Louis Rosen: The Beatles- Revolver
We start today’s session watching a 1960s video of “Paperback Writer” made before song videos were common/popular. Between 1962 and early 1964, The Beatles had a tremendous streak of #1 hits. Their music was growing smarter and more sophisticated. In a case of carpe diem on steroids, they worked 52 weeks a year pausing live performance only to write and record.
“Before the album Rubber Soul, McCartney and Lennon did most of their writing together. Ideally one would have an idea, but if not, they’d just sit and bat things around. McCartney said that never once did he and John leave a session without having written a new song,” host Louis Rosen begins. At this point, the two were almost equal in skill and creativity. They worked out melody, structure, background vocals, then collaborated on instrumental arrangements with the rest of the band.
McCartney, living with girlfriend Jane Asher at her parents’ house, got involved in the emerging hip scene. The extremely cultured Ashers introduced him to classical music as well as avant-garde composers like Stockhausen and Cage. As a result, the young musician started to experiment with musique concrete, utilizing sounds recorded from the human voice, natural environment, or synthesizers, then modifying these with audio effects or tape manipulation.
He thought, or rather heard outside the box and was much more interested in sound per se than Lennon (Lennon soon caught up and by the White album went even further with sound experimentation.) Otherwise This development was a big part of Revolver.
“At this point not only did the group have back taxes, but all the penalties, and the rate then was 97%!” Rosen comments introducing “Taxman.” Beat is steady, twang omnipresent. “Angry sarcasm is not what we associate with or expect to hear from The Beatles,” the host notes.
The title “Eleanor Rigby,” depending on whom one believes, was either a nod to actress Eleanor Bron (she played the villainess in Help) and a business named Rigby, or the name on a local tombstone. It’s one of only two songs for which Lennon and McCartney disagreed about credit. Rosen points out the Indian influence, minimal harmony – only two chords are used in the entire song – and a drone sound.
For the host’s money, the lyric, Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been…says it all. He quotes McCartney: “You have to ask yourself what it means. Most people leave the rice. She could be a cleaner or a spinster.” Only in the final verse at her grave site, do the paths of Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie briefly cross,” symbolized afterward by the two refrains of the song being sung together in counterpoint. McCartney, who had no formal training and couldn’t notate music, brought the song to the band. It was producer George Martin who suggested adding strings.
When the Beatle expressed concern it might sound Mancini-ish, like film scoring, Martin told him the end result would be more influenced by a cross between 18th century music and the intense feel of Bernard Hermann’s score for the film Farenheit 451. For “I’m Only Sleeping,” one of three songs not on the American version of the album, the band recorded instrumentals at a higher pitch and vocals at a lower pitch, adjusting them afterwards as if electronic clay. At that time, they were dealing with 4-track capability, now it would all be done digitally.
Next is “Love You To” (No, it’s not misspelled.) Harrison had been studying sitar (first used on Rubber Soul). The track features sitar, tabla, and guitar. In Beatles chronicler Ian Ingles’ estimation, its lyrics “remind us that in a world of material dissatisfaction and moral disharmony, there is always the solace of sexual pleasure.” It was considered a psychedelic vision of society.
“Rock was almost always in 4/4 time. Here, Harrison built on a freer rhythmic impulse as derived from Indian music. The meter periodically changes, sometimes from measure to measure. The Beatles were really successful at this point and could do what they wanted confident their public would follow. They were also intensely curious.” (Rosen)
McCartney said “Here, There, and Everywhere” was a response to Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows.” He intermittently created a kind of rejoinder and was a great fan of Wilson. A deftly simple love song, it has no use for bells and whistles. “The introduction is typical of Tin Pan Alley,” Rosen observes. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison would spend hours rehearsing harmony.
