Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 30 May; 6, 10, 11, 20, 21 June 1968
Producers: George Martin, John Lennon
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
John Lennon: vocals, tape loops, effects, samples
George Harrison: vocals, samples
Yoko Ono: vocals, effects, samples
Released: 22 November 1968 (UK), 25 November 1968 (US)
Available on:
The Beatles (White Album)
Dividing audiences since late 1968, John Lennon's sound collage Revolution 9 was an exercise in musique concrète influenced heavily by Yoko Ono and the avant-garde art world.
The recording emerged from Revolution 1, the final six minutes of which formed a lengthy, mostly instrumental jam. Lennon took the recording and added a range of vocals, tape loops and sound effects, creating Revolution 9, the longest track released during The Beatles' career.
The slow version of Revolution on the album went on and on and on and I took the fade-out part, which is what they sometimes do with disco records now, and just layered all this stuff over it. It was the basic rhythm of the original Revolution going on with some 20 loops we put on, things from the archives of EMI. We were cutting up classical music and making different-size loops, and then I got and engineer tape on which some test engineer was saying, 'Number nine'.
Playboy, 1980
Although he made no direct contribution to Revolution 9, being in New York at the time, Paul McCartney had made a similar sound collage, the unreleased 14-minute Carnival Of Light, 18 months previously.
Revolution 9 was quite similar to some stuff I'd been doing myself for fun. I didn't think that mine was suitable for release, but John always encouraged me.
Anthology
The other Beatles and George Martin are said to have persuaded Lennon not to include Revolution 9 on the White Album, to no avail. Although McCartney had long been interested in musique concrète, particularly Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge, it is likely that he was concerned at the effect Revolution 9 would have on the group's public perception.
I don't know what influence Revolution 9 had on the teenybopper fans, but most of them didn't dig it. So what am I supposed to do?
Anthology
It wasn't only the group's teenage fans who were confused by Revolution 9. Charles Manson found a wealth of symbolism in the track's loops and effects, and thought that Lennon's shouts of 'Right!' were, in fact, a call to 'rise' up in revolt.
Manson drew a parallel between Revolution 9 and the Bible's book of Revelation. He thought The Beatles were variously four angels sent to kill a third of mankind, or four locusts mentioned in Revelation 9, which he equated with beetles.
Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer's testing voice saying, 'This is EMI test series number nine'. I just cut up whatever he said and I'd number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn't realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying, 'number nine'; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that's all it was.
Rolling Stone, 1970
Revolution 9 also featured in the 'Paul is dead' myth, after it was discovered that the 'number nine' motif, when played backwards, sounded like 'Turn me on, dead man'. A number of other elements of the recording featured in the myth, including the sound of a car crashing followed by an explosion.
Related articles:
- Recording: Revolution 9
- Recording: Revolution 9
- Recording, mixing: Revolution 1, Revolution 9
- Unreleased 11-minute mix of Revolution 1 surfaces
- Recording, mixing: Revolution 1
according to karl heinz stockahausen's official website, lennon was inspired by stockhausen's "hymnen" in recording revolution 9.
is that correct?
The recording of "Hymnen" was first released after "Revolution 9" was recorded, so Lennon would have had to have access to a pre-release version.
What part of Revolution 9 does George Harrison and John Lennon whisper the phrase 'There ain't no rule for the company freaks' six times??? I've listened for it many times, but couldn't hear it. Is it audible at all???
As far as I know it's on the four-track tape, but wasn't used in the final mix. Mark Lewisohn mentioned it, but I've never heard it myself. Possibly it's buried deep in the mix somewhere, though.
"Revolution 9" : was so far ahead of it's time I was amazed alot of people didn't like it simply for the absolute genius of it? When I bought the 'White Album', I always felt the album would be incomplete without it, being every song has it's genre it represents! This song is the 'Beatles', the creativity, invention and total mystery of it's existence? 'Abstract Expressionism' hanging upon the walls and 'Revolution 9, playing unending! Sometime in the future, folks play the song 9 times in a row, as I did, you'll be amazed how it actually 'sounds' like an actual musical song, exsisting in the Beatles popular catalogue of songs and it's why the 'White Album' is so important to the history of recorded music!
I do agree it becomes a song, after all these years I actually expect every hidden sound of it; and when the Ipod plays it randomly I will let it play to the end. (but please: its genre, its existence, it's why. Its and it's are not the same)
It's good to hear someone else feels this way. I absolutely understand what John was on about hear. Music is, after all, controlled noise. This piece seems to be a carefully choreographed sound. It sounds like music but defies most people's expectations. Once you get around that, it's a symphony.
The singing voice from 7:05 till 7:25 is sung in Arabic, and most probably it's by Egyptian singer Mohammad Abdel Wahab.
Can you tell what any of the Arabic words are? I'd be very interested to narrow down what song it might have been.
