Revolver (Beatles album)

Background

In December 1965, the Beatles' Rubber Soul album was released to wide critical acclaim. According to author David Howard, the limits of pop music "had been raised into the stratosphere" by the release, resulting in a shift in focus away from singles to creating albums of consistently high quality. The following January, the Beatles carried out overdubs on live recordings taken from their 1965 US tour, for inclusion in the concert film The Beatles at Shea Stadium. The group's manager, Brian Epstein, had intended that 1966 would then follow the pattern of the previous two years, in terms of the band making a feature film and an accompanying album, followed by concert tours during the summer months. After the Beatles vetoed the proposed film project, however, the time allocated for filming became a three-month period free of professional engagements. The extended layoff allowed the band members to experience life outside the group collective for the first time since 1962, as well as giving them an unprecedented amount of time to prepare for a new album.

Writing in The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner cites 1966 as the start of the band's "'psychedelic' period" and adds: "That adjective implies not only the influence of certain mind-altering chemicals, but also the freewheeling spectrum of wide-ranging colors that their new music seemed to evoke." Music journalist Carol Clerk describes Revolver as having been "decisively informed by acid", following John Lennon and George Harrison's continued experimentation with the drug LSD since the spring of 1965. Through these shared experiences, the two musicians developed a fascination for Eastern philosophical concepts, particularly regarding the illusory nature of human existence. Despite his bandmates' urging, after Ringo Starr had also partaken of the drug, Paul McCartney refused to try LSD. As reflected in the more conventional subject matter of his lyrics on Revolver, relative to those of Lennon and Harrison, McCartney drew his inspiration from the intellectual stimulation he experienced among London's thriving artistic community.

While arranging dates for the band's world tour, Epstein agreed to a proposal by journalist Maureen Cleave for the Beatles to be interviewed separately for a series of articles that would run in London's Evening Standard newspaper in March 1966. Cleave's observations reflected the band members' more sophisticated personalities beyond the simplistic portrayals that were commonplace at the time. She found Lennon to be intuitive, lazy and dissatisfied with fame and material wealth; Harrison shared this dissatisfaction, in addition to appearing fiercely anti-authoritarian. Cleave considered Starr to be the most contented, as a dedicated family man, while McCartney conveyed confidence and a hunger for knowledge and new creative possibilities. In his book Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock 'n' Roll, Robert Rodriguez writes that, whereas Lennon had been the Beatles' dominant creative force before Revolver, McCartney now attained an approximately equal position with him. In addition, Harrison's interest in the music and culture of India, and his study of the Indian sitar, had inspired him as a composer. According to author Ian Inglis, Revolver is widely viewed as "the album on which Harrison came of age as a songwriter".

Recording history

The Beatles had hoped to work in a more modern facility than EMI's London studios at Abbey Road, and so sent Epstein to Memphis in March 1966 to investigate the possibility of their recording at Stax Studio. According to a letter written by Harrison two months later, the group intended to work with Stax's in-house producer, Jim Stewart. The idea was abandoned after locals began descending on the Stax building, as were alternative plans to use either Atlantic Studios in New York or Motown's facility in Detroit.

Recording for the album instead began at EMI Studio 3 in London on 6 April 1966, with George Martin again serving as producer. The first track attempted was Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows", the arrangement for which changed considerably between the initial take that day and the subsequent remake. This first version of "Tomorrow Never Knows", along with several other outtakes from the album sessions, was included on the 1996 compilation Anthology 2. Also recorded during the Revolver sessions were "Paperback Writer" and "Rain", which were issued as the A- and B-side of a non-album single in late May.

The band had worked on ten songs, including both sides of the upcoming single, by 1 May, when they interrupted the sessions to perform at the NME's annual Poll-Winners Concert. At a time when Time magazine dubbed London "the Swinging City", belatedly recognising its ascendance as the era's cultural capital, members of the Beatles attended concerts and other events held by visiting artists. From February through June, these acts included Stevie Wonder, Roy Orbison, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas & the Papas, Bob Dylan (with whom they socialised extensively), Luciano Berio and Ravi Shankar. In addition, during mid May, Lennon and McCartney attended a private listening party for the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and McCartney met Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, who filmed Blowup in London, inspired by the contemporary fashion scene.

On 16 May, Epstein responded to a request from Capitol Records, EMI's North American counterpart, to supply three new songs for an upcoming US release. The album, Yesterday and Today, compiled tracks that Capitol had omitted from the Beatles' previous US releases with songs that the band had originally issued on non-album singles. From the six completed recordings for Revolver by this point, Martin selected three Lennon-written songs, since the sessions had favoured his compositions thus far. Keen to limit the interruption to recording that multiple television appearances would create, the Beatles spent two days making promotional films for the "Paperback Writer" single. The first set of clips was filmed at EMI Studio 1 on 19 May by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, director of the popular TV show Ready Steady Go! The following day, the group shot further clips for the two songs in the grounds of Chiswick House, in west London.

