What is it with Revolver?

[Midas]

Revolver is much different from the predecessors, in terms of sound, production and attitude. While Rubber Soul represented the break with their beat past, Revolver is the album where the Fab Four enter fully in the psychedelic and experimental movement. Anyone who knows what kind of music was being done in 1966 can see that Beatles music was progressive. They use a great array of instruments, sound effects, tape collages and reversed tapes, etc while still retaining a keen sense of melody, harmony and pop music.

"Taxman" A George Harrison song with a killer funky bass line and a strong distorted guitar riff. The guitar solo played by McCartney has him playing a highly distorted descending Indian scales. The government protest song with odes to Brit politicians Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath. Did you ever hear Dylan mention Kennedy or LBJ?

"Eleanor Rigby" IMO one of the most perfect pop songs created. It does not include any traditional pop/rock instruments, but orchestral strings and vocals. The melodies and vocal harmonies are top notch.

"I'm Only Sleeping" Sounds something like Beck. The song just wisps you away into a dreamy state with its vocals, backward guitars and slowed down instruments on bass and drum. Nice use of backward guitars on its fade-out adds to the dreamy state of this song.

"Love You To” Traditional Indian music and it uses authentic Indian instrumentation (another deviation away from traditional pop/rock). Either Paul of George contributes to the backward guitar parts that swell in and out on this track.

"Here, There and Everywhere" One of Paul's greatest melodies and the three part vocal harmony is almost perfect. The horn like sounds you hear at the end of the track are actually George Harrison using volume swells to create those sounds.

"Yellow Submarine" Not one of my favorite Beatles tracks but the song was, in fact, innovative for its musique concrete influence and using sampling.

"She Said, She Said" One of the many tracks on this album that have a strong Modal influence. Hilarious psychedelic lyrics, unexpected changes especially on the bridge, psychedelic guitar, and organ sounds are clearly LSD influenced. Paul McCartney supposedly did not play on this track and Ringo turns in one of his best drum performances.

"Good Day Sunshine" Another one of Paul melody dominated tracks, with unexpected time changes, and a great double-tracked vocal ending. Leonard Bernstein loved this track.

"And Your Bird Can Sing" The Beatles do what they do best IMO and that's Power Pop. The track is one of the Beatles best guitar tracks and one of it's most inventive with it's dual guitar harmonies played basically throughout the track.

"For No One" A nineteenth century influenced Art Song with Paul on Clavichord and Alan Civil's French Horn. A very haunting and beautiful melody.

"Dr Robert" a song about a doctor who gave unorthodox prescriptions. Another guitar driven song this time having a slight rockabilly influence and Indian influence on it's guitar parts. The harmonium adds some psychedelia to the overall sound of the track.

"I Want To Tell You" A George Harrison song that features intentional dissonance with a ultra catchy chorus on a Piano driven rock song. Like most George songs at this point it shows an Indian influence but it's not as strong.

"Got to Get You into my Life” Apparently it's about drugs but again taking into consideration the strength of the music it doesn't matter. The brass dominated sound merges the Stax Sound and Motown with rock styled guitar solo. Again the melody is top notch, and has a strong Modal flavor.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" The last song on the album sees the band using raga, musique concrete, analog electronics with a repeating drum and bass sound. The backing music created by tape loops includes an orchestra, mellotron, and Paul laughing. John voice was fed into a rotating Leslie speaker to give a more strangled sound. This effect was later used by Jethro Tull on the title cut of Aqualung.

Remember this album was released in 1966. Floyd had not yet even start recording Piper and “The Doors” their first album and Airplane was in its infancy. This song is really precursory of a whole movement which will soon invade the musical scene.

[Detroit Rock Citizen]

[Midas]

Well joannajewsom needs to realize that the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa were not major players in the musical landscape in April of 1966. The Beatles were by far the biggest influence in popular music in 1966. I DOUBT some of the Beatles haters will realize that or acknowledge that. The Beatles were musically different than Zappa and the Velvet Underground so I never understood why people make the comparison. It's pointless and you don't need a music degree to hear they experimented in different things.