I've been doing an extensive search to find that song. And I finally did! The original Arabic song is called "Awwal Hamsa" -Arabic for "First Whisper"- sung by Syrian/Egyptian artist Farid Al-Atrash.
I love this piece but I believe the main inspiration is "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" by Frank Zappa on the Freak Out! album
I hear some "War of the Worlds" battle scene sounds in there around 5:30...
This "song" (collage) never ceases to fascinate me. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall while Lennon and his mates going through all those EMI tapes.
Revolution#9, Wild Honey Pie, You Know My Name (Look Up The Number), When I'm 64, Being For The Benefit of Mr.Kite, Lovely Rita, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, I Am The Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life, Maxwell Silver Hammer, Good Night, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, I Want You/She's So Heavy, Because, Helter Skelter, Sexy Sadie, Yer Blues, Long Long Long, Savoy Truffle, Don't Bother Me, Octopus's Garden, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, Rocky Racoon and so many many more are why I love The Beatles. They are so diverse, so talented, so catchy, so deep, so fun and all of them are so unforgettable
This song doesn't appear in the track list of your US Discography. Is it a mistake, or was it removed in the US version?
No, it was released on the US White Album. I missed it out of the discography due to a cut and paste error (more cut than paste), but thanks for letting me know about it - I've amended the discog.
This song is so darn comical.
"So the wife called me and we'd better go to see a surgeon
Or whatever to price it....yellow underclothers
So, any road, we went to see the dentist instead
Who gave her a pair of teeth which wasn't any good at all
So I said I'd marry, join the f?!%$#g navy and went to sea"
What the heck? Not only does he constantly change person, his lyrics are as collaged as the music...There are passages that are slightly related in their subjects, but it is all a big acid trip--sort of fascinating, but also scary---very tense, like it's all about to blow apart in your face.
I'd heard that above phrase said about the Who, but this is entirely different instance.
You know, that was the good thing with a L.P., you sure could spin it backward, and darn, I sure did hear "Turn me on dead man, turn me on dead man, turn me on dead man" when, what was heard forward, was "Number nine, number nine, number nine...". Sure can't do that with a CD!
Music is made for create an emotional response in people. "Revolution 9" amazes me and gives me the creeps every time I hear it.
I also agree that it is a "song".
I remember seeing years ago on TV a live performance of this track where the band (can't recall the name) played an impressive percentage of the sounds live, the rest sampled from the CD...
John saying the Number 9 part was taken from an engineer saying "This is EMI test series number nine" clashes with the claim it was "culled from examination tapes from the Royal Academy of Music". Which is correct?
The Royal Academy information came from tape operator Richard Lush, who worked on the sessions. I suspect the tapes were made for the Academy at Abbey Road, so both could have been true. I don't know for sure. Apparently the tapes no longer exist, and the identity of the person isn't known.
George Martin didn't produce this track. The de facto producer was Lennon, who also played mellotron. And Ringo Starr didn't participate.
You're right that John was the de facto producer, although George Martin was listed as producer on the studio documentation. I've listed them both.
As for Ringo's participation, I'm not sure why I wrote that. I've removed the credit now. Thanks for the suggestions.
Ringo apparently made spoken word contributions, as did George Martin
Source is Wikipedia
There's a recording of George Martin speaking to Alistair Taylor at the very start, but that doesn't make them contributors as such. I'd need a better source than Wikipedia (!) if I was going to add Martin and Starr to the list, as I'm not sure they did anything during the actual assembly and recording of the track.
In the line-up I'm ignoring various performances that were taken from other recordings, mainly Revolution 1 and A Day In The Life, and concentrating instead on who did what for the actual sound collage.
I've listened to it several times & I don't get it. From a sound experimentation stand point, fine. But it is too far of a radical departure from basic music for my tastes, even in the standards of the White Album.
In their (and I say that loosely, based on the construction of this) entire catalog, I rank this as their worst effort & not even by Beatle standards, just general music.
So you think this is the worst song ever made? You should check out Carly Simon's version of Itsy Bitsy Spider, that might change your perspective.
I didn't mean it in the sense of worst music ever period. God knows much of the "good" music now is way worse than this could ever be. At least Rev 9 is ambitious. I'm just saying that it's not good by basic standards.
A lot of the time some songs are just "Beatle Bad" (Ex. "Little Child" compared "I Want To Hold Your Hand"), but in this case I feel Revolution 9 is a subpar sound in general.
That George Martin and Alistair Taylor exchange is a riot.
Following suit shortly thereafter comes 1910 Fruitgum Co.'s interesting sounding but hardly ambitious 'Pow-Wow', which was really a straight song played entirely backwards. I was never compelled to try and play it forward though.
"Pow Wow" came from really ridiculous throwaway song called "Bring Back Howdy Doody" which was probably an insider's joke. Some American producers really loved to put those kind of things to single b-sides...