The camaraderie among the four Beatles was at its highest throughout this period. A disagreement between McCartney and his bandmates nevertheless resulted in McCartney walking out of the studio during the final session, for Lennon's "She Said She Said", on 21 June, two days before the band were due to fly to West Germany for the first leg of their world tour. The Beatles spent over 220 hours recording Revolver – a figure that excludes mixing sessions, and compares with less than 80 hours for Rubber Soul. Final mixing of the album took place on 22 June. The Beatles celebrated the project's completion by attending the opening of Sibylla's, a nightclub in which Harrison had a financial stake.

Studio aesthetic

The sessions for Revolver continued the spirit of studio experimentation evident on Rubber Soul. With the Beatles increasingly involved in the production of their music, Martin's role as producer had changed to one of a facilitator and collaborator, whereby the band now relied on him to make their ideas a reality. According to Rodriguez, Revolver marked the first time that the Beatles integrated studio technology into the "conception of the recordings they made". He views this approach as reflective of the group's waning interest in live performance before crowds of screaming fans, "in favor of creating soundscapes without limitation" in a studio environment. For the first time at EMI Studios, the company's four-track tape machines were placed in the studio's control room, alongside the producer and balance engineer, rather than in a dedicated machine room. The Beatles' new recording engineer, Geoff Emerick, recalls that no preproduction or rehearsal process took place for Revolver; instead, the band used the studio to create each song from what was often just an outline of a composition. Speaking shortly before the start of the sessions, Lennon said that they had considered making the album a continuous flow of tracks, without gaps to differentiate between each song.

The group's willingness to experiment was also evident in their dedication to finding or inventing sounds that captured the heightened senses inspired by their hallucinogenic experiences. In this endeavour, the album made liberal use of compression and tonal equalisation. Emerick says that the Beatles encouraged the studio staff to break from standard recording practices, adding: "It was implanted when we started Revolver that every instrument should sound unlike itself: a piano shouldn't sound like a piano, a guitar shouldn't sound like a guitar."

In their search for new sounds, the band incorporated musical instruments such as the Indian tambura and tabla, and clavichord, vibraphone and tack piano into their work for the first time. The guitar sound on the album was also more robust than before, through the use of new Fender amplifiers; the choice of guitars, which included Harrison using a Gibson SG as his preferred instrument; and the introduction of Fairchild 660 limiters for recording. With no expectations of being able to re-create their new music within the confines of their live shows, the Beatles increasingly used outside contributors while making the album. This included the band's first use of a horn section, on "Got to Get You into My Life", and the first time they incorporated sound effects extensively, during a party-style overdubbing session for "Yellow Submarine".

Innovations

A key production technique that the band began using was automatic double tracking (ADT), which EMI technical engineer Ken Townsend invented on 6 April. This technique employed two linked tape recorders to automatically create a doubled vocal track. The standard method had been to double the vocal by singing the same piece twice onto a multitrack tape, a task Lennon particularly disliked. The Beatles were delighted with the invention, and used it extensively on Revolver. ADT soon became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments such as the artificial chorus effect.

The Beatles' most experimental work during the Revolver sessions was channelled into the first song they attempted, "Tomorrow Never Knows". Lennon sang his vocal for the song through the twin revolving speakers inside a Leslie cabinet, which was designed for use with a Hammond organ. The effect was employed throughout the initial take of the song but only during the second half of the remake. According to author Andy Babiuk, "Tomorrow Never Knows" marked the first time that a vocal was recorded with a microphone plugged into a Leslie speaker. Much of the backing track for the song consists of a series of prepared tape loops, an idea that originated from McCartney, who, influenced by the work of avant-garde artists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, regularly experimented with magnetic tape and musique concrète techniques. The Beatles each prepared loops at home, and a selection of these sounds were then added to the musical backing of "Tomorrow Never Knows". The process was carried out live, with multiple tape recorders running simultaneously, and some of the longer loops extending out of the control room and down the corridor.

The inclusion of reversed tape sounds on "Rain" (specifically, a portion of Lennon's vocal part) marked the first pop release to use this technique, although the Beatles had first used it, in some of the tape loops and the overdubbed guitar solo, on "Tomorrow Never Knows". The backwards (or backmasked) guitar solo on "I'm Only Sleeping" was similarly unprecedented in pop music, in that Harrison deliberately composed and recorded his guitar parts with a view to how the notes would sound when the tape direction was corrected. The band's interest in the tones that resulted from varying tape speed (or varispeeding) extended to recording a basic track at a faster tempo than they intended the song to sound on disc.

Importantly for the group's sound, Emerick and Townsend recorded McCartney's bass guitar amplifier via a loudspeaker, instead of a standard microphone, so ensuring that the bass was more prominent than on any previous Beatles release. Although the recording staff employed this technique only on the two songs selected for the May 1966 single, the enhanced bass sound was a feature of much of the album. Emerick also ensured a greater presence for Starr's bass drum, by inserting an item of clothing inside the structure, to dampen the sound, and then moving the microphone to just 3 inches from the drumhead and compressing the signal through a Fairchild limiter. Author and critic Ian MacDonald writes that, despite EMI Studios being technically inferior to many recording facilities in the United States, Starr's drumming on the album soon led to studios there "being torn apart and put back together again", as engineers sought to replicate the innovative sounds achieved by the Beatles. The preference for close-miking instruments extended to the orchestral strings used on "Eleanor Rigby", to achieve McCartney's request for a "really biting" sound, and the horns on "Got to Get You into My Life". This was another break from convention, and the cause for alarm among the classically trained string players.