It's so obvious the Beatles were balancing experimental, non rock sources, rock, and pop music all in the course of one song at times on Revolver. Add to that they could compose great melodies and chord structures compared to most of their rivals.

Not to take anything away from Frank Zappa or the Velvet Underground but that's not what they were about. They were more avant garde in their musical style and really there is nothing wrong with that. It's just not going to compete with songs like "Eleanor Rigby" or "Norwegian Wood" in the mainstream and composing great melodies and chord structures are musical elements just like dissonance or modal music.

[Mr.Music]

[Midas]

The thread title should be.

"Beatles haters know crap about music".

To the person above me. The Beatles paid there dues by being a bar band for years before they became famous.

The title of this thread should be "Beatles haters know crap about music".
Who cares about if the Beatles influence on Punk Rock is small. Many will say it was a reaction against the Beatles and Progressive Rock. Most punk rockers now like the Beatles. It's one subgenre compared to say the Beatles overall influence on Rock Music and Popular Music.

The Beatles experimented and they were even more obscure with what they were doing musically than most rock musicians including the Velvet Underground. I mean have you ACTUALLY heard how experimental tracks like "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Love You To" and "Revolution #9 are. They are just as experimental as anything any rock musicians were doing at the time. I mean really seven minutes of drone or feedback does not constitute as being more experimental than say "A Day in the Life". Get a clue!

"A Day in the Life" a song of composed of two suites - one by Lennon, one by Paul McCartney - that are totally different in sound and texture, yet complement each other perfectly. The song features two cacophonous crescendos from an orchestra, the final one climaxing in a single E major piano chord that lasts 42 seconds. So don't give me this crap the Beatles did not experiment. Most of the early progressive rock artists were more influenced by the Beatles than they were with Beefheart.

The Beatles did not experiment all the time and so what. Most great musicians are not avant artists and most musicians would love to have the Beatles song catalog. The Beatles experimented but it's just a small fraction of what they did for music. Open your ears most people could care less about Captain Beefheart, and to a smaller extent The Velvet Underground.

[NowhereMan]

Ok, If music had been called Prog or Punk, then maybe the Beatles may not be the greatest band ever - But the fact it is called music means that it is allround, not just specialising in Blues or Jazz.

During the Beatle's 8 years in the studio, they attempted more or less every genre under the sun - R N' B/ Blues in Please Please Me and With The Beatles, Psychadelica in Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper's.

If music had been just about guitar, then maybe Cream, or Led Zep would be the most recognised band on the planet - but it isn't, and thats a fact.

[Facetious]

[Facetious]

Alright, maybe Break on Through or The End.......but I just don't like Light My Fire as much as anything off Revolver. And then there's, as you mentioned, the great Tomorrow Never Knows.

[Facetious]

Ahh, who cares, really? He will not probably not see this.

Off to Listology.

[thejoj96]

I finally listened to this album two days ago. I hadn't sat down to do so before, so I figured I'd see what was all the hype. I enjoyed it for the most part, but didn't think much of it at the moment. I put my headphones away and went to get ready for bed. I calmly brushed my teeth, flossed, shaved, and washed my face prior to heading back to my bedroom. I decided to pull out my laptop and review a few albums. I settled on listening to several Switchfoot albums, but I found that just going a few seconds into the first song caused me to grow very, very tired. I fell asleep soon after the first song ended and my review was never completed.

I had some interesting dreams that night. One of my dreams involved a giant talking tree named 'Joshua' and my struggle to fight him off as he grew hostile. Another dream involved some guy walking into a record store I was working at, slamming Refused's 'The Shape of Punk to Come' on the counter and asking me, "HOW MUCH?"; to which I responded with the price, but then he kept screaming at me about how he wanted it to rock his socks off. He came back later with his socks still on and proceeded to assault me for it.

I woke up pretty early and felt odd. I wasn't myself, but I couldn't figure out what was going on. I turned over a few times but couldn't shake the feeling off, so I turned my light on to see of anything was different about me. I looked down at my legs to see that I was, in fact, not myself. I all of a sudden had legs like a beetle, and it was hideous and horrifying. Nothing like this had ever happened to me and I was speechless. I felt the legs with my hands and I wanted to vomit. I shook it off like it was a bad dream and fell back to sleep.


