Best Ever Albums

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

Johnnyo — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 15:08:20 GMT

Author: Johnnyo

Posted: 10/09/2025 19:08

II wrote:

Yes, II agree.
This thread has been great, and this thread could gain a lot of attraction since The Beatles are widely known.
Thank you Johnnyo for this thread [-o<

Thanks II. On the whole this thread has been great and well supported by quite a lot of people which is what I was looking for. I want to try to get more people contributing to topics in addition to stalwarts like yourself,

This one went a little off topic (I guess) and sometimes these conversation can go down a bit of a rabbit hole. Far more so than if we were talking face 2 face.

I’ve had my Revolver music listening session and now moved on to

In The Court Of The Crimson King (An Observation By King Crimson) (1969) by King Crimson

Would love to here anyone’s views on this album (see a new thread that I set up a few days ago)

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 12:16:41 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/09/2025 16:16

I'm sorry that my comments are forcing this popular thread to be closed. I don't mind if a moderator clears the discussion of my comments. I'm also willing to do so myself, as long as it doesn't break the rules. The issue that was bothering me was resolved right here, for which I'm grateful to everyone.

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

II — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 09:01:33 GMT

Author: II

Posted: 10/09/2025 13:01

albummaster wrote:

Shame to lock the thread (as started off well), so let's bring back on topic to the music itself and a new thread can be made if the tangential discussion needs to be continued.

Yes, II agree.
This thread has been great, and this thread could gain a lot of attraction since The Beatles are widely known.
Thank you Johnnyo for this thread 🙏

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

albummaster — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 04:22:46 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/09/2025 08:22

MadhattanJack wrote:

Mods, can you lock this thread or something?

Shame to lock the thread (as started off well), so let's bring back on topic to the music itself and a new thread can be made if the tangential discussion needs to be continued.

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

MadhattanJack — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 02:09:23 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/09/2025 06:09

musicoed wrote:

Except it didn't end there.

Well, it should end here, I think. To repeat what I stated above, you must fight the tendency to believe in absurdities. It's for your own good.

Mods, can you lock this thread or something?

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Wed, 8 Oct 2025 19:38:05 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/08/2025 23:38

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Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Wed, 8 Oct 2025 17:47:48 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/08/2025 21:47

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Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

MadhattanJack — Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:13:48 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/08/2025 20:13

musicoed wrote:

If we put aside the mystical circumstances that led me to this idea, we're left with the bare facts. According to my information from the BBC, the day before the album's release, the world learned of the Inquisition of the late 20th century.

But you can't put aside the mystical circumstances. You have a preconceived notion about this; reality-based people don't share your preconceived notion and do not believe in "mystical circumstances." And even if everyone is willing to agree that this was an "inquisition," it doesn't matter so much when people learn about it, it matters when it happens, which is to say when people do it, participate in it, and (ideally) try to oppose it and stop it.

I might add that if Christian fundamentalists were going to get upset about any Beatles album, it should have been Rubber Soul, due to the presence of the song "Think For Yourself."

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Wed, 8 Oct 2025 08:22:53 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/08/2025 12:22

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Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

MadhattanJack — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 21:10:16 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/08/2025 01:10

musicoed wrote:

It might seem strange, but I'd like to believe it wasn't a coincidence.

It doesn't just seem strange, it is strange. And not in a good way! You (and everyone else) must fight the tendency to believe in absurdities, because this is what leads to the collapse of civil society, if not civilization itself.

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 18:51:32 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/07/2025 22:51

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Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

MadhattanJack — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 18:02:38 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/07/2025 22:02

musicoed wrote:

Several decades later, I began paying attention to precise release dates. It took another 10 years before two events coincided in my mind.
The release date of Revolver and the date on the BBC report on the public record burning scandal differ by just one day. On the other hand, was I even prepared to entertain the idea that this coincidence was not a coincidence just a couple of years ago? I think my innovativeness clearly wasn't enough.

If you're making a timeline of these events, you can't really go by publication dates. It wasn't like today, where a story will be pitched, reported, written up and published on the internet within a span of hours or even minutes. In the 1960s, unless it was something huge like the Kennedy Assassination or the Moon landing, it could take weeks or even months for a story to work its way from the initial event to widespread publication.

This is a case in point: John Lennon said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" on or around March 2, 1966, and it was published in The Evening Standard two days later. His comments made it into Newsweek later that month, and on June 15, Yesterday and Today was released (US only) with the infamous "butcher baby" cover, which drew a great deal of anger from, well, just about everybody. The New York Times Magazine ran a story mentioning Lennon's "Jesus" comments on July 3 — a full four months after the Evening Standard interview appeared — but the negative reactions to that didn't really start until a story was published in Datebook, the editor of which sent copies out to radio stations in the southern US to try to stir up publicity (i.e., to sell copies of that issue of Datebook). So the butcher-baby cover had already happened; southern DJs had never liked the Beatles anyway, so the Datebook story became the "last straw." The first album-burnings occurred on July 29, and this is what led to the BBC report you heard and the Aug. 5 New York Times article that really got things moving in the USA.