According to authors Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, ADT, backwards recording, and close-miked drums were among the nine techniques that the Revolver sessions introduced into the recording world for the first time. Ryan and Kehew quote Emerick as saying: "I know for a fact that, from the day it came out, Revolver changed the way that everyone else made records."

Overview

Author Steve Turner writes that Revolver encapsulates not only "the spirit of the times" but the network of progressive social and cultural thinkers in which the Beatles had recently become immersed in London. He says that the album "challenged all the conventions of pop" through its mix of novel sounds and the unusual subject matter of the songs. The album is an early work in the psychedelic rock genre, which accompanied the emergence of counterculture ideology in the 1960s. Through its individual tracks, Revolver covers a wide range of styles, including acid rock, chamber music, R&B, raga rock, musique concrète, as well as standard contemporary rock and pop. In Rodriguez's view, the influence of Indian music permeates the album. Aside from the sounds and vocal styling used on much of the recording, this influence is evident in the limited chord changes in many of the songs, suggesting an Indian-style drone.

In its lyrical themes, the album marks a radical departure from the Beatles' past work, as a large majority of the songs avoid the subject of love. Author and critic Kenneth Womack writes of the Beatles' exploring "phenomenologies of consciousness" on Revolver, and he cites as examples "I'm Only Sleeping"'s preoccupation with dreams, and the references to death in the lyrics to "Tomorrow Never Knows". In Womack's estimation, the songs represent two important elements of the human life cycle that are "philosophical opposites". Echoing this point, music critic Tim Riley writes that, just as "embracing life means accepting death", the fourteen tracks "link a disillusioned view of the modern world ('Taxman') with a belief in metaphysical transcendence ('Tomorrow Never Knows')". In the view of musicologist Russell Reising, all the songs on Revolver are linked in that each line in "Tomorrow Never Knows", the closing track, is alluded to or explored in the lyrics to one or more of the tracks that precede it.

"Taxman"

Harrison wrote "Taxman" as a protest against the high marginal tax rates paid by top earners like the Beatles, which, under Harold Wilson's Labour government, amounted to 95 per cent of their income. The track's spoken count-in is out of tempo with the performance that follows, a contrivance that Riley credits with establishing the "new studio aesthetic of Revolver". Harrison's vocals on the track were treated with heavy compression and ADT. In addition to playing a glissandi-inflected bass part reminiscent of Motown's James Jamerson, McCartney performed the song's Indian-style guitar solo. The latter section was also edited onto the end of the original recording, ensuring that the track closed with the solo reprised over a fadeout. Rodriguez recognises "Taxman" as the first Beatles song written about "topical concerns"; he also cites its "abrasive sneer" as a precursor to the 1970s punk rock movement. Completed with input from Lennon, the lyrics refer by name to Wilson, who had just been re-elected as prime minister in the 1966 general election, and Edward Heath, the Conservative Leader of the Opposition.

"Eleanor Rigby"

Womack describes McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" as a "narrative about the perils of loneliness". The story involves the title character, who is an ageing spinster, and a lonely priest named Father McKenzie who writes "sermon[s] that no one will hear". He presides over Rigby's funeral and acknowledges that despite his efforts, "no one was saved". The first McCartney composition to depart from the themes of a standard love song, its lyrics were the product of a group effort, with Harrison, Starr and Lennon all contributing. While Lennon and Harrison supplied harmonies beside McCartney's lead vocal, no Beatle played on the recording; instead, Martin arranged the track for a string octet, drawing inspiration from Bernard Herrmann's 1960 film score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. In Riley's opinion, "the corruption of 'Taxman' and the utter finality of Eleanor's fate makes the world of Revolver more ominous than any other pair of opening songs could."

"I'm Only Sleeping"

"I'm Only Sleeping" was the first of the three tracks cut from the US version of Revolver. Author Peter Doggett describes the song as "Half acid dream, half latent Lennon laziness personified." As with "Rain", the basic track was recorded at a faster tempo before being subjected to varispeeding. The latter treatment, along with ADT, was also applied to Lennon's vocal as he sought to replicate, in MacDonald's description, a "papery old man's voice". For the guitar solo, Harrison recorded two separate lines: the first with a clean sound, while on the second, he played his Gibson SG through a fuzzbox. Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould views the solo as appearing to "suspend the laws of time and motion to simulate the half-coherence of the state between wakefulness and sleep". Musicologist Walter Everett likens the song to a "particularly expressive text painting".

