By Alex Schaaf
By the time The Beatles reached The Beatles, more commonly known as The White Album
The recording of The White Album began in the spring of 1968. “Revolution 9” was born out of the remains of “Revolution 1,” a previous song on the album, when they took an extended jam at the end of “Revolution 1” and used it as the basis for “Revolution 9.” The track was largely assembled by John Lennon and Yoko Ono with the help of an unenthusiastic George Harrison. Work began with Lennon compiling multiple tapes filled with sounds: classical recordings, past Beatles tapes, sounds taken from the Abbey Road archives, and others.
The construction of the track as we know it today took place on June 20th, 1968, as Lennon oversaw the live mix of the song. He took the tape loops that he had created out of all of those compilations of sounds, and put each loop on a different tape machine, using every tape machine in the facility, as well as every available engineer. The engineers stood around holding pencils that guided the various tape loops through the machines, and they played them all at once while Lennon was in the control room conducting the mix. Lennon and other engineers recorded a live mix as they controlled the faders to bring in and out different loops, and manipulate them using panning and other effects.
Looking at the effect this piece has on the listener, it must be pointed out that this song was composed for tape, and was meant to be listened to on a record. The piece was never designed to be played live – in fact, by this point in their careers, the Beatles had stopped touring altogether, so none of the songs on The White Album were made with the explicit intention of being able to recreate them live.
With all of these things in mind, we see how experimental of a piece this was. Unlike many other compositions of the time, however, Lennon did not use many post-processing effects such as reverb or delay or anything like that; most of his manipulations were limited to controlling the speed and direction of the tape – speeding it up to change the pitch, or reversing it to create the reverse effect. The main experimentation came in the collage construction of the piece, as he cut and pasted bits and tape onto each other to create the collection of sounds.
While the subject matter and the layout of “Revolution 9” may have stemmed from randomness and a lack of structure, Lennon certainly took the piece seriously. When getting an unenthusiastic response from the rest of the band, Lennon said, “This should be our next bloody single! This is the direction the Beatles should be going in from now on.” Paul McCartney was not very subtle in his disgust of the piece – after first hearing the song, a dark cloud came over his face before he muttered, “Not bad.” McCartney may have liked the song as an avant-garde piece – he experimented with tape collages even before Lennon did – but he just didn’t see it as Beatles music, and didn’t agree that it was the direction the Beatles should take.
That seems to be the underlying debate when it comes to “Revolution 9” – should it have been a Beatles song? Regardless of the avant-garde qualities of the piece, and how it compared to other pieces by artists like Stockhausen or Cage, the fact remains that this is appearing on a Beatles album, and that is how it ultimately must be judged. Many people have argued that The White Album would have been much stronger without the inclusion of “Revolution 9” and that it should have been left off the album, but the fact remains – it is on the album, so that is the way it must be judged.
The fact that it appears on this album, which is otherwise filled with pop, rock, and blues-inspired works, plays a big role in how it is judged, and the overall effect it has on the listener. When you listen to the entire album, coming to “Revolution 9,” the penultimate track of The White Album, you have a built-up set of expectations for how the song should sound, based on what you have heard before. When the piece kicks in, your expectations are shattered, and now you have to reconstruct an idea of how you should be listening to the song. Much of that tension, the struggle to hear continuity, to relate what you are hearing to your preconception of the Beatles’ music, is crucial to the effect of the piece. If you were to put this piece in a compilation along with other avant-garde compositions of Stockhausen, Cage, and others, it might not be as striking or as notable. But when it appears at the end of a Beatles album, it elicits a much stronger reaction than it would otherwise.
In conclusion, it is clear that “Revolution 9” is a very interesting piece, and it can be easily compared to other avant-garde pieces of the time. But the real effect of the piece comes when you realize it is a song by The Beatles, and as such it is an example of a context-driven piece. Playing with your pre-conceptions and expectations, the piece succeeds by grabbing your attention as something different. Looking at the history of the creation of the piece, it cannot be said definitively that this is what the Beatles were going for, as it is clear that most of the band did not agree with the inclusion of “Revolution 9” on The White Album, and that the one person that did, John Lennon, intended on this being the new “Beatles sound,” not merely a psychological experiment on how this would play with listener’s expectations. But it cannot be denied that this is the effect the piece had, and thus it can be said that “Revolution 9” is undeniably an essential piece of the Beatles’ catalogue.
// Wicked article. It is interesting the inclusion of “Revolution 9″ on The White Album and not released separately. You’re absolutely right, when listening to such composers as Cage, Stockhausen, Varese, “Revolution 9″ doesn’t compare. It doesn’t even compare to Steve Reich’s “Come Out” and “Piano Phase” in that world of music. However, on the Sgt. Pepper’s album cover, Karlheinz Stockhausen is the only composer of any kind to appear. Music was always placed and represented well with The Beatles, but “Revolution 9″ seems so forced that, it’s hard to enjoy in the middle of such a great album.