“I was lying in bed in the Ashers’ garret… thinking of it as a song for Ringo…so not too rangey…” McCartney said explaining the origin of “Yellow Submarine.” “…Then I started making a story, sort of an ancient mariner telling the young kids where he lived.” The single went to #1 on every major British chart, stayed for 13 weeks, and became the basis of the animated film. “George Martin drew on his experience as a producer of comedy records for Beyond the Fringe and The Goon Show, providing an array of zany sound effects…” (Wikipedia)
“Yellow Submarine was also a fashionable drug in the 1960s. I don’t know if he was unaware or just left out that part of the story,” Rosen remarks. (Nembutal capsules which were large, elongated, bluntly-rounded, and yellow acquired the nickname “Yellow Submarines.”) “It was probably one of the most popular songs they ever did.” On tour in Los Angeles in August 1965, Beatles’ visitors included Peter Fonda who, having just experienced LSD, described being briefly dead on an operating table when he was a child. “I know what it’s like to be dead,” he’d commented. “She Said, She Said” became the druggy musical echo.
Side two opens with “Good Day Sunshine,” another of McCartney’s responses to peer material. In this case, he was emulating the spirit and tone of Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream.” The writer played piano, bass, with Ringo on drums. There are, in fact, two pianos on the track, one evidently a broken down upright. “And Your Bird Can Sing,” the second song omitted here, is obscure.
The host describes sparsely orchestrated “For No One” as being “about a relationship, but not exactly a love song.” Martin suggested adding a French horn. When the horn player told McCartney that the part was written beyond his instrument’s range, he was told to “figure it out.” And he did. Rosen tells us that playing on the a Beatles album was serious cachet for a studio The hornist started to get calls from other rock musicians, all of them unfortunately wanting the higher range.
“The Beatles were accustomed to writing songs fashioned for the quartet in live shows. Once they got to Revolver, they stopped thinking that way. By Spring ’66, the group loathed stage performance. Beatlemania was experiencing a volatile backlash, in part due to Lennon’s saying they were more popular than Jesus. They soon made up their minds not to play live anymore.” (Rosen)
The very real “Dr. Robert,” known as The Great White Father, was actually Dr. Robert Freymann who dispensed Vitamin B shots laced with amphetamine from his East 78th Street office. “John and I thought it was a funny idea: the fantasy doctor who would fix you up by giving you drugs, [the song] was a parody.” (McCartney in Many Years From Now by Barry Miles.)
Lennon assumed McCartney’s “Got to Get You Into My Life” was a love song to LSD. In fact, he was singing about pot. “Got to Get You Into My Life” is a case where the brass players, with Paul guiding them at the piano, worked things out together. “In jazz, it’s what we call a ‘head’ arrangement (an arrangement which is created and then memorized by players) and realizes the Motown sound they were going for.” (Rosen)
“Every song dictates what it wants. In 1962, the business was an assembly line: writer to producer to arranger to musicians. Often vocal talent was the least important aspect. The Beatles obliterated that”, the host comments. Sergeant Pepper took 800 hours to record employing a wide roster of outside musicians. EMI (record label) wasn’t going to say no.
Much of the lyric for “Tomorrow Never Knows” comes from Timothy Leary’s book The Psychedelic Experience advocating LSD as the key to human enlightenment. The song has one chord, that’s it; drums, sitar, guitars, bass, tape loops –musique concrete.
Though the environment at Apple was fairly straight-laced, Martin and Emerich were open to the band’s iconoclastic ideas. Once by accident, a guitar solo was attached backwards at the end of a song (“I’m Only Sleeping.”) The Fab Four loved and kept it in. Edward Greenfield in The Guardian wrote “Tomorrow Never Knows” was: pop-music as a substitute both for jungle emotions and for the consolations of religion. “In many ways that track was a group effort,” Rosen says. “The lyrics were written before, but everyone contributed to its sound.” “So this is Revolver. It changes the idea of what a pop music album can be, what songwriting can be. The idea that a song can have real substance emerges into the mainstream. Lennon came up with the title, a combination of the action of a record on a turntable and a gun.” (Louis Rosen)
Opening photo courtesy of Mr. Rosen
Louis Rosen’s excellent classes are under the aegis of the 92Y: Louis Rosen at the 92Y