"Love You To"

"Love You To" marked Harrison's first foray into Hindustani classical music as a composer, following his introduction of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood" in 1965. Made with minimal contributions from Starr and McCartney, Harrison recorded "Love You To" with Indian musicians from the north London-based Asian Music Circle, who provided instrumentation such as tabla, tambura and sitar. Author Peter Lavezzoli recognises the song as "the first conscious attempt in pop to emulate a non-Western form of music in structure and instrumentation". Aside from playing sitar on the track, Harrison's contributions included fuzztone-effected electric guitar. Everett identifies the song's change of metre as being without precedent in the Beatles' catalogue and a characteristic that would go on to feature prominently on the band's subsequent album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Partly influenced by Harrison's experimentation with LSD, the lyrics address the singer's desire for "immediate sexual gratification", Womack writes, and serve as a "rallying call to accept our inner hedonism and release our worldly inhibitions".

"Here, There and Everywhere"

"Here, There and Everywhere" is a ballad that McCartney wrote towards the end of the Revolver sessions. His inspiration for the song was the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds track "God Only Knows", which, in turn, Brian Wilson had been inspired to write after listening to Rubber Soul. McCartney's double-tracked vocal was treated with varispeeding, resulting in a higher pitch at playback. The song's opening lines are sung over shifts in time signature from 9/8 to 7/8 to 4/4; according to Everett, "nowhere else does a Beatles introduction so well prepare a listener for the most striking and expressive tonal events that lie ahead." Womack characterises the song as a romantic ballad "about living in the here and now" and "fully experiencing the conscious moment". He notes that, with the preceding track, "Love You To", the album expresses "corresponding examinations of the human experience of physical and romantic love".

"Yellow Submarine"

McCartney wrote "Yellow Submarine" – a song he later characterised as a "kid's story" – as a vehicle for Starr's limited vocal range. The lyrics were written by McCartney and Lennon, with assistance from Scottish singer Donovan, and tell of life on a sea voyage accompanied by friends. Gould considers the song's childlike qualities to be "deceptive" and that, once in the studio, it became "a sophisticated sonic pastiche". On 1 June, the Beatles and a group of their friends created a nautical atmosphere over the pre-recorded basic track, by mixing sounds such as gongs, whistles and bells with an assortment of Studio 2's sound effect units. To fill the portion after the lyrics refer to a brass band playing, Martin and Emerick used a Sousa march recording, sourced from EMI's library, splicing up the taped copy and rearranging the melody. Lennon recorded the track's superimposed voices in an echo chamber, supporting Starr's lead vocal in a manner that Gould likens to "an old vaudevillian with the crowd in the palm of his hand". Riley recognises the song's mix of comedy as reminiscent of The Goon Show with satire inspired by Spike Jones. Donovan later said that "Yellow Submarine" represented the Beatles' predicament as prisoners of their international fame, to which they reacted by singing an uplifting, communal song.

"She Said She Said"

The light atmosphere of "Yellow Submarine" is broken by what Riley terms "the outwardly harnessed, but inwardly raging guitar" that introduces Lennon's "She Said She Said". The song marks the second time that a Beatles arrangement used a shifting metre, after "Love You To", as the foundation of 4/4 briefly switches to 3/4. Harrison recalled that he helped Lennon finish the composition, which involved joining together three separate fragments of song. Having walked out of the session, McCartney did not contribute to the recording, leaving Harrison to perform the bass part in addition to lead guitar and harmony vocals. The lyric was inspired in part by a conversation that Lennon and Harrison had with actor Peter Fonda in Los Angeles in August 1965, while all three, along with Starr and members of the Byrds, were under the influence of LSD. During the conversation, Fonda commented: "I know what it's like to be dead", because as a child he had technically died during an operation.

"Good Day Sunshine"

"Good Day Sunshine" was written by McCartney, whose piano playing dominates the recording. The track was one of several contemporary songs that evoked the unusually hot and sunny English summer of 1966. Music critic Richie Unterberger describes it as a song that conveys "one of the first fine days of spring, just after you've fallen in love or started a vacation". The verses reflect aspects of vaudeville, while McCartney also acknowledged the influence of the Lovin' Spoonful on the composition. Overdubbed by Martin, the piano solo on the track recalls the ragtime style of Scott Joplin. The song ends with group harmonies repeating the title phrase, creating an effect that Riley likens to a "cascade" of voices "enter[ing] from different directions, like sun peeping through the trees".

"And Your Bird Can Sing"

Another song first issued on Capitol's Yesterday and Today, "And Your Bird Can Sing" was written primarily by Lennon, with McCartney claiming to have helped on the lyric and estimating the song as "80–20" to Lennon. Harrison and McCartney played dual lead-guitar parts on the recording, including an ascending riff that Riley terms "magnetic ... everything sticks to it". Riley describes the composition as a "shaded putdown" in the style of Dylan's "Positively 4th Street", whereby Lennon sings to someone who has seen "seven wonders" yet is unable to empathise with him and his feelings of isolation. According to Gould, the song was directed at Frank Sinatra after Lennon had read a hagiographic article on the singer, in Esquire magazine, in which Sinatra was lauded as "the fully emancipated male ... the man who can have anything he wants".

