SONGBOOK
REVOLVER
We’ll lose some fans with [the new album], but we’ll also gain some. The fans we’ll probably lose will be the ones who like the things about us that we never liked anyway.
– Paul McCartney
There are still more ideas buzzing around in the Beatles’ heads than in most of the pop world put together . . . They’ll never be able to copy this. Neither will the Beatles be able to reproduce a tenth of this material on a live performance. But who cares? Let John, Paul, George and Ringo worry about that when the time comes.
– Melody Maker, 1966
TRACK LIST
Side 1:
Taxman (Harrison)
Eleanor Rigby (Lennon-McCartney)
I’m Only Sleeping (Lennon-McCartney)
Love You To (Harrison)
Here, There And Everywhere (Lennon-McCartney)
Yellow Submarine (Lennon-McCartney)
She Said She Said (Lennon-McCartney)
Good Day Sunshine (Lennon-McCartney)
And Your Bird Can Sing (Lennon-McCartney)
For No One (Lennon-McCartney)
Doctor Robert (Lennon-McCartney)
I Want To Tell You (Harrison)
Got To Get You Into My Life (Lennon-McCartney)
Tomorrow Never Knows (Lennon-McCartney)
Released: 5 August 1966 (Parlophone)
Highest chart position: 1
Weeks in chart: 34 (7 at number 1)
FAB FACT
No song from Revolver found its way into the set of The Beatles’ summer world tour, highlighting how much the band’s work in the studio was becoming incompatible with live performance. The recording of the album was the first time the band attended and worked in the mixing sessions.
FAB FACT
‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the final song on the album, was the first one recorded by The Beatles in 1966 – and quite the statement of a new direction. After John and George’s dental experience, John threw himself into experimenting with LSD. The lyrics of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ were inspired by his reading of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert’s The Psychedelic Experience. The song was originally called ‘The Void’, though John, feeling self-conscious of the lyric, later gave the song its known title – another Ringoism.
In the studio, John told Martin that he wanted the vocal of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ to sound like the Dalai Lama and 4,000 monks chanting on a mountaintop. To try to accomplish this, John’s vocal was fed through a revolving Leslie speaker inside a Hammond organ. To add the distinctive sound effects throughout the song, the band created tape loops on their Brenell tape recorders, feeding the tapes at the right moments during recording. Sounds recorded in these tape loops include Paul laughing, a Mellotron on a flute setting and the guitar solo in ‘Taxman’.
FAB FACT
George seems to have found it hard to decide on titles for his songs on the album. During recording, ‘Love You To’ had the working title of ‘Granny Smith’, while ‘I Want To Tell You’ was originally called ‘Laxton’s Superb’, both kinds of apple.
FAB FACT
The horn section in ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ includes two of Georgie Fame’s Blue Flames: Eddie Thornton and Peter Coe.
FAB FACT
For the first time, the album cover was not by photographer Robert Freeman, though his photographs were featured. Klaus Voormann, The Beatles’ old friend from their Hamburg days, was brought in to create the iconic pen-and-ink and photo collage. Klaus was living in London, playing bass for Manfred Mann by then, and had been inspired by the Aubrey Beardsley exhibition that ran at the V & A Museum in 1966.