Tag Archives: revolver

#1392: The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows

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I saw this song was next after writing the previous post, and it got me wondering. When and how did I listen to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’? The thought got me looking back on that final third of 2009 when I really started listening to The Beatles, and surprisingly, it unlocked a memory that hadn’t been in the mental plane for a while. When I was on my Beatles discovery, trying to find out anything about any kind of song, I came across this person’s video. Made in the golden age of YouTube when everything was made on Windows Movie Maker, the video was a bunch of facts about ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ laid over the music, with some pictures here and there. My introduction to the Beatles was through songs like ‘Penny Lane’, ‘The Night Before’, ‘One After 909’… Songs that sound like a band made them. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was not like one of those. It was unlike any song I’d heard before. I was only 14 then, so that’s no exaggeration. And I don’t think it was too long after that that I found it was on Revolver and listened through the whole album.

The Beatles were meant to spend the first four months of 1966 making a film, which would have been their third in the four-film contract they had with some company. They said no and took a break instead. In January, John Lennon bought a book, took LSD and followed the instructions as exactly stated within the pages. The opening lyrics, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream”, are taken almost verbatim from it. April came around, it was time for the band to start recording a new album again, and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was the first song they worked on. Lennon wanted to translate the hallucinogenic experience into song, and the Beatles threw everything they had into it. They all brought in tape loops, which they manually overdubbed in a session, McCartney spurring up the idea. George Harrison played a sitar and tambura on the track, bringing his firmly established Indian inspirations into the mix. Lennon wanted to be hung upside-down and spun around a microphone while recording his vocal. New engineer Geoff Emerick tampered with a Leslie-speaker cabinet to get something to that effect. And in addition the banging drum take, Ringo Starr provided the song’s title. Not intentionally, but it was his words.

The problem with Beatles posts is that I don’t want to turn them into a casual rewrite of a Wikipedia page, and there’s a Wikipedia article for every Beatles track, I think. So any technical stuff or further insight you might want, it’s probably best you went over there. My personal take is hopefully what people are here for, so I’mma give it to you. I can’t imagine how people in 1966 reacted when this arrived as the final song on Revolver. To me, it feels like an intentional mark on the band’s part, showing that they were just on another level compared to their contemporaries. A lot of the public must have thought they’d gone insane or too weird. Or had been taking too many drugs, which isn’t wrong a judgement. This is a song that was worked on 60 years ago next week, and there are songs and bands today that solely exist to sound like it but pale in comparison. That pretty much sums up The Beatles too, honestly. A lot of people don’t want you to believe it these days, but those guys, they made some really good music.

#1340: The Beatles – Taxman

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‘Taxman’ would have been the track I heard first when deciding to go thorugh Revolver, having never heard it before, when I was in the depths of a Beatles discovery phase in 2009. Makes sense seeing as it’s the opening song on there. I’m sure I liked it then and there. I honestly wouldn’t be able to recall here how I felt about the song after that initial listen. It feels like it’s been around forever, I’ve heard it so many times since. But I’m sure I would have thought the ‘Taxman’ refrains were an obvious nod to the ’60s Batman theme tune and how similar the song ‘Start!’ by The Jam was to it. I usually see how ‘Taxman’ is talked about in the wider context of the Beatles’ discography. How it, and the rest of Revolver sort of marks a point where they were really blossoming into these fantastic songwriters, more than they were already, but with this newfound edge that clearly separated them from their peers. I mean, I’m sure all of that’s true. Just sounded like a cool song to me at the time.

People in the Beatles camp thought George Harrison had finally made a song worthy enough to begin a Beatles album, and so ‘Taxman’ did, and on it Harrison sings about the audacity the British government had in the mid-’60s to impose a supertax on the people with the highest taxable income in the country. The Beatles were four of those people, and they each were liable to give away 95% of their income to the taxman, hence the “one for you, 19 for me” lyric and Harrison’s general annoyance exuded in the song. Harrison further reinforces the preposterous nature of the titular taxman, who would tax the street, the seat, the heat, and your feet, if they could, for all the people who drive, sit, get too cold and go for leisurely walks. It’s quite comical how it’s written, I’m thinking Harrison felt the same way about the whole tax situation – but there’s definitely a seething undertone to it all, which makes it all the more emphatic of the political critique it is.

Online, you’ll find many a video detailing how the group recorded it and all the technicals. This one does, going into a dive as to who does the two count-ins you hear at the beginning of the song. For what it’s worth, before I saw it, I thought it was George doing the loud count-in and Paul McCartney doing the buried one. Now I think it’s Harrison doing both. Notable highlights in the song that I’d like to shine a light on is McCartney’s rapid-fire guitar solo about halfway through. It’s like a machine gun the way it comes out of the gate. It may also be out of frustration out of having to do it because Harrison couldn’t get the solo down himself. But that’s just my theory. His bassline isn’t too bad either, particularly those licks he pulls out during the middle eight. So, really, on a Harrison song, McCartney manages to take the spotlight somehow. And I just like the overall biting tone to that stabbing rhythm guitar that blasts the chords throughout. Got some real grit to it. And thankfully, the 2022 mix of it (above) did a good job of preserving all those things, just making it easier for listeners of the here and now. Or the here and now of 2022.