"For No One"

"For No One" was inspired by McCartney's relationship with English actress Jane Asher. Along with "Good Day Sunshine", which similarly dispensed with guitar parts for Harrison and Lennon, Rodriguez cites the track as an example of McCartney eschewing the group dynamic when recording his songs, a trend that would prove unpopular with his bandmates in later years. The recording features McCartney playing piano, bass and clavichord, accompanied by Starr on drums and percussion. The French horn solo was added by Alan Civil, who recalled having to "busk" his part, with little guidance from McCartney or Martin at the overdubbing session. While recognising McCartney's "customary logic" in the song's musical structure, MacDonald comments on the sense of detachment conveyed in the lyrics to this "curiously phlegmatic account of the end of an affair". MacDonald suggests that McCartney was attempting to employ the same "dry cinematic eye" that director John Schlesinger had adopted in his 1965 film Darling.

"Doctor Robert"

The third track omitted from the US Revolver LP, "Doctor Robert" was written by Lennon, although McCartney has since claimed co-authorship. A guitar-based rock song in the style of "And Your Bird Can Sing", its lyrics celebrate a New York physician known for dispensing amphetamine injections to his patients. On the recording, the hard-driving performance is interrupted by two bridge sections where, over harmonium and chiming guitar chords, the group vocals suggest a choir praising the doctor for his services.

"I Want to Tell You"

Harrison said he wrote "I Want to Tell You" about "the avalanche of thoughts" that he found hard to express in words. Supporting the lyrics, his stammering guitar riff, combined with the dissonance employed in the song's melody, conveys the difficulties of achieving meaningful communication. The prominent backing vocals include Indian-style gamak ornamentation in McCartney's high harmony, similar to the melisma effect used in "Love You To". Reising and author Jim LeBlanc cite the song as an early example of how from 1966 onwards the Beatles' lyrics "adopted an urgent tone, intent on channeling some essential knowledge, the psychological and/or philosophical epiphanies of LSD experience" to their increasingly aware audience.

"Got to Get You into My Life"

Described by Riley as the album's "most derivative cut", "Got to Get You into My Life" was influenced by the Motown Sound and written by McCartney after he had seen Stevie Wonder perform at the Scotch of St James nightclub in February. The horn players on the track included members of Georgie Fame's group, the Blues Flames. To capture the desired sound, microphones were placed in the bells of the brass instruments, according to Emerick, and the signals were heavily limited. A month later, a tape copy of these horn parts was superimposed with a slight delay, thereby doubling the presence of the brass contributions. Rodriguez terms the completed track "an R&B-styled shouter". Although cast in the form of a love song, McCartney described the lyric as "an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret". The initial version of the song featured acoustic backing and organ, and a harmonised refrain of "I need your love", which was replaced by Harrison's guitar break on the more uptempo remake.

"Tomorrow Never Knows"

Rodriguez describes Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" as "the greatest leap into the future" of the Beatles' recording career up to this point. The recording includes reverse guitar, processed vocals, and looped tape effects, accompanying a strongly syncopated, repetitive drum-beat. Lennon adapted the lyrics from Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which equates the realisations brought about through LSD with the spiritually enlightened state achieved through meditation. Originally recorded as "Mark I", the eventual title came via a Ringo Starr malapropism.

Lennon intended the track as an evocation of a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony. The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based on a high-volume C drone played by Harrison on a tambura. Over the foundation of tambura, bass and drums, the five tape loops comprise various manipulated sounds: two separate sitar passages, played backwards and sped up; an orchestra sounding a B♭ chord; McCartney's laughter, sped up to resemble a seagull's cry; and a Mellotron played on either its flute, string or brass setting. The Leslie speaker treatment applied to Lennon's vocal originated from his request that Martin make him sound like he was the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a high mountain. Reising describes "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the inspiration for an album that "illuminates a path dedicated to personal freedom and mind expansion". He views the song's message as a precursor to the more explicitly political statements the Beatles would make over the next two years, in "All You Need Is Love" and "Revolution".

Artwork

The cover for Revolver was created by German-born bassist and artist Klaus Voormann, one of the Beatles' oldest friends from their time in Hamburg during the early 1960s. Voormann's artwork was part line drawing and part collage, using photographs taken over 1964–65 by Robert Freeman and others by Robert Whitaker. In his line drawings of the four Beatles, Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1966 and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time. Voormann placed the various photos within the tangle of hair that connects the four faces. Turner writes that the drawings show each Beatle "in another state of consciousness", such that the older images appear to be tumbling out from them.

When Voormann submitted his work to the Beatles, Epstein wept, overjoyed that Voormann had managed to create a cover that matched the experimental tone of the Beatles' new music. Voormann also designed a series of four images, titled "Wood Face", "Wool Face", "Triangle Face" and "Sun Face", which appeared on the front of the Northern Songs sheet music for each of the album's songs.

