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Let me start with my personal relationship to Revolver. it was an album that I never rated that high. This has a reason. My relationship with The Beatles started extremely early. Probably between my 5th and 6th birthday. The singles were played by my aunt and niece at parties and the youngest daughter of a family I regularly stayed with at the time was a huge fan at the time. This was music that was handed to me, where I had no real role in, except remembering asking them to play a single. By my eighth year that changed a little. 'Hey Jude' was the first single I discovered for myself through the radio and bought myself.
The big change came with the "red" and the "blue" album. I got them age 13 and 14. They were truly mine. The first time I discovered some of the album tracks. It did not take long for me to find out that I liked the 1967-1969 output the best by far (and all those big hits from before of course).
By the time I was able to buy albums myself, that were the albums I focused on. Come the 1980s my interest for The Beatles had waned somewhat. The big 70s bands had become my favourites. This changed, probably for good, thanks to The Analogues, The Beatles recreation band from The Netherlands, recreating, as this is way beyond covering. The Beatles were back, exactly at the time when Apple started releasing all these newly mixed re-releases. Not to speak of the 'Get Back' series on Disney.
Recently, I thought let's play Revolver. I wasn't even sure whether I had bought it as an album. I found a second hand copy, probably bought around 1990. One, this copy, a stereo version, sounded great. Not a single scratch on the vinyl after all these years. Second, this is one great album. How can I have underrated it so badly for decades? Maybe I'm amazed, so to say.
From the very first notes of 'Taxman' I was listening spellbound. The level of musicianship is so high. The tricks of the studio made it an extra instrument, as it were. The Beatles were not holding any options back anymore. Revolver holds a great selection of songs in which the band performed at the peak of its abilities. And the best was yet to come....
What surprised me most is 'Yellow Submarine', one of the 16 number 1 hits here between 1965 and 1970. Even that song showed me how good The Beatles were. From a carnivalesque ditty the song slowly gets a different layer, outshining a song for Ringo exactly because the rest of the band steps up to make it song of The Beatles quality. There's so much going on and so many details worked into the background. Perhaps I truly heard the song for the first time for real.
Of course 'Yellow Submarine' is at the bottom of Revolver. George Harrison has three songs on the album and brings in Indian music into the sound for the first time. Paul and John dared each other to come up with better songs and did. 'Here, There And Everywhere', 'For No One', 'Got To Get You Into My Life', 'I'm Only Sleeping', 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 'She Said, She Said', they are all fantastic album tracks, and so different. And there's 'Eleanor Rigby', the kind of song that makes me think, where did he get it from? It's so different, so nothing to do with a pop/beat band, that it is hard to imagine that The Beatles dared to release it and that the company gave them a free hand in everything as well.
In hindsight John Lennon was right: The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, as the band could do almost anything it liked on the basis of its popularity. Jesus certainly could not, popular or not.
In October 2022 I have to totally review my take on Revolver. Not that I thought it was bad, far from it, just not in line with what came after. This is a fantastic album and fits into that row of three. It's never too late to change one's mind.
Wout de Natris
In 2024 I bought the two disk edition 2022 mix. I can't stop playing it to be honest. It is like I have been handed a new album that fast turned into a favourite. The sound is fantastic, yes. (WdN)
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