From the garage band simplicity of their first couple of albums to the more refined folk rock of their next few, and on to the genuine sophistication of Rubber Soul, the first half of The Beatles' career was a constant succession of progressions.
Revolver still seemed to come from left field. Yes, they'd monkeyed a bit with strings on "Yesterday", non-romantic themes on "Nowhere Man", and non-Western instruments on "Norwegian Wood", but never before had The Beatles unleashed their imaginations as they did on Revolver. They not only moved beyond traditional love songs for most of the LP, but they also dared to take on such controversial topics as drugs, religion, politics, and their own fracturing psyches. They sang songs for cynics, freaks, proto-Goths, anti-government types, hypersomniacs, mystics, wasteoids, toddlers, and bird owners. They ran their tapes backward, hired full horn and string sections, swapped instruments a bit, and blew bubbles into buckets of water. They gleefully danced from genre to genre--now hard rock, now folk rock, now chamber music, now raga, now kiddies' ditties, now acid rock, now ragtime, now soul, now crazed psychedelia--and somehow never sounded self-conscious taking such unabashedly artsy risks.
So it's a gas that UMe/Apple decided to pick up here with its Special Edition Beatles Box campaign after hitting a natural chronological terminal with last year's Let It Be set. The Powers That Be could have gone all the way back to the beginning for a Please Please Me set, but I doubt most Beatlemaniacs would be as excited for that as they are for a set devoted to the album that many folks now consider to be The Beatles' finest.
Giles Martin and Sam Okell's new stereo remix of Revolver leads this 4 LP/1 seven-inch/1 hardcover book set. Balance was always the problem with the hastily mixed original stereo version, and Martin and Okell predictably deal with that by centering key elements like bass and drums more often. The rhythm tracks of "Taxman", "Here, There, and Everywhere", "She Said, She Said", "Good Day Sunshine", "I Want to Tell You", and "Got to Get You Into My Life" no longer huddle ineffectually in the left channel. The vocal of "Eleanor Rigby" no longer skids off to the right channel after the first verse has already begun, and the strings now spread across both channels (of course, Peter Cobbin had already made those moves back in 1999 for the Yellow Submarine Songtrack). For tracks that were already pretty balanced in '66 ("I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Dr. Robert"), there's just a bit more punch to the new mixes.
Some mixes are quite noticeably different from the originals. The various instruments of "Love You To" are better spread across channels, allowing you to hear all of those elements much clearer (a fuzzy guitar stands out in the right channel), and George's vocal is drier, making the new mix more detailed but a bit less exciting than the original. Interestingly, Martin and Okell opted for the quicker fade of the original stereo mix rather than the mono mix's longer one. Same goes for "Got to Get You Into My Life".
"Yellow Submarine" retains its mono touches, such as the guitar and bass drum accompanying its opening notes (though I prefer the naked vocal of the original stereo and Yellow Submarine Songtrack remix) and the entirety of John's echoing vocal on the final verse.
Organ is more audible in "She Said, She Said". Bass is much less audible in "For No One", but the piano and clavichord split into opposite channels, making them more distinct. Martin and Okell do the same for the guitar tracks of "Dr. Robert". The tape loops of "Tomorrow Never Knows" are a bit muted and now travel across channels but are still allowed to play out fully as they do in the original stereo mix, as opposed to the shorter intrusions on the original mono LP (which is also included in this set). In one instance, it seems like an error was added to a track: a resonating cymbal clips out before the a capella coda of "Good Day Sunshine" with an audible ziiiip.
The two LPs of sessions, tidily titled Revolver Sessions, offer a lot more than the early takes and backing tracks usually referred to as "sessions" in fancy box sets like this. There's a demo for "She Said She Said" and several alternate mixes: "I'm Only Sleeping" with different backwards guitar additions than any previously released version, "Love You To" with prominent falsetto harmonies from Paul throughout, "Yellow Submarine" with Ringo's excised spoken introduction and a cavalcade of additional sound effects, "Dr. Robert" with an extra bridge and prominent percussion and drums through the bridges, and a mono mix of "Tomorrow Never Knows" with the tape loops mixed louder and playing out as they do in the stereo mix. This is the mix that should have been on the original mono Revolver LP and probably the best mix of John's psychedelic milestone I've ever heard.
Most fascinating is a series of tracks devoted to "Yellow Submarine" that reveal the song's progression from a haunting waltz-time Lennon demo with the refrain "no one cared" to a collaboration with Paul that finds its footing as the children's tune we all know and whistle. This is the clearest document of Lennon and McCartney's songwriting process I've heard, and it's incredibly valuable for that.
As for the alternate takes and backing tracks, this stuff is pretty amazing too. We hear a spooky early take of "I'm Only Sleeping" and an amusingly upbeat later take (the intention was to slow it down by reducing the tape speed for the album). We hear "Love You To" stripped down to George's voice and acoustic guitar and Paul's harmony. We hear "And Your Bird Can Sing" in three totally unique ways: once in the jangly early incarnation originally released on Anthology 2 but without that mix's stoned giggling, once with the giggling but also an edgier lead guitar than that of the Anthology mix, and once as a version closer to the released one but with a bluesier feel and walking bassline. We hear a truly fabulous, scaled down version of "Got to Get You Into My Life" without brass but with very different backing vocals and gnarly guitar lines throughout--Paul's "ode to pot" as hard rocker rather than rubber soul.
Only "Good Day Sunshine" is not represented on Revolver Sessions, but the "Paperback Writer" b/w "Rain" single from the same period is represented both on Sessions and an accompanying seven-inch with new stereo and original mono mixes. The backing track of "Rain" at its original speed (it was slowed down for the single to achieve a dronier effect) on Sessions is quite astonishing, McCartney and Starr sounding more like Entwistle and Moon.
We also hear most of the terrific alternates originally released on Anthology 2, though mostly in different mixes: spacious, vastly different early versions of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Got to Get You Into My Life", an alternate mix of "Taxman" with those "anybody got a bit of money?" harmonies and a cold ending, a brief snatch of "I'm Only Sleeping" with eerie cocktail-lounge vibes, and, as previously noted, that weedy version of "And Your Bird Can Sing". Although the "Eleanor Rigby" backing track from Anthology 2 is not here, the backing track of an alternate take with more legato strings is. The only glaring absentee is the folky first take of "I'm Only Sleeping", which I would have preferred to any of the other versions of that song actually included on Revolver Sessions.
The vinyl is mostly flat and spindle holes are mostly well-centered (LP 1 of Sessions is slightly off but sounds fab), but the discs might need a little cleaning. The mono LP is the only one that wasn't totally flat, and it has some sibilance.
The book is excellent with lots of pics and track-by-track details with lots of technical information about the sessions' myriad innovations, short intros by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin, and a long personal essay by Roots/Tonight Show Band drummer Questlove that's a little silly at times (he seems very impressed with himself for selecting Revolver as his favorite Beatles album while "