The LP's back cover included a photograph of the Beatles, in Riley's description, "shaded by the hip modesty of sunglasses and cigarette smoke". The photo was part of a series taken by Whitaker during the filming at Abbey Road on 19 May and demonstrated the Beatles' adoption of fashions from boutiques that had recently opened in Chelsea, rather than the Carnaby Street designers they had favoured previously. From these Chelsea boutiques, Lennon wore a long-collared paisley shirt from Granny Takes a Trip, while Harrison was dressed in a wide-lapelled velvet jacket designed by Hung on You. Turner views the selection of attire as reflective of the Beatles "still dressing similarly yet with an individual stamp"; he identifies the choice of sunglasses as another example of a unified yet personalised look, whereby the styles ranged from oblong-shaped lenses, for Lennon, to an oval-shaped pair worn by Starr. Gould, who describes Starr's glasses as "ludicrously bug-eyed", considers the cover design to be consistent with the "break with the past" ethos that had guided the album's creation. During the same photo shoot, Whitaker took pictures of the Beatles examining orange transparencies of his "butcher cover" design for Yesterday and Today – an image that, due to its depiction of dismembered baby dolls and raw meat, proved instantly controversial in America.

Title

The album's title, like that of Rubber Soul, is a pun, referring to both a kind of handgun and the "revolving" motion of the record as it is played on a turntable. Gould views the title as a "McLuhanesque pun", since, more so than on their previous albums, the focus of Revolver appears to rotate from one Beatle to another with each song.

The Beatles had difficulty coming up with this title. The group had originally wanted to call the album Abracadabra, until they discovered that another band had already used it. After that, opinion was split: Lennon opted for Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle and Starr jokingly suggested After Geography, playing on the title of the Rolling Stones' recently released Aftermath LP. Other suggestions included Magic Circles, Beatles on Safari, Pendulum and, finally, Revolver. The title was chosen while the band were on tour in Germany in late June. They then confirmed the choice in a telegram to EMI, sent from the Tokyo Hilton on 2 July.

Release

Revolver was released on 5 August 1966 in the United Kingdom and on 8 August in the United States. The eleven-song North American LP release was the band's tenth album on Capitol Records and twelfth US album in total. Due to the exclusion of the three Lennon tracks, there were only two songs on the Capitol release for which he was the principal writer, compared with three by Harrison and the rest by McCartney. "Yellow Submarine" was issued as a double A-side single with "Eleanor Rigby". As a novelty song and a ballad devoid of any instrumentation played by a Beatle, respectively, each of the two tracks marked a significant departure from the usual content of the band's singles.

The album's release coincided with a period of public relations challenges for the Beatles, the combination of which led to their decision to retire from touring in 1966. In the United States, the release was a secondary event to the controversy surrounding the recent publication there of Cleave's interview with Lennon, in which he had remarked that the Beatles had become "more popular than Jesus". This episode followed the unfavourable reaction to the Yesterday and Today butcher sleeve, from the press, radio stations and retail outlets in the US. As a result of this media disquiet, there was no accompanying build-up to Revolver's release or conjecture regarding what the group was to offer; at press conferences during the North American tour, questions were typically focused on religious matters rather than the band's new music. In Britain, however, EMI had gradually distributed songs from the album to radio stations throughout July 1966 – a strategy that MacDonald describes as "building anticipation for what would clearly be a radical new phase in the group's recording career". Schaffner likens the Beatles' 1966 recordings to the moment of transformation in the film Wizard of Oz, "where, when Dorothy discovers herself transported from Kansas to Oz, the film dramatically changes from black-and-white to glorious technicolor".

In the UK, where "Eleanor Rigby" was the favoured side, the single became the best-selling song of 1966, after topping the national chart for four weeks during August and September. On the UK Albums Chart, Revolver spent 34 weeks in the top 40, for seven of which it held the top spot. In America, Capitol were wary of the religious references in "Eleanor Rigby", given the ongoing controversy, and instead pushed "Yellow Submarine". The latter peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it, in Gould's description, "the first 'designated' Beatles single since 1963" not to top that chart. On the Billboard Top LPs chart, Revolver hit number 1 on 10 September, a week after the end of Yesterday and Today's five-week run at the top. Revolver remained at number 1 there for six weeks. For the only year between 1963 and 1969, the Beatles failed to win the NME readers' best-band poll, losing to the Beach Boys, while Revolver and Pet Sounds were jointly recognised as the magazine's "Album of the Year". In March 1967, Revolver was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Voormann's design for Revolver won the Grammy for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts.

The release of Revolver marked the last time that Capitol issued an altered UK Beatles album for the North American market. When the Beatles re-signed with EMI in January 1967, their contract stipulated that Capitol could no longer alter the track listings of their albums. The April 1987 CD release of Revolver standardised the track listing to the original UK version. In January 2014, the Capitol version of Revolver was issued on CD for the first time, both as part of the Beatles' U.S. Albums box set and as an individual release.

