Revolver

Product Information

The pairing of a ballad devoid of any instrumentation played by a Beatle and a novelty song marked a significant departure from the usual content of the band's singles. There is also a new Dolby Atmos mix of Revolver which sounds incredible if you can find the right sound system. Packaging [ edit ] Artwork [ edit ] For the cover of Revolver, Klaus Voormann drew inspiration from The Yellow Book illustrator Aubrey Beardsley.

It has since become regarded as one of the greatest and most innovative albums in the history of popular music, with recognition centred on its range of musical styles, diverse sounds and lyrical content. Although a sempiternal intellectual like Dylan might not have been able to see it at the time (he reportedly countered Macca by playing him his own witty-not-cute Blonde on Blonde acetate), the Fab Four were no longer a boy band and hadn’t been for a while, at least since they explored Dylanesque folk rock on Rubber Soul.

On one take of “I’m Only Sleeping,” which sounds a bit like a campfire song on some versions here, Lennon sounds alert and awake asking, “Martin, will you get this boy a plectrum [guitar pick] please? He says it established rock 'n' roll as an art form and 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".

Steve Turner likens the Beatles' creative approach in 1966 to that of modern jazz musicians, and recognises their channelling of Indian and Western classical, Southern soul, and electronic musical styles into their work as unprecedented in popular music. The standard method had been to double the vocal by singing the same piece twice onto a multitrack tape, a task Lennon particularly disliked. Lennon’s lyrics, kind of an interdimensional blues ripped from Timothy Leary’s interpretation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, still sound ominous and anything but cute. In a further development, 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 Philip Norman, Revolver captured the confidence of summer 1966: "It was hot pavements, open windows, King's Road bistros and England soccer stripes.The song ends with group harmonies repeating the title phrase, [229] creating an effect that Riley likens to a "cascade" of voices "enter[ing] from different directions, like sun peeping through the trees". They collectively wanted to create a Beatles album, and the best Beatles album at that, full of pomp and swagger. The box set’s producers sandwich all of the outtakes with new stereo mixes of the songs by Giles Martin and the original mono mixes, which is how the band in 1966 wanted listeners to experience it. 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". 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.

Emerick also ensured a greater presence for Starr's bass drum, by inserting an item of clothing inside the structure, to dampen the sound, [87] and then moving the microphone to just 3 inches from the drumhead and compressing the signal through a Fairchild limiter. nb 7] According to Rodriguez, Revolver marked the first time the Beatles integrated studio technology into the "conception of the recordings they made". The effect was employed throughout the initial take of the song but only during the second half of the remake. Due to the controversies surrounding the Beatles during their tour, critical reaction in the US was muted relative to the band's previous releases.

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". Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. A month later, a tape copy of these horn parts was superimposed with a slight delay, thereby doubling the presence of the brass contributions. Paul Williams gave the US LP a mixed review, in which he admired "Love You To" and "Eleanor Rigby" but derided "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Yellow Submarine". In the 1950s, Meek had pioneered many recording techniques and had experimented with close-miking, [89] a sound-capture technique favoured by Emerick.