all around.” When you listen very carefully, toward the end of the song, George sings “you are too much, John,” and “we are dead.” Apparently at that time, John was too much for George. At the very end of the song, John’s and Paul’s background vocals sing “tuba” and “Cuba” instead of “too much.” Recorded at a time when George and John were taking LSD, the music and lyrics of “It’s All Too Much” captured the psychedelic drug culture prevalent in the flower-power hippie movement that was happening in 1967. The song was considered for inclusion in the Magical Mystery Tour movie but was held back and put in the Yellow Submarine movie and its accompanying soundtrack album. Adding fanfare to the song, George Martin wrote an arrangement consisting of four trumpets and a bass clarinet and recorded it as an overdub. In retrospect, George Harrison had said in the October 1999 issue of Mojo Magazine that he didn’t like those instruments added to his song. The trumpets and clarinet were too much for Harrison.
Soon after the Beatles returned to England from their transcendental meditation experience in India with the Maharishi, George wrote “Long, Long, Long.” One might think that having spent six weeks in India, George would have written another Indian song using a sitar, tabla, and tambura, but George actually refrained from using Indian instruments on future Beatles songs. However, the recurring acoustic guitar part he plays on “Long, Long, Long” does sound like a sitar. George’s lead vocals in the verses are soft and tender and at times almost a whisper. Ringo plays only a few brilliant drum fills in the verses and then plays a steady beat and more drum fills during the bridge section. At the end of the bridge, George’s vocals dramatically peak on the words oh, oh. Lyrically, the song tells of great longing for someone or something. In the last verse, George “can see you” and “be you.” “Long, Long, Long” can be interpreted as George expressing love for his wife Pattie or about George finally finding spiritual love. The peculiar psychedelic ending of the song is the happenstance result of a wine bottle rattling on a Leslie speaker cabinet while Paul played the Hammond organ. Making the ending of “Long, Long, Long” even stranger, George wails like a cat in heat, Ringo plays a fast drumroll, George makes bright string noises on his guitar, and Ringo ends the song with a thud. As was the case with the White Album, the Abbey Road album has several songs that do not feature all of the Beatles, as they were functioning more like four individuals rather than a group. Therefore, John didn’t contribute anything on “Long, Long, Long” or on George’s other song, “Savoy Truffle.”
“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is a long, complex, blues, heavy-rock, electronic music song written by John. The seven-minute, forty-four-second song is a direct statement from John declaring how much he emphatically wants Yoko. Repeatedly. Three years prior to the Beatles recording “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” Bob Dylan had recorded and released a single titled “I Want You.” Both Bob Dylan’s and John’s song contain the lyrics “I want you so bad,” but the melody and musical elements of John’s song are radically different from Bob Dylan’s folk tune. While the lyrics are minimal and repetitive, the music evolves beyond a more common three-chord blues progression. The last song on side one of the Abbey Road album, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” begins with explosive electric guitars playing an abbreviated musical chorus in three-four time. The introduction ends with an altered A major chord, and the first chord in the verse is an A minor chord, illustrating another parallel modulation used by the Beatles. The many verses, played in four-four time, begin, and John sings “I want you,” followed by three beats on drums, guitar, and bass. Then John sings “I want you so bad,” followed by four beats played by the band. John plays the same vocal melody on his guitar as he imitates his singing voice with the guitar on all of the verses. The combined vocal/guitar effect is sensual. John wants Yoko so bad it’s driving him mad. After he sings “driving me,” a transitional musical bridge occurs, with Paul playing a solo bass line. There’s more “I want you, I want you so bad,” but this time John’s voice intensifies. The transitional bridges returns, and then the “heavy” part of the song kicks in. John sings “she’s so,” and after the guitar chorus riff and organ are played, he screams “heavy.” Back in the 1960s, heavy was a popular word used to describe something deep or intense. Without a doubt, John found Yoko to be “heavy.” Unlike the first chord in the verses, the “heavy” section of the song begins with a D minor chord played in three-four time. Harmonically, the song has two different tonal/key centers and different time signatures. We return to the verse chord progression, where John plays a bluesy lead guitar solo right up to the musical bridge, and this time Paul plays a rhythmic variation of his bass solo. Another “she’s so heavy” chorus takes place, with a brilliant organ part played by Beatle buddy Billy Preston. One more verse happens with an added conga part, and Paul plays a rapid descending bass run. After John sings “driving me mad,” leading into the bridge, he rips his vocal chords screaming an emotional, primal “Yeah!” John wants Yoko, and she is driving him mad. The final massive “heavy” musical chorus begins.
A wall of omnipresent electric guitars play a two-part riff in the ending chorus. Multilayered, repetitive arpeggio guitars play simultaneously with a thick recurring, melodic low-string guitar riff overdubbed several times played by John and George. Paul doubles the low guitar riff on his bass. As the end chorus builds, Ringo’s drumming is jazzy, the screeching background voices are haunting, and Paul’s soaring bass runs are remarkable. What makes “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” an electronic song are the sound effects added to the long musical ending. Gradually, the sound of white noise, produced from the Moog synthesizer, takes over the song, growing louder and more aggressive with each musical repetition. Adding to the swirling noise is a howling wind machine played by Ringo. The combined synthesizer noise with the wind machine lifts the song off the ground and propels you off your feet and into a cosmic space. As the song intensifies with no ending in sight, suddenly you are stunned with an abrupt, cliff-hanging silence. When John was working on the final mix of the song, he told the engineer to cut the tape exactly where the song comes to a screeching halt. It is a shocking ending that no one could have anticipated.
While recording the Abbey Road album, the Beatles were acutely aware that their individuality was much stronger than their desire to continue working together as a group. Knowing that Abbey Road would be their last album, the Beatles temporarily put aside their differences, focused on their gifted musicianship, and created an outstanding album. The photo on the album cover is simple: The Beatles are walking across Abbey Road on a crosswalk, called a zebra crossing in England. Dressed in a white suit, a full-bearded John with flowing long hair leads the crossing, followed by Ringo with a beard in a black suit, clean-shaven Paul in a navy-blue suit, and a long-haired, bearded George dressed in a denim shirt and jeans. This Abbey Road cover formation is unlike the historical sequence of how the band came together. John started with the Quarrymen; Paul then joined the Quarrymen, followed by George; and Ringo joined the Beatles. During the 1960s, it was commonplace to refer to the Beatles as John, Paul, George, and Ringo, yet the Beatles appear in a different order on this album cover. In 1969, their images were so well known worldwide that their name didn’t need to be printed on the cover. Their name does appear on the back cover, along with a tile sign identifying the thoroughfare known as Abbey Road. Appropriately enough, the s in the Beatles’ name is cracked, perhaps symbolizing that when Abbey Road was released in 1969, the Beatles had cracked—they were unofficially no longer a band.
In the span of three years, from 1966 to 1969, the Beatles had created an unprecedented collection of psychedelic electronic songs that have stood the test of time. When they were originally released, Beatles fans and critics alike were awestruck. Today, when listeners hear these songs for the first time, it must be a mind-expanding listening experience.
Suggested Listening: “Rain”; “I’m Only Sleeping”; “Tomorrow Never Knows”; “Strawberry Fields Forever”; “Baby You’re a Rich Man”; “I Am the Walrus”; “Revolution 9”; “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”