Contemporary reviews

With controversy following the Beatles during their summer US tour, critical reaction there was muted relative to the band's previous releases. KRLA Beat's reviewer described Revolver as "a musical creation of exceptional excellence" while lamenting that, in the wake of the acclaimed Rubber Soul, "it is receiving only a fraction of the attention and respect due". Writing in the recently launched Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams gave the US version of the album a mixed review, in which he admired "Love You To" and "Eleanor Rigby" but derided "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Yellow Submarine". In a critique that Rodriguez terms "[a]head of the curve", Village Voice critic Richard Goldstein described Revolver as "a revolutionary record" that was "as important to the expansion of pop as was Rubber Soul", adding: "it seems now that we will view this album in retrospect as a key work in the development of rock and roll into an artistic pursuit ..." Turner writes that it was the upcoming generation of writers who "got it immediately"; among these, Jules Siegel likened the album to works by John Donne, Milton and Shakespeare, saying that the band's lyrics would provide the basis for scholarly analysis well into the future.

In Britain, the reception was highly favourable. In their joint review for Record Mirror, Richard Green and Peter Jones found the album "full of musical ingenuity" yet "controversial", and added: "There are parts that will split the pop fraternity neatly down the middle." Allen Evans of the NME highlighted the album's "electronic effects", McCartney's "penchant for the classics" and Harrison's "stunning use of the sitar" as diverse elements that distinguished it as a group effort, such that the four band members' "individual personalities are now showing through loud and clear". Evans concluded: "this is a brilliant album which underlines once and for all that the Beatles have definitely broken the bounds of what we used to call pop." Having found Rubber Soul "almost monotonous" at times, Melody Maker lauded the new release as a work that would "change the direction of pop music". Peter Clayton, a jazz critic for Gramophone magazine, described it as "an astonishing collection" that defied easy categorisation since much of the album had no precedent in the context of pop music. Clayton concluded: "if there's anything wrong with the record at all it is that such a diet of newness might give the ordinary pop-picker indigestion."

Recalling the release in his book Revolution in the Head (1994), Ian MacDonald writes that, with Revolver, the Beatles "had initiated a second pop revolution – one which while galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones, left all of them far behind". In a February 1967 review, Hit Parader declared: "Revolver represents the pinnacle of pop music. No group has been as consistently creative as the Beatles, though the [Lovin'] Spoonful and Beach Boys are coming closer all the time ... Rather than analyze the music we just suggest that you listen to Revolver three or four times a day and marvel ..." Later that year, in Esquire, Robert Christgau called the album "twice as good and four times as startling as Rubber Soul, with sound effects, Oriental drones, jazz bands, transcendentalist lyrics, all kinds of rhythmic and harmonic surprises, and a filter that made John Lennon sound like God singing through a foghorn".

Retrospective reviews

In the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rob Sheffield writes that Revolver found the Beatles "at the peak of their powers, competing with one another because nobody else could touch them"; he describes it as "the best album the Beatles ever made, which means the best album by anybody". Writing for PopMatters that year, David Medsker said that Revolver showed "the individual members of the greatest band in the history of pop music peaking at the exact same time", and he deemed the album to be "the best of the bunch, the letter that went unanswered" among a series of reciprocally influential musical statements between the Beatles and the Beach Boys over 1965–67. In a 2007 appraisal of the band's albums, Henry Yates of Classic Rock magazine paired it with Sgt. Pepper's as the two "essential classics" in the Beatles' canon, and concluded: "Always the rock fraternity's favourite (and the blueprint for Noel Gallagher's career), Revolver still has the power of a piledriver to the head."

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic describes Revolver as "the ultimate modern pop album". While noting the diverse musical directions adopted by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison in their respective contributions, he states: "The biggest miracle of Revolver may be that the Beatles covered so much new stylistic ground and executed it perfectly on one record, or it may be that all of it holds together perfectly." In his review for The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick says that the album shows the band at their most unified and is a work in which "they introduce whole new vistas of sound yet still contain them within tightly structured and performed songs." He also attributes an acerbic quality to the album that psychedelia lacked once the genre succumbed to "the woolly politics of flower power". Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork views Revolver as a "sonic landmark" that, in its lyrics, "matur[ed] pop from the stuff of teen dreams to a more serious pursuit that actively reflected and shaped the times in which its creators lived". He considers it to be McCartney's "maturation record" as a songwriter in the same way that Rubber Soul had been for Lennon.

Chris Coplan of Consequence of Sound is less impressed with the album, rating it a "B" and "the black sheep of the Beatles' catalog". Although he admires the psychedelic tone, he considers that this experimentalism renders the more standard pop songs, such as "Got to Get You Into My Life" and "Here, There and Everywhere", "seemingly out of place" within the collection. Writing for Rough Guides, Chris Ingham describes it as "clearly brilliant" but adds: "There's an edge to the sound and a danger in the air … that makes listening to it an uncomfortable trip. It's easy to admire, even to be awed by, but some listeners find Revolver a little harder to love."

