The Beatles - Revolver POLL

I find the melody draggy and Lennon's vox too nasal and sneery on Rain (I know that was increasingly his thing, but it doesn't always work for me). I appreciate its innovations, I just don't particularly dig it.

Also, and I realise this is cock-eyed in all kinds of ways and I may well get shouted at for it, it reminds me of Oasis and I've always hated Oasis.

(xxxp) OK right I hadn't thought about the historical significance of the phrase "British Invasion".

xp
Well it's a very simple song at its core so I can totally understand not being impressed by the songwriting aspect.

Er... I find Rain quite boring, great drumming and bassline aside.

I find the melody draggy and Lennon's vox too nasal and sneery on Rain (I know that was increasingly his thing, but it doesn't always work for me). I appreciate its innovations, I just don't particularly dig it.

Also, and I realise this is cock-eyed in all kinds of ways and I may well get shouted at for it, it reminds me of Oasis and I've always hated Oasis.

Agree with every Chap word here.

If you haven't read Geoff Emerick's book, "Here, There and Everywhere", you should check it out. There's a section where he describes his very first day as an official engineer on Revolver which turned out to be the first Tomorrow Never Knows session. He was only 19 years old and still living with his parents. I can only imagine.

I listened to the audio book a few years ago, it's incredible. My favorite bit is how on one of his first days of work he figures out the best way to record bass guitar is by using giant speakers as microphones.

I always felt "I Want to Tell You" was a mutant psych version of Motown, it has that swing to it.

Er... I find Rain quite boring, great drumming and bassline aside.

I find the melody draggy and Lennon's vox too nasal and sneery on Rain (I know that was increasingly his thing, but it doesn't always work for me). I appreciate its innovations, I just don't particularly dig it.

Also, and I realise this is cock-eyed in all kinds of ways and I may well get shouted at for it, it reminds me of Oasis and I've always hated Oasis.

Agree with every Chap word here.

same. i have been walking around listening to past masters vol 2 a lot recently, and have come to think it's maybe the most overrated beatles song (at least among fans who know about it in the first place). listening to it right now, it's hard to pinpoint why. the bass is amazing, ringo's doing his thing, the production is interesting. maybe it's the vocal? lennon's voice itself sounds good, but the melody is just boring as hell. if you get Rain stuck in your head, you just get this terrible one-note "RAAAAAAAAAAAAIN" moaning thing to deal with. whereas the melodies going on in And Your Bird Can Sing dance circles around the hungover Rain.

I think Rain is groovy and weird and druggy and maybe a huger departure from where they'd come from than "Paperback Writer," and the drum fills rule, but I agree that I've never quite been converted to it being this crucial milestone Beatles song. If anything I'd bring it in to replace "I'm Only Sleeping" and make "She Said She Said" the album opener. But what do I know?

was it written/recorded before tomorrow never knows? i always think of TNK as the link between different eras of the beatles, so if Rain was first then i understand giving it props for that.

recorded after first take of TNK (the "Mark I" version) but maybe not the final one? I'm not sure. Anyway it was released first, so that's something.

If anything I'd bring it in to replace "I'm Only Sleeping"

IOS is fucking fantastic, don't touch it.

for a 50 year old piece of rock n roll, TNK still sounds totally astonishing.

If anything I'd bring it in to replace "I'm Only Sleeping"

IOS is fucking fantastic, don't touch it.

― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Thursday, April 30, 2015 2:39 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for a 50 year old piece of rock n roll, TNK still sounds totally astonishing.

― tylerw, Thursday, April 30, 2015 2:40 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ios and tnk are the only tunes on this album that never really get stale for me

Well again I can understand not being impressed by the basic songwriting of Rain and yes the melody is minimalist... But TNK is even more simple in that case !

One chord !

when my band covered it for that (great) ILX beatles comp we played it w/ two chords, but yeah...
https://soundcloud.com/ilx-beatles-comp/forces-at-work-tomorrow-never

And as a simple song with great production and performance, they're both better than Taxman !

I'm Only Sleeping is on some Chillwave vibe. Love how those guitars are somehow right inbetween acoustic and electric, it's hard to tell.

I can't believe there isn't a Revolver Sessions box I can buy on iTunes I want to hear every attempt at TNK.

Can't imagine how these guys must've felt trudging around on tour in 1966, knowing they had something epochal in the can, but not being able to play any of it live.

They should have gone on tour w Yoko doing tape loops.

Maybe Cynthia could have provided the tape loops.

Well again I can understand not being impressed by the basic songwriting of Rain and yes the melody is minimalist... But TNK is even more simple in that case !

Yep, though I really like the melody on TNK! It's just a personal taste thing I think. Some people don't like coriander.

Yeah the guitars on Only sleeping are great. There's something so sad and dark in that song. Lennon was on fire at that time... (and then he made Strawberry fields, A day in the life and Walrus !)

