55 Years Later: Revisiting The Beatles’ Transcendently Creative ‘Revolver’ LP

Now at a fifty-five-year mark, the passage of time has not been kind to Revolver. Arguably the Beatles’ greatest album, the iconic band’s seventh long-player is unfortunately overshadowed by its successors, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles (a/k/a The White Album) and Abbey Road, this despite the fact it is as experimental or more so than any of those albums and also retains a palpable sense of band unity missing (except in passing ) from those other three titles. This 1966 work constitutes as much of a quantum leap over its predecessor from the previous year, Rubber Soul. as that album represented over the quartet’s previous record of all-original material (the first such effort of its kind in the group’s discography), A Hard Day’s Night.

In its fourteen-track form as released in the four Liverpudlians’ native England,  this Beatles album posits John Lennon as creative weather-vane. Intentionally or not at the time of recording (and debatable as is his status as the quartet’s titular leader since his passing), Lennon provides not just the ballast for the transcendent creativity on this record, but its most ingenious piece. Actually, the very first track recorded for the project (perhaps not coincidentally, like “Strawberry Fields Forever” was the first for the Pepper era), “Tomorrow Never Knows” features the relentless, circular hammering of Ringo’s drums behind a lead vocal from the main author fed through a Leslie speaker (usually used with a Hammond organ), while loops and other-echoed effects add to the density of the cut.

This conclusion to the LP has virtually nothing in common with John’s four other contributions to the album.  All those, including “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “Dr. Robert,” bear a remarkable similarity to a Lennon song released as a single prior to the album: “Rain” is all hard electric guitars, deep resonating bass lines from Paul McCartney and more inventive playing from a drummer who virtually defines swing on “She Said, She Said,” and “I’m Only Sleeping.” If there is any aspect of these tracks more notable than the inclusion of a snippet of recording run backwards–on the flip side of the 45 featuring Macca’s fictional narrative “Paperback Writer,”(John’s playback mistake)–it’s the emphasis on group vocal harmonies.

Whether in layered leads (via the technical innovation known as ADT or automatic double tracking) or counterpoint to the lead vocal, those singing techniques stand as one of the most unheralded but effective features of Revolver and function as a point of reference for all that is so novel around the voices. There’s the gleeful ridicule of political figures–‘haha Mr. Wilson…haha Mr. Heath’–next to the sound of an electric guitar solo run in reverse on George Harrison’s “Taxman.” The sweetness of the voices is absolutely sublime on Paul’s quintessential love ballad “Here There and Everywhere” and the harmonies define exultant on his other expression of unmitigated joy “Good Day Sunshine.” 

While the shouted chorus of “Yellow Submarine” no doubt took little if any practice compared to those more sleek singing interludes, it’s nevertheless representative of a fraternal bond also mirrored in the sense of instrumental cohesion of the rock and roll tracks. So prominent is that fundamental attribute, in fact, it places in even greater relief the diversity of innovation(s) on Revolver, particularly as juxtaposed with the rousing r&b horns adorning “Got to Get You Into My Life” and the elegiac string quartet on “Eleanor Rigby.” McCartney’s singing there, both soft and loud, is arguably the best of his career.

Wondrous as those cuts are, they would presage Sir Paul’s later exercises in pure style, like “Lady Madonna.” In much the same way, Harrison’s “Love You To” is his overt homage to the Indian music in which he had become immersed and it is perhaps the best example of that interest this side of “The Inner Light” from two years later (actually the flip side of the single with the latter-named tune of Paul’s the A-side); its author displays little if any sense of the condescending attitude permeating its stylistic successor, “Within You Without You,” and much of George’s first solo album All Things Must Pass.

Yet, as with the versatility of his peer songwriters to whom he had deferred for so long before his prominence on this album—he contributes three tunes–George retained his grasp on the basic elements of rock and roll. The descending electric guitar riff of “I Want to Tell You” gains force through the nearby the placement of slightly discordant piano in the arrangement: that flourish is emblematic of the litany of small touches on Revolver that distinguish the album, the lot of which proceed from start to finish in a natural, unforced set of dynamics missing from the records to follow. 

Granted the concepts for recording each of the later Beatles albums were markedly different, but that’s in large part because they had made the decision to stop playing live as of the end of that tour in support of this now over a half-century old album. When it came to recording in the wake of that epochal choice, the absence of much ensemble playing certainly had its advantages and disadvantages. Yet before then, with the perpetually astute and resourceful assistance of producer George Martin (and his engineering crew)on Revolver, the Beatles effectively turned recording into the best of both worlds, the studio and the stage.

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