Development of popular music and 1960s counterculture

MacDonald deems Lennon's remark about the Beatles' "god-like status" in March 1966 to have been "fairly realistic", given the reaction to Revolver. He adds: "The album's aural invention was so masterful that it seemed to Western youth that The Beatles knew – that they had the key to current events and were somehow orchestrating them through their records." MacDonald highlights "the radically subversive" message of "Tomorrow Never Knows" – exhorting listeners to empty their minds of all ego- and material-related thoughts – as the inauguration of a "till-then élite-preserved concept of mind-expansion into pop, simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness-enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient". Author Shawn Levy writes that the album presented an alternative reality that contemporary listeners felt compelled to explore further; he describes it as "the first true drug album, not a pop record with some druggy insinuations, but an honest-to-heaven, steeped-in-the-out-there trip from the here and now into who knew where".

In the recollection of Barry Miles, one of Britain's key countercultural figures, Revolver resounded with the contemporary London underground, particularly those behind initiatives such as the UFO Club, on the level of experimental jazz, and it established rock 'n' roll as "an art form" by signalling "the way forward for all rock musicians who wondered if there was life after teen scream status". He also identifies its "trailblazing" quality as the impetus for Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and for Brian Wilson to complete the Beach Boys' "mini-symphony", "Good Vibrations". In his review for Pitchfork, Plagenhoef says that the album not only "redefin[ed] what was expected from popular music", but recast the Beatles as "avatars for a transformative cultural movement".

Revolver has been recognised as having inspired new subgenres of music, anticipating electronica, punk rock, baroque rock and world music, among other styles. As on Rubber Soul, Walter Everett credits the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" as the inspiration for many of the bands that formed the progressive rock genre in the early 1970s. Rolling Stone attributes the development of the Los Angeles and San Francisco music scenes, including subsequent releases by the Beach Boys, Love and the Grateful Dead, to the influence of Revolver, particularly "She Said She Said". Steve Turner recognises the album as the catalyst for a wide range of styles; he says that, through the Beatles' efforts to faithfully translate their LSD-inspired vision into music, "Revolver opened the doors to psychedelic rock (or acid rock)", while the primitive means by which it was recorded (on four-track equipment) inspired the work that artists such as Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes and the Electric Light Orchestra were able to achieve with advances in studio technology and larger multi-tracking capability. Turner also highlights the pioneering sampling and tape manipulation employed on "Tomorrow Never Knows" as having "a profound effect on everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Jay Z".

Rodriguez praises Martin and Emerick's contribution to the album, suggesting that their talents were as essential to its success as the Beatles'. While also highlighting the importance of the production, David Howard writes that Revolver was a "genre-transforming album", on which Martin and the Beatles had "obliterated recording studio conventions". Combined with the similarly "visionary" work of American producer Phil Spector, Howard continues, through Revolver, "the recording studio was now its own instrument; record production had been elevated into art."

Ascendancy over Sgt. Pepper

Whereas Sgt. Pepper had long been identified as the Beatles' greatest album, since the 2000s Revolver has often surpassed it in lists of the group's best work. Sheffield cites the album's 1987 CD release, with the full complement of Lennon compositions, as marking the start of a process whereby Revolver "steadily climbed in public estimation" to become recognised as the Beatles' finest work. Writing on the BBC's website in August 2016, Greg Kot identified the "More popular than Christ" controversy and the attention subsequently afforded the release of Sgt. Pepper in 1967 as the two factors that had contributed to Revolver being relatively overlooked. Kot concluded that the ensuing decades had seen this impression reversed, since Revolver "does everything Sgt Pepper did, except it did it first and often better. It just wasn’t as well-packaged and marketed."

Rodriguez writes that, whereas most contemporary acts shy away from attempting a concept album in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, Revolver's "eclectic collection of diverse songs" continues to influence modern popular music. He also characterises Revolver as "the Beatles' artistic high-water mark", and notes that unlike Sgt. Pepper, it was the product of a collaborative effort, with "the group as a whole being fully vested in creating Beatle music".

Appearances on best-album lists and further recognition

Revolver has frequently appeared high up in lists of the best albums ever made. In 1997 it was named the third greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millennium poll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at number 1 in its list of the 50 Greatest British Albums Ever; four years later, the album topped the same magazine's list "The Music That Changed the World". In 2001, the VH1 network named it the greatest album in history, and Colin Larkin ranked it first in his book All-Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Revolver third on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2006, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums and topped a similar list compiled by Hot Press. That same year, Guitar World readers chose it as the tenth best guitar album of all time. In 2010, Revolver was named the best pop album by the official newspaper of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano. In 2013, Entertainment Weekly named Revolver the greatest album in history.

In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award bestowed by the American Recording Academy "to honor recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance that are at least 25 years old". In 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, the album was declared as having gone platinum.

Track listing

The following track listing is for the original UK release, whereas the US edition omitted "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Doctor Robert", all of which had appeared on the North American release Yesterday and Today. The 1987 CD release, the 2009 remastered CD release, and all subsequent LP re-releases conformed with the full, fourteen-song order.

All tracks written by Lennon–McCartney, except where noted.

Personnel

According to Mark Lewisohn and Ian MacDonald:

The Beatles

Additional musicians and production

Certifications

In the US, the album had sold 1,187,869 copies by 31 December 1966 and 1,725,276 copies by the end of the decade.