Rain... hmmm, never a standout for me although I think it improves in today's context. It's kind of proto-shoegaze, isn't it?

Thought I'd finally look in to see why Revolver's in the news. Doctor Casino's Blood, Sweat & Tears thing earlier is great. I think I've met my doppelganger.

Rain-love utterly baffles me too, always has.

https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6576012/unknown-george-harrison-letter-surfaces-reveals-why-the-beatles-canceled-stax

Did you hear that we nearly recorded in Memphis with Jim Stuart [sic]. We would all like it a lot, but too many people get insane with money ideas at the mention of the word 'Beatles,' and so it fell through!

aw man, how cool would that have been

so much of the Revolver material is decidedly un-American (Eleanor Rigby, Tomorrow Never Knows, For No One etc.), it's funny to think what would have crept into the material or how the record would be different

"Got To Get You Into My Life"?

is very American R&B

altho it scans more as Motown than Stax to me

They might have just done some messing around...or they might have asked to re-recorded "Day Tripper" with Otis Redding!

There's also this, recorded on the Rubber Soul sessions; they conceivably could've come out with an instrumental EP or something along these lines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghnj5Tr64Bk

eh that's not exactly stunning material

Is the idea that they would have recorded Revolver there, or some unspecified next project? I probably used to know this, but was the longish gap between Revolver and SPLHCB (with John filming How I Won The War and whatever else) planned out in advance?

I'm very happily imagining some alternate timeline where this deal didn't fall through and they trundled determinedly into Memphis in late 1966 to bang out a potboiling album (mostly covers or vault-clearing bits and pieces, one assumes, since I don't think most of the Pepper material had actually been written) with the M.G.'s, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding. "When I'm Sixty-Four" gets a boost with the first recorded vocals by talented young songwriter Isaac Hayes. "The One After 909" with the heat turned up, "Cry For A Shadow" turned inside out, "That Means A Lot" finding its final form... pretty cool fuckin record I think.

ha it's fun to fantasize but... would they really have gone in that much for collaboration, swapping vocals etc.? seems kinda unlikely. I can see them using some sidemen on stuff - the horns, a Cropper lick here or there

I wonder what that Tune In dude thinks of this?

would they really have gone in that much for collaboration, swapping vocals etc.?

yeah i admit it's maybe a reach, but these guys did adore American R&B, and it might just be that since they didn't have a ton of new originals they were eager to record, and that they probably had a short term stay booked (Rubber Soul and Revolver having both been knocked out in under a month) it might be more of a jam-session kind of deal, them discovering in the course of rehearsal a body of covers that everybody's kind of in the mood to play, and just going with it. Like if there was any moment in their career when some kind of collaboration with a stable of outside musicians (setting aside string sections and so on) was plausible I think this could have been it.

Following the fantasy a chapter forward, you can even imagine the experience shifting their priorities slightly going into the next records, coming out of Pepper going "well that was cool, but it wasn't really as fun as that Stax record, let's play together as a band more," who knows. Fanfic, I know, but ehhh, it's Beatles fandom.

in negative fanfic world, they have so much fun cranking out the record with the stax guys that when they walk in on day 1 of the pepper session and see george martin there adjusting his tie and being all serious, they immediately realize they can no longer be a band and break up immediately

haha

Like if there was any moment in their career when some kind of collaboration with a stable of outside musicians (setting aside string sections and so on) was plausible I think this could have been it.

well really this just happened a couple years later with the White Album, right? Clapton, Yoko etc. And accelerated each one's treatment of the others as session musicians, which further alienated the band from each other.

but yeah at this point they were still very much "together", maybe they were cohesive enough as a unit to work with a whole clique of new people without splintering

xposts hahaha, that's great

also a pretty cool fanfic really. paul mccartney struggles to complete his new solo concept album about an old-timey jug band, has a mental breakdown over his inability to compete with brian wilson alone. the rest of them decamp back to memphis to chase a dream. the sixties were never the same again.

i think they would have dug it honestly. i mean all the gripes about playing live where nobody could hear them, and so there was no point even playing well - getting to really kick back at length with a bunch of fucking tight players would probably have felt super stimulating and invigorating, "shit, yeah, this is what we do this for!" like a better version of how much george harrison enjoyed hanging around with The Band. you're exactly right about the white album - the "treating each other as session musicians" was the problem there but i kind of believe the stax thing would have played out differently. they also were still on mostly happy drugs.

Stax would've made much more sense for Let It Be.

ooh def

not all cold and drafty that's for sure

I'm very happily imagining some alternate timeline where this deal didn't fall through and they trundled determinedly into Memphis in late 1966...

and while they're there, they meet a teenage alex chilton, who convinces a disgruntled george harrison to quit the beatles and form a new band with him and his buddy chris bell.