14. “Doctor Robert”
The fact that John Lennon does not write about himself, but more or less invents a character (otherwise more like Paul McCartney’s approach), suggests a serious writing crisis. Role model was Dr. Robert Freymann, a New York physician known for giving amphetamine-laced vitamin B-12 shots to wealthy patients. “Doctor Robert” is one of many tracks on “Revolver” that deals with drugs of one kind or another. According to Paul McCartney, the rather relaxed rhythm, which is very different from previous Beatles albums, is mainly due to the fact that the Beatles were stoned the whole time in the studio.
13. “I Want to Tell You”
Due to John Lennon’s writing crisis, George Harrison was allowed to contribute three of his own songs to a Beatles album for the first time. Inspired by an acid trip, “I Want To Tell You” shows that Harrison had become more confident as a songwriter since “Rubber Soul”. Even if the lyrics could be interpreted as if they didn’t (anymore?) feel understood within the band. The song slipped onto the tracklist at the last minute, originally Harrison had wanted to record another song: “Isn’t It A Pity”. Indeed.
12. Yellow Submarine
To this day, this delicious silliness, which we’ve known since the new Revolver box set began as a self-doubt-ridden Lennon song and was reworked into a children’s song by McCartney, remains Ringo Starr’s signature song. Is it the best worst song ever? Or a successful homage to the anarchic “Goon Show” starring Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, to which the Beatles listened enthusiastically on BBC Home Service in their youth? Or big stoned fun like Dylan’s contemporaneous Rainy Day Women #12 & 35? Or simply “the lunatics have taken over the asylum”? Anyway, producer George Martin was sick in bed when the Beatles invited friends like Brian Jones and Marianne Faithfull to one hilarious evening in the studio to record what would later be released as a single (double A-side with “Eleanor Rigby”!) the was to top the UK charts and received the Ivor Novello Award for best-selling single of 1966.
11.”Love You To”
Sure, you’ll hear a sitar on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” from “Rubber Soul,” but on “Love You To” (working title “Granny Smith”), George Harrison gets serious about his passion for Indian music. So serious that there is hardly room for the other Beatles on this track. Ringo Starr plays the tambourine, Paul McCartney sings along a bit, John Lennon is absent – but you can hear former political activist Anil Bhagwat on the tabla and some of his musicians from the Asian Music Circle. Harrison’s Declaration of Independence.
10. “Good Day Sunshine”
On any other Beatles album, this upbeat song, inspired by Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream,” and also a tribute to Paul McCartney’s love of pre-rock ‘n’ roll music of his childhood and early teens, would probably have charted higher. But on the visionary, adventurous “Revolver” remains only a place in midfield.
09.”I’m Only Sleeping”
Sleep played a large part in John Lennon’s life in early 1966. After years of touring and commitments, the Beatles once again had a break because their third movie didn’t come out. Lennon spent most of his time at his home in Kenwood, south-west of London, sleeping, watching TV stoned and slowly but surely becoming depressed. However, when he wrote “I’m Only Sleeping,” he seemed to be enjoying the break. George Harrison’s guitar solo is heard backwards here, a technique the Beatles had recently employed on the b-side to Paperback Writer’s fabulous Rain. The idea came to him after he’d come home from the studio stoned one night and somehow put the day’s recordings into his tape machine the wrong way round. sounded good.
08. “Taxman”
No one would dare to start an album with a complaint about the tax policies of a Labor government anymore (anyone in their right mind would of course be happy about a Labor government today). The fact that it came from George Harrison of all people, the Beatle who was on the way to spiritual enlightenment, makes it interesting. The true epiphany in this song, however, comes from the Indian-inspired guitar solo by – Paul McCartney.
07. “Got to Get You into My Life”
Paul McCartney was a big fan of the soul records that appeared on Stax and Motown in the mid-sixties, the melodic playing of Motown bassist James Jamerson had a lasting influence on him, and the Beatles even briefly considered recording their new album at Stax Studios in early 1966 Memphis with producer Jim Stewart. In the end, though, the soul fervor on “Revolver” is only heard in McCartney’s exalted vocals and horn arrangement of “Got To Get You Into My Life.” The lyrics are a love letter to an influence that’s far more present on “Revolver” than American soul music: marijuana.
06. “And Your Bird Can Sing”
A song about Frank Sinatra’s penis. He kept calling his best piece “bird” to journalist Gay Talese, and John Lennon read the resulting text in Esquire magazine. Musically, the song could also have been called “And Your Byrd Can Sing”, because especially in the first few takes, which the Beatles recorded, it jingled and jangled that Roger McGuinn would have enjoyed.
05. “Here, There and Everywhere”
A ballad of such artistry and delicacy would convince even John Lennon. Even if Paul McCartney wanted to impress someone else this time: top beach boy Brian Wilson. The song was his reaction to “God Only Knows” from the Pet Sounds album, which McCartney still calls his all-time favorite pop song.
04. “Tomorrow Never Knows”
The first song the Beatles recorded for “Revolver” and which probably also determined the further course of the sessions, which – as George Martin’s son Giles explained in the ROLLING STONE interview – were under the motto “Shall we try this?”. The Beatles were more confident about the studio’s capabilities than they had previously been. This early sense of achievement was probably crucial. John Lennon borrowed much of the text from The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, who in turn borrowed from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He wanted the song to sound like a thousand Tibetan monks, he had told George Martin, or alternatively like the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop.
Lennon liked to be a little vague about things like this. McCartney, on the other hand, got concrete straight away – musique concrète, to be precise. He suggested trying out a technique that the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen had used in his “Gesang der Jünglinge”. If you turned off the erase head of a tape recorder and then ran an endless loop through the recorder at different speeds while recording, the tape would constantly overwrite itself, creating a saturating effect. So every Beatle came into the studio with a few self-made tape loops. 30 total. 16 of them were used. The result doesn’t sound like the Dalai Lama, but like the big bang of psychedelic pop music.
03.”For No One”
Written while on a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps after a falling out with then-girlfriend Jane Asher. Must have rattled quite a bit, because McCartney was never so bitter and laconic again. “And in her eyes, you see nothing/ No sign of love behind the tears/ Cried for no one/ A love that should have lasted years.” Not only John Lennon liked that.
02.”She Said She Said
The song on which Oasis have built an entire career. Inspired by a sentence Peter Fonda uttered during an LSD trip in the Beverly Hills mansion rented by Beatles manager Brian Epstein during a US tour: “I know what it’s like to be dead.” Decisive for the psychedelic The magic of this song is mainly George Harrison’s riff. He would have liked to get a song credit for it.
01. “Eleanor Rigby”
A song that seems far less radical than, say, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, but at least as much questioned the boundaries of what was understood as pop music in 1966. No guitar, no bass, just strings. And what kind of. George Martin’s arrangement, inspired by Hitchcock soundtrack composer Bernard Hermann, is quite a leap from his first string effort on a Beatles album on Yesterday.
And McCartney also made a leap – as a lyricist. In the mid-’60s, while Lennon was looking deeper and deeper into himself (the Dylan school), he was creating characters that (seemingly) had nothing in common with him (the Charles Dickens school). With a little help from his bandmates, he has never done it more poetically and impressively than in this song about an old maid and a lonely priest. And the last line is probably the darkest of all in his often bright and optimistic oeuvre: “No one was saved.”