The Beatles - Revolver POLL

I think nine of the fourteen songs are perfect, probably the highest hit rate of a Beatles album.

And the ones I'm not so keen on can't exactly be described as duds.

way bigger duds on abbey road and white album honestly.

Fuck no.

inferior songs to revolver:

mean mr. mustard
maxwell's silver hammer
her majesty
honey pie
wild honey pie
piggies
yer blues
rocky racoon

Oh, I think you mean inferior songs on Revolver?

Eleanor Rigby
For No One
I'm Only Sleeping
Love You To
I Want to Tell You
Taxman

ok, just know that the universe thinks you're wrong

those songs are all great except for 'love you to' imo.

tbh, an album consisting of darin's rejects on side 1 and how's life's rejects on side 2 would be a damn good album.

superior 'Take 7' of Here There And Everywhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRrZBj7vaSc

i'm only sleeping has always been the height of revolver to me. TNK is spectacular obviously but for the backwards-guitar psychedelic jams i've always preferred IOS.

I'm happy being wrong in a universe Eleanor Rigby. I could probably get by with just Doctor Robert, got to get you into my life, and your bird can sing, and yellow submarine.

And Your Bird Sing also got robbed. hell, almost all of the songs got robbed. tomorrow never knows is a classic but it doesn't tower above the rest of the album like this poll suggests

Yeah, there was so much hype about TNK before I heard it and then its just three minutes long? That song needed to be at least 7 minutes or so, imo.

I thought "Help" was the current "Best Beatles Album" thesedays?

I'd love to see where this album would rank in The Beatles' discography if 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was left off. While I love many of the songs on this album, it seems (at times) that the album's entire reputation hinges on that track alone.

Also, McCartney's songs on this record are much better than his contributions to Pepper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACRIrMcjBXY

inferior songs to revolver:

mean mr. mustard
maxwell's silver hammer
her majesty
honey pie
wild honey pie
piggies
yer blues
rocky racoon

― Darin, Tuesday, 20 May 2014 18:56 (1 hour ago) Permalink

love a bunch of these. lol are we really counting "Her Majesty" as something though?

dig the whole Abbey Road medley actually, my main beef is with the first side cuz I think Lennon'd basically checked out at that point. Which maybe makes me the reverse of people who hate "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' gets an undeserved slagging from some, IMHO.

the album version of 'maxwell' is a bit too cutesy for my taste -- all the sound effects et al just make me think of wings at their worst. but yeah it's certainly no worse as a song than 'bungalow bill' or 'rocky raccoon.' i like the anthology version where it's just paul + piano.

this thread hijacked my day and somehow led me to this youtube clip of all the revolver sessions, overdubs, etc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMzGZCaHOfU

I've heard most of these bootlegs, but this one is incredibly exhaustive. Hearing the isolated TNK loops is really cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jMzGZCaHOfU

All this hate for Rocky Raccoon is inappropriate. That song is clearly in the top 10 Paul songs. That story telling, the amazing harpsichord ditty, and the chorus is simply beautiful. I get it can seem 'gimicky', but it is the best kind of 'gimicky' I've ever found in a song.

Barrel of fun to play as well.

I like silly Beatles

I really, intensely dislike 'Rocky Raccoon'.

i don't ever listen to any other beatles album now, just this. the older ones are too slight (tho i used to like to play rubber soul) and the later ones too indulgent and lousy w/ beatlesisms.

"All this hate for Rocky Raccoon is inappropriate. That song is clearly in the top 10 Paul songs"

real talk, + "silly Beatles" is part of why The White Album's my fave

The lesser songs on that are ones that're just more bland imo

Thinking that Her Majesty is an inferior song seems like such a fundamental misunderstanding of the Beatles.

It's easy to pick as a favorite bc it has the most tracks that haven't been played to death, perhaps.

Also it has she said she said and tmrw never knows which both dovetailed nicely with 80s underground noise vibe. I remember the first notice I had that revolver was "important" to know/have was a Bob Mould interview c 1985 where he named it as his favorite record.

It = revolver

is it weird that I have an issue with the drumming on "She Said She Said" and it kills the song for me

probably but w/e

huh, i think the drumming there is some of ringo's best

listening to those bootlegs, what strikes me most about revolver's songs is the overall cohesiveness - the reoccurring drones, themes of death - and the equal amount of participation between the four.

Yeah, that's one of the first songs I'd play to convince the otherwise unconvinced of Ringo's brilliance.

xp

and the equal amount of participation between the four.

iirc, "Eleanor Rigby" even had lyrical contributions from Ringo!

The drumming on 'She Said She Said' is some of his best ever drumming to my ears. In fact, the Revolver period is quite possibly Ringo's best period for drumming... 'She Said She Said', 'Rain', 'Tomorrow Never Knows'...

it seems like some degree of apathy creeps into most of their subsequent recording (at least from a few members). revolver seems like the last document of the beatles believing in being beatles and collectively reaching for something.

and yes, total agreement on Ringo's drumming from this period

xp yeah, i mean, a lot of his drumming there is ... unprecedented? not sure where that style really came from tbh. it's amazing -- tomorrow never knows, she said, rain -- who else was playing like that in 1965?

"Rain" has a few faintly Moon-like moments, mainly in terms of fill placement, but other than that, yeah, no one was doing that shit then.