Revolver was released on August 6, so there's really just no way the album itself had anything to do with all this. Later that month, the Beatles announced they would stop playing live at the end of their US tour, and the rest is history. I guess you could say another positive result of the Beatle-burnings was that the band stopped touring and afterward felt less constrained in the recording studio (to make records with songs they could accurately play live), and that's how we ended up with Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour.

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 17:34:45 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/07/2025 21:34

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Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

MadhattanJack — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 17:32:13 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/07/2025 21:32

musicoed wrote:

Sorry for asking a hypothetical question so late, especially one not directly related to the music. And yet. Is this album innovative enough to suggest that the scandal that erupted on the eve of its release, with the public burning of the Beatles' records, was also part of Revolver.

The answer to that is a resounding "no" — people who burn albums never do it because the albums are musically innovative, they do it because they don't like something the recording artist said or did. In this case specifically, John Lennon said (into a hot mic) that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus," so all the religious fundamentalists freaked out and started burning their albums.

The only exception I know of to the above rule is Disco Demolition Night, and to this day there are a lot of people who insist that this event was primarily racist and not mainly driven by an opposing musical aesthetic. I disagree, rather vehemently in fact, and I was alive and paying close attention at the time. Very few of us, at the time, considered disco to be "music for Black people," and of course there was nothing particularly innovative about disco music either. However, video images of the records people brought to Disco Demolition Night to be destroyed showed at least one 1960s Marvin Gaye album (I think it might have been What's Goin' On), and people have since seized on this one image at one event to argue that the entire "disco sucks movement" was racist in origin.

One (and perhaps the only) positive result of both of these events was that the intense public backlash made it difficult for people to hold or sponsor subsequent album-destruction movements and events. Also, this was back in the vinyl days, so the smell of burning records was not only extremely unpleasant, the fumes were highly dangerous to breathe — perhaps in some cases causing brain damage and personality disorders. It should be noted that Disco Demolition Night, which took place in 1979, happened after the music industry had increased the amount of polyvinyl acetate (PVA) they were using in the record manufacturing process. Though increased PVA content reduced the sound quality of the records, this would have also correspondingly reduced the amount of carcinogens and dioxins in the records as they burned (and were breathed in) by the participants. Also, on Disco Demolition Night they blew up the pile of albums, and while many of them did catch fire, the level of fumes was significantly lower than would have been billowed-out by the Beatle-album bonfires that burned during the anti-Beatle boogeyman backlash of August 1966.

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

Johnnyo — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 15:23:57 GMT

Author: Johnnyo

Posted: 10/07/2025 19:23

musicoed wrote:

Thanks for contributing musicoed.

I’m not enough of an expert in the Beatles to really answer that point. From my personal perspective, it had nothing to do with my re-evaluation of the album but for others, it may play a part.

Always good to hear different perspectives on album / music in general

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

musicoed — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 15:12:46 GMT

Author: musicoed

Posted: 10/07/2025 19:12

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Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

Johnnyo — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 06:54:52 GMT

Author: Johnnyo

Posted: 10/07/2025 10:54

So, I've just left the listening group where Revolver was discussed. The most engaging and interesting group discussion that we have had so far. Really enjoyable.

We went about 20 minutes over which is always a good sign.

Most concluded that it's a ground-breaking album, no dissent on that, even from me, and I now understand far better the influence that this album had on musical history. So worthwhile doing this

Going to start a new thread for the next one, which is an album that is going to be a real challenge for me. Look out for it

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

Johnnyo — Thu, 2 Oct 2025 14:43:19 GMT

Author: Johnnyo

Posted: 10/02/2025 18:43

CharlieBarley wrote:

Very interesting thread about one of my favourite albums

I really enjoyed participating in this thread and learnt a lot about this album and, as a consequence, I appreciate it more now than a month ago when I set up the thread, which is exactly what I wanted

Will find out next week what the next album will be. Hopefully it will generate as much great discussion as this did.

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

CharlieBarley — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:26:41 GMT

Author: CharlieBarley

Posted: 09/30/2025 18:26

Very interesting thread about one of my favourite albums

Re: Revolver (The Beatles)

NowhereMan — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 07:34:07 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 09/27/2025 11:34

Although I have not contributed to the discussion, I have been perusing and checking in periodically. Really great conversation. I will look forward to the next!