My alarm went off and I wasn't able to reach my snooze button. I couldn't reach very far at all. I looked down to see that my covers were off and I now possessed the body of some disgusting insect, like a cockroach or a beetle. I exclaimed, "Oh, God! What is this? Why am I an insect? Why did this happen?"

I tried to stand up, but I couldn't get out of bed. I struggled to turn myself over but it took me what seemed like twenty minutes to do so. I finally turned over completely but fell off the bed in the process. I was a massive, human sized insect, and this really sucked. My brother apparently heard a thump and came to see what happened. He didn't see me at first, but going to the other side of the bed, he appeared to be terrified, jumped up, and exclaimed, "WHERE IS MY SHOE?!?"

He ran out of the room as I tried to pick myself up. 5 minutes later I finally got up and was able to kind of move around. Suddenly, I felt a hard blow to the back of my head. The blow came several times as my brother began beating me over the head with a shoe. I yelled, "Hey, it's me! I'm an insect now! Stop hitting me!!". My brother wasn't interested in what I had to say as he kept hitting me and yelling, "DIE YOU DISGUSTING BASTARD I HATE YOU STUPID THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T EVEN EXIST DIE DIE DIE!"

He hit me for another minute until he finally stopped, glared at me, and said, "WHERE IS MY BIGGER SHOE?!?". He ran out of the room and I looked around the room.
"Maybe I'll be back to normal tomorrow," I said as I gazed at the clock. It was 10:22. "OH GOD....I gotta go to work..."

I opened the door, stepped out, and checked to see if the coast was clear. Seeing nobody, I headed out the door and headed towards my office building. After walking about a quarter of a mile, I was hit over the head with a shoe. "DIE, YOU DISGUSTING PIECE OF SHIT!!" yelled the businessman-looking guy. He hit me a few more times before heading off some other direction. Walking a little bit further down the road I was hit a few more times by a few other people. Finally, I reached my office building and walked through the door.

Immediately, the 8 or so people in the main lobby were reaching for their shoes. I couldn't even get a word out before they all ran up and began to relentlessly slam the shoes over my head. I tried reasoning with them: "Guys! I work here! Stop it!"

After 8 minutes, they stopped, and I headed towards my desk and sat down. As an animator, my current task was to animate some walk cycles. I spent ten minutes trying to finish the last few frames before my boss entered the room. "Hey, boss, I almost have the walk cy..."

He began to hit me over the head with his shoe. I tried reasoning with him: "Hey! Boss! It's me, I work for you!" This seemed to register with him as he lowered his shoe.
"Oh, you're him...ok, well show me what you've gotten done so far." my boss said.
I hit the play button, and what happened next I could not explain. My character that I was working on had all the movements right, and his steps were flawless, but he was going backwards!
My boss began hitting me over the head again with his shoe. "THAT WILL NOT WORK FOR ANYTHING YOU WORTHLESS BASTARD!"
After 10 more minutes, he stopped, walked out of my workplace, and I continued to work in my task.

After several hours, my workday was finally over. A few shoes were thrown at me or slammed over my head on the way home, but I had gotten used to it. I didn't even bother doing my typical routine as I plopped down on my bed and tried to sleep. I was woken up quickly with my brother yelling, "DIE, YOU PATHETIC INSECT SCUM!" as he slammed a gigantic shoe over my entire body, and just leaving it there, assuming it had killed me. I still didn't fail to fall asleep...and I drifted..and drifted...just wanting this nightmarish day to end.


My alarm went off at 6:00. I reached over with no struggle to hit the snooze button as I tried to drift back off. I then realized that I had my own arm back. Ecstatic, I leaped out of bed and rushed to the bathroom mirror to see that I was myself again. Excited, I approached my brother and exclaimed, "HEY! I'M MYSELF AGAIN! ISN'T THIS GREAT?!?"
"DIE YOU MISERABLE SACK OF SHIT!" he exclaimed as he hit me over the head with his shoe several times.
"WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?!?" I yelled as I struggled to get my brother to stop hitting me.


This is what I get for listening to 'Revolver'. I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to become a disgusting, mutant creature and get pummeled with shoes..