Ringo used to complain bitterly -- more than the others -- about having to tour when no one could hear them, and they couldn't hear themselves. He used to say that he had to hack away at the bass and snare to hold them together, and doing anything on the toms would just vanish into the gale of screams. So when he got to the studio, he must've felt let off the leash, finally able to dig into all these ideas he'd been storing up.

maybe a bit of Keith Moon influence? xp

this thread hijacked my day and somehow led me to this youtube clip of all the revolver sessions, overdubs, etc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMzGZCaHOfU

I've heard most of these bootlegs, but this one is incredibly exhaustive. Hearing the isolated TNK loops is really cool.

― Darin, Tuesday, May 20, 2014 5:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wow, this is fascinating! Thanks for posting! Take 8 of GTGYIML is great; you can hear the drums clearer, and it sounds like there's fuzz guitar doing what the horns would later do.

xp yeah moon is sort of the go-to when it comes to the "play a fill for the whole song" kinda drumming. wasn't sure of the chronology there, if ringo would've been aware of him by the time the revolver sessions rolled around. probably?

Yeah, they were definitely drinking buddies by that point.

Glad you liked the link, Tarfumes. There's a similarly cool, unused fuzz bass track on one of the Love You Too tracks.

I'm on that one now! Man, they should put out a legit mix of this; would be totally heavy.

yeah would be totally into a "complete Revolver sessions" box set a la the pet sounds set.

At this rate, they're more likely to release them as an iTunes-only "bootleg recordings" thing, like those 1963 recordings.

(Fuck, it only took them THREE YEARS to get from "From Me To You" to Revolver?!)

(Fuck, it only took them THREE YEARS to get from "From Me To You" to Revolver?!)

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, May 20, 2014 10:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Amazing, isn't it? That's how long Coldplay take between albums, to put that into perspective.

on Revolver being more of a Beatles-together album -- I dunno, Lennon and McCartney seem to be aiming for completely different things there. Compare to Rubber Soul, Pepper (more of a McCartney project but still,) White Album even has a certain general "sound" to it even if the compositions are pretty different

Oh wow, how did I miss the Overlanders comments gold on Popular back in the day?? An absolute treasure.

this one, from a band member who left just a few months before those Revolver comments hit the stands, is quite interesting in this light: Take it from me as one of the original trio comprising Laurie Mason Peter Bartholomew and myself Paul Arnold Friswell and the first to leave in summer 1966, we had no delusions of grandeur and we didn`t think we were the greatest thing since sliced bread as many do today.

from the same: Michelle was our tenth single getting to No 1 Jan 1966.I don`t really give a monkeys what people think of it, its history, Getting to No 1 was my Mount Everest and I climbed it alongside some great people. right on.

another member reports: When we returned to England (I think, New Years day 1966.) all the music papers were giving the release of Michelle, rave reviews and none of us imagined that how our lives would change in the course of the next few weeks. Fantastic times: touring, radio, TV and meeting an unbelievable galaxy of stars. It was very disappointing not to have a follow up hit and it all started to come unglued from the middle of 1966.

also I've read that back then the inclusion of hit singles on UK LPs was considered a waste of space or some shit

except for their soundtrack albums, the beatles in particular were pretty strict about keeping their singles separate from their albums for most of their career. (which is why the "past masters" cds exist!)

Jeez come on guys

Got to Get You into My Life 0
I Want to Tell You 0
Good Day Sunshine 0
Taxman 0

except for their soundtrack albums, the beatles in particular were pretty strict about keeping their singles separate from their albums for most of their career. (which is why the "past masters" cds exist!)

Ha, contextually funny because they made their first exception to that rule with the Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby double A-side. Why? to supposedly thwart any hit covers of Eleanor Rigby (a decision which likely doubles as a sly dig at the Overlanders' Michelle).

I think that exclusivity was mostly for the "lead" singles - I'm not sure what to call them because even though they're not on the forthcoming LP, they kind of promoted them as a preview of how they'd sound. Either that or the singles couldn't be on an LP before the single was released (only at the same time or after).

Or I should say, I always thought that exclusivity etc

another road where maybe
i could see another kind
of mind there

Was about to moan about the number of songs that got zero votes, only to see I’ve done it twice already.

Third time is the charm

Three times!

Got to Get You into My Life 0
Good Day Sunshine 0
Taxman 0

0__o

― piscesx, Sunday, January 4, 2015

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Got to Get You into My Life 0
Good Day Sunshine 0
Taxman 0

scenes.

― piscesx, Monday, October 31, 2016

---

Jeez come on guys

Got to Get You into My Life 0
I Want to Tell You 0
Good Day Sunshine 0
Taxman 0

― piscesx, Monday, July 25, 2022

haha oh man.

Good Day Sunshine is Paul at his most unbearable. I agree that the other three got robbed though

agreed, perhaps my least favorite Beatles song

does anybody else really really love the “got to get you into my life” demo on anthology?

I don't mind "Good Day Sunshine." I'm not a fan of "Taxman." George Harrison grumbling about having to pay taxes drags it down. The Jam did use the bassline and guitar riff to good effect, though.

quite like Good Day Sunshine, even more so in the "Bad Night Moonlight" version by Peter Serafinowicz where he puts it into a minor key and changes all the lyrics "I need screams / and when the moon is out / I've got something you can scream about"

Got To Get You Into My Life is straight up magnificent