Revolution No. 9
Originally posted to rec.music.beatles on November 12, 1999; revised on March 22, 2004
On 12 Nov 1999 08:31:49 GMT, dlee82993@aol.com (DLee82993) wrote:
>Hello Beatle Philes...I am rather new to the White Album and was taken aback by
>this haunting track.....did the band ever state what the meaning of this
>bizarre track is? it also sounds like it may be played backwards, if so what
>does it reveal?is...)
Ha! God bless you - welcome to one of the oldest subjects in all Beatledom.
The Beatles were all recording fanatics who loved to experiment with music and tapes and tape recorders, both in and out of the studio. Right from the early days they started buying themselves home reel-to-reel tape recorders and then taking them home to see what would happen if you put a tape on backwards, or at a different speed, or through various filters. Some of these taped effects turned up later on actual Beatles records. The introduction to “Sun King” on Abbey Road, for instance - which sounds like bells and crickets - is an experimental home tape made by Paul. On the other hand, sometimes their experiments would go into outside projects, like London’s “Festival of Light” in 1967, for which the Beatles created a random soundscape.
But “Revolution No. 9” has the distinction of being the only prolonged experimental piece of non-musical sound that ever made it onto any Beatles record. In this case, it’s not a joint effort, nor was it a tape made at home. The main force behind the track is John, and the sessions took place at Abbey Road in the spring of 1968.
By the time of the ‘white album’ sessions in 1968 John was a man whose life was in transition. The previous year he had met avante garde artist Yoko Ono at a London gallery, and by the time John returned from India in the spring of 1968 he was openly in love with her and looking for a way to end his marriage to Cynthia. The press had a field day with this - especially when John started turning up in public with his new Japanese girlfriend - but soon it became apparent that this wasn’t a flash in the pan. John stuck to Yoko stubbornly, and the two were inseparable. George Martin remembers how, at the commencement of the White Album sessions, John arrived with Yoko and that was that. She was by his side ever after.
John always maintained that one of the reasons for his love for Yoko was that she woke him up creatively in ways he hadn’t felt in a long time. She was also a safe haven for him in a world that - including Paul - lately seemed a little less safe than before. Remember that, just half a year before starting the White Album, the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein had died, following which had come the public and critical disaster of Magical Mystery Tour. The Beatles all felt buffeted by these events, and in the latter case even (perhaps a little self-indulgently) hurt that their collective inner child had been so resoundingly spanked. Home from India, they quietly resolved to follow their inner personal muse even more resolutely than before. The only problem was, it was a muse with a newly-developing case of schizophrenia.
The White Album sessions were not the happiest times for the Beatles. The group which had been so united the previous year while making Sgt. Pepper was now motivated by new, strong currents of individual expression. Everybody wanted to do their own thing, and nobody wanted to do anybody else’s thing. This led to many wonderful songs being recorded in new and unique ways; but it also led to constant bickering on the studio floor, and a general day-to-day atmosphere of tension. It got so bad that Ringo quit at one point; and at the end of the sessions Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ groundbreaking engineer, walked out for good. (He didn’t return until Abbey Road sessions the following year.)
Part of the trouble was that there was simply so much material at hand; the Beatles had spent months in Rishikesh, India, with nothing else to do but meditate and write music. Write they did, and when they convened at EMI in May George, John and Paul between them had more than two dozen songs and song ideas waiting to be developed. In the past this would have been considered a creative goldmine, but now it was a source of tension. The trouble was, each songwriting Beatle wanted all of his songs to be on the upcoming LP - but it was doubtful, even in a two-LP set, that there would be room. This soon led to jockeying, which quickly bred feelings of competition and mutual mistrust. The Beatles, who in the past had always been such good friends, willing to accomodate each other, now became sulky, touchy, and unbending. Some nights they worked in separate studios, on separate songs, alone.
The fact is, the four Beatles were growing apart. As the band entered their mid-twenties their tastes were maturing, their temperments were changing, their characters maturing - in different directions. Paul and John were becoming particularly estranged. John began seeing Paul as a hyper-competitive, self-serving square who would smother him, if allowed, in Beatle-rock-pop conformity; while Paul saw John as a loose cannon who, given half a chance, would wreck the whole band with his offensive pseudo-artistic agenda. Sadly, feelings like this frequently bubbled to the surface during the White Album period, and about the only reason the group didn’t split up this year instead of next is that it was just too big a step to contemplate. In 1968 the band was so successful, so much of a worldwide musical and cultural institution, that ending it was all but unthinkable: it was much easier to look for smaller solutions. Maybe they were just in a bad patch? Maybe the old magic would return if they just hung in there? Maybe it was just the stress of newly-founded Apple causing so many fights? The Beatles had weathered tough times before; and their friendship, for better or worse, went back to the mid-1950s. Even John shrank from taking such an enormous step as ending it all. So for now, the glue held.