#1190: The Beatles – She Said She Said

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Another contender for one of my favourite songs of all time. I think I’ve said that for only two other songs on this site. Good luck trying to find them. For any Beatles fans reading, were you just as disappointed in the 2022 remix of this track as I was? Having been such a fan of ‘She Said She Said’ since 2009 when I first listened through Revolver, I was really hoping that Giles Martin would pull through with a new mix that packed as much of a punch as the 2009 remaster. I was quite disappointed when that new version came through though. I’m not even going to embed it, I was that sad about it. Almost every other song on the 2022 Revolver remix got a better treatment. Even though the original mix is laid out in a way that modern listeners can’t stand, I’ll take it any day over the new one.

Story goes the Beatles were holed up in a rented house in Beverly Hills and invited a couple guys from the Byrds and Peter Fonda over one day. They all took LSD and, while under the influence, Fonda began telling George Harrison that he knew what it was like to be dead in an attempt to somehow comfort him. Harrison thought that he himself was dying, but it was most likely the drug making him feel that way. John Lennon overhearing Fonda saying this got quite annoyed, remarking “You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born” and asking him “Who put all that shit in your head?” Fonda was asked to leave the party, eventually. But the whole ordeal was enough of a spark of inspiration to get a song down. Phrases from the conversation were almost used verbatim as the lyrics. The original “He” in the title became “She”, and the song was eventually recorded, the last one to be, for inclusion on Revolver.

So what makes this an “all-time” favourite of mine, you might be asking? Well, simply put, I like everything about the song. The tone of the guitars provide this bright, summery feel. Ringo Starr’s drumming is some of the best he ever put down to tape, and I’ve always got a kick out of the emphatic cymbal crashes on the “making me feel like I’ve never been born’ phrases. The decrease in volume of those in the 2022 mix play a part in why it’s worse than the original. John Lennon sings the track really well. The delivery of the first “She saaaaaid” has such a rousing quality to it, and the tone of his vocal is generally pleasant to my ears. And I still remember how sort of surprised I was when I found out that the harmonies were done by Harrison. I thought it was Lennon doing all the vocal work initially. Harrison’s voice sounds very similar. Always appreciate the transition between the “She said you don’t understand…” section to the “When I was a boy…” bridges. Just a little subtle time change there, but it’s enough to make the track stand out that little bit more. And the great double-time ending as Harrison echoes Lennon’s lines with the cymbals crashing away into the fade out. There’s a lot of things there for me. And the whole song is only under two-and-a-half minutes. Bands today could do with a song like it.

#778: The Beatles – Love You To

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The Beatles’ Revolver is an album that I’ve admired for so long now, it’s hard to recall when I had that ‘eureka!’ moment where I suddenly enjoyed each of its fourteen songs or even how I felt when I listened to the album for the first time. I know that I did go through it initially in 2009/10 when I was on my Beatles discovery phase, but I don’t think it was an album that struck me as a special one on the first listen. Through subsequent listens each track slowly became a lot clearer in terms of rhythm and melody and all that good stuff, but I have the feeling that George Harrison’s second song on the album ‘Love You To’ was one that I had to get my head around.

When listening to Revolver for any new Beatles follower, ‘Love You To’ will stick out immediately. Well, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ too, but definitely ‘Love’ because the band aren’t playing as a group. It’s more George Harrison and a lot of Indian musicians with Paul McCartney on backing vocal and Ringo Starr on the tambourine. It’s a real trip, but it’s merely a sign of the musical headspace Harrison was in at the time. He had fallen in love with the sitar and the music of India in general, and wrote this song in order to showcase his new interests. Experimentation with LSD may also have played a part in his new influences. It’s a song in the key of C and I’m sure that’s the only chord the song stays on throughout. That is known as a drone, for anyone who may be getting into music theory or something.

The song is of the the existential/philosophical type judging by its lyrics. Harrison, who was only 22 going on 23 when he wrote it, goes on to sing about how time’s going too quickly, how life is short and how people can be quick to take advantage of you if they get the chance. But while this is all going on, he just wants to make love as much as he can with the time he has. I’ve sometimes wondered why the track is titled ‘Love You To’; the phrasing doesn’t make sense and even so, the phrase doesn’t appear in the lyrics. If it was called ‘Love to You’ it would be a different story. Though I’ve realised now that it may be a play on the words ‘Love Me Do’, the very first Beatles single out only four years earlier. So strange but commendable how much the group changed it that time.

#600: The Beatles – I’m Only Sleeping

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It has been said and verified by many that John Lennon liked to sleep. When the Beatles took their rare breaks during their constant touring schedule, Lennon would take the time reading, writing, and sleeping – usually whilst under the influence of drugs. Paul McCartney would have to wake him up so they could get their songwriting sessions started. ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ is his dreamy ode to the activity…. and the lack of physical activity in general.

The song is the third on the band’s 1966 album Revolver. My personal favourite. Considered their best work by some. The track is driven by hazy acoustic guitars played by both Lennon and George Harrison, McCartney does his thing on the bass as usual, and a great emphasis is placed on the cymbals of Ringo Starr’s drum to further enhance the misty soundscape. One notable highlight is the backward electric guitar part that Harrison reportedly wrote and then recorded in an intense five hour session. Now it’s standard practice to put backwards music in a song to jazz things up, I can only imagine that in the 60s it must have really blown some people’s minds. Or at least made them question what was going on.

It’s a very cliché thing to say, but I seem to hear new things almost every time this song comes on. Lennon does a little hum just as the guitar solo is ending, John tells Paul to yawn before he does so in the little break, there’s a little guitar whine during the ‘lying there and staring at the ceiling line’…. there’s a lot of stuff to uncover! Makes it the more interesting to listen to.