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In the studio
On 30 May 1968 The Beatles recorded Revolution 1, take 18 of which became the basis for Revolution 9. The final six minutes of the recording formed an extended jam, which was cut from Revolution 1 to form the basis of Revolution 9. Onto this John Lennon and Yoko Ono assembled a range of effects and tape loops, and recorded a range of new sounds.
Work on Revolution 9 began on 6 June, when Lennon prepared 12 effects tapes. Some of these were of his own making; others were taken from the Abbey Road archives. According to Mark Lewisohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, five were marked 'Various'; the others were titled 'Vicars Poems', 'Queen's Mess', 'Come Dancing Combo', 'Organ Last Will Test', 'Neville Club', 'Theatre Outing' and 'Applause/TV Jingle'. Not all were used on Revolution 9.
On 10 June Lennon spent three hours assembling a further three tapes of sound effects. The following day, while Paul McCartney was in Abbey Road's Studio Two recording Blackbird, Lennon was in Studio Three compiling more effects.
The most significant day's recording for Revolution 9 was 20 June, in a session beginning at 7pm and ending on the following morning at 3.30am. Using Studios One, Two and Three, Lennon oversaw the live mix of his sound collage, with numerous tape loops being played across a number of Abbey Road's tape machines.
All those different bits of sound and noise are all compiled. There were about 10 machines with people holding pencils on the loops - some only inches long and some a yard long. I fed them all in and mixed them live. I did a few mixes until I got one I liked.
Playboy, 1980
Lennon played a key role on the day, fading the various elements in and out in the control room. The following elements can be identified from the many that featured on the four-track master tape:
- George Martin saying 'Geoff, put the red light on', looped with heavy echo
- A choir accompanied by backwards violins
- Extracts from a symphony orchestral performance, edited and rearranged, and played backwards
- A repeated sample from the orchestral overdub for A Day In The Life, recorded on 10 February 1967
- A Mellotron, performed by Lennon and played backwards
- Various extracts from symphony and operatic recordings
- The final chord from Sibelius' Seventh Symphony
- High pitched humming by Yoko Ono
- Lennon and George Harrison whispering six times the phrase 'There ain't no rule for the company freaks'
Most memorable, however, is the recurring 'Number nine' announcement, culled from examination tapes made for the Royal Academy of Music, formerly stored at Abbey Road. The phrase appears sporadically throughout the track, faded in and out as a constant thread running through an otherwise chaotic creation.
Also on 20 June, Lennon, Ono and Harrison recorded a series of seemingly random statements. These included Ono's 'You become naked'; Lennon's 'Industrial output, financial imbalance, the Watusi, the Twist'; Harrison's mention of Eldorado; and Lennon's 'Take this brother, may it serve you well'.
The track used Abbey Road's STEED - single tape echo and echo delay - reverb system. During the live mix the delay ran out, and at 5'11" the sound of the tape being rewound can be heard.
Yoko was there for the whole thing and she made decisions about which loops to use. It was somewhat under her influence, I suppose. Once I heard her stuff - not just the screeching and the howling but her sort of word pieces and talking and breathing and all this strange stuff, I thought, My God, I got intrigued... so I wanted to do one. I spent more time on Revolution 9 than I did on half the songs I ever wrote. It was a montage.
Playboy, 1980
A stereo mix of the song was made on 21 June, after a final set of sound effects were added by Lennon and Harrison. The following day the track was completed, with an edit taking its running time down from 9'05" to 8'12".
When released on the White Album, Revolution 9 was preceded by two further recordings. The first of these was an ad-libbed Paul McCartney song commonly known as Can You Take Me Back, taped during the 16 September session for I Will. The 28-second snippet was edited from the full 2'21" version.
The second recording, from an unknown session, featured Apple's office manager Alistair Taylor apologising to George Martin for forgetting to bring him a bottle of red wine.
Taylor: ...bottle of claret for you if I'd realised. I'd forgotten all about it George. I'm sorry.
Martin: Well, do next time.
Taylor: Will you forgive me?
Martin: Mmm, yes.
Taylor: Cheeky bitch.
These two snippets were added during a 24-hour session which spanned 16 and 17 October, in which The Beatles prepared the final running order, crossfades and edits for the White Album.
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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...