But the White Album, as a result, is strewn with schismatic tracks. “Wild Honey Pie” and “I Will” are performances entirely by Paul. “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” is Paul and Ringo. “Back in the USSR” is John, Paul and George. “Piggies” and “Savoy Truffle” are all four underneath, but both were entirely finished - even down to the mixing - by George. “Julia” is a solo performance by John, and “Revolution No. 9” would be one too if it weren’t for a little help here and there from George. In fact, it’s hard to find a recording on the whole album where all four Beatles are playing together with anything like the old joy and verve. “Birthday” is one. “Yer Blues” is another.
* * *
For “Revolution No. 9,” John decided that he was going to go into Abbey Road studios and create a long experimental soundscape of the kind he and Paul and George had done at home for years. Ringo didn’t participate, and George only contributed a few scraps of sound here and there (saying random things like “Eldorado”). Paul wasn’t even in England at the time. He was visiting America when the recording was made.
In preparation John spent several days assembling taped effects and making loops of them. On the day of the first session (June 6, 1968) he showed up at EMI with paper bags literally stuffed with tape loops under each arm. Commandeering every available reel-to-reel tape deck in the building, he wired them all into the various consoles in Studios One, Two and Three, then plugged these together into a single master recorder. With various people using pencils to keep the tape loops at proper tension, the various playback decks were then started. John then sat at the mixing board by the recording deck, and manually brought different faders up and down, allowing this sound or that one to be heard. In this way, he would create experimental sound segments. In later sessions - held on June 10, 11, 20 and 21 - he created new segments, or joined existing ones together. In this way “Revolution No. 9” was made.
The reason it’s called “Revolution No. 9” is that the basic track underlying it all was a long, freewheeling jam session on the song “Revolution” that had been recorded at EMI several weeks previously. At one point in “Revolution No. 9” you can hear John going “Right! Right! Ri-i-i-i-ght!” etc. That’s him at the prior “Revolution” session, singing over a band you can no longer hear.
In all the reading I've done, John has never said there was any literal meaning to be derived from ”Revolution No. 9.” It is almost certainly not a story from A to Z with clear chapters. But that’s not to say some sort of “story” isn’t happening here; it’s just that, if it is, it’s a subconscious one. IMHO, John was simply trying to free his mind and sort of improvise like a jazz musician, using sound instead of music. And yet, even though the effects are apparently random, what always strikes me when I listen to this piece is how organized, and musical, it really is. It has movements. It has tempo. It has high notes and low notes. At times it’s very dramatic; at other times slow, peaceful. After listening to the track several times you can almost “sing along” with it, as each movement becomes more familiar. It’s not a song, I guess, but who cares? Really, I find it quite lovely and eerie. Haunting is a good word for it. To me it's like a radio-play dream.
At the time, as I’ve said, the other Beatles weren’t terribly impressed. Although George helped here and there, he also called the song “heavy” and frankly admitted he didn’t like it (David Wigg interviews, 1969). Paul wanted it kept off the album altogether - partly, it seems, because he simply didn’t like it, and in part (some say) because he was jealous. Paul had also been making experimental tapes for years and was angry that now John would get all the credit for being the Beatles’ avante-garde groundbreaker. (Paul: “I loved John, but he could be a maneuvering swine.”) Only Ringo expressed no opinion that I can find. George Martin thought it was “interesting,” but he also thought the white album was an out-of-control monster and should have been a single LP with only the best songs included. In that case, of course, “Revolution No. 9” would never have been heard.
But the White Album wasn’t a record where anybody was prepared to sacrifice for the sake of anyone else. So cutting it down to a single album would never have worked.
The repeating “number nine, number nine,” by the way, is from a Royal Academy of Music test recording that John found in the EMI vaults. The announcer is saying something like, “This is Royal Academy of Music test recording number nine,” from which John clipped the end part.
I’ve never listened to it backwards. But there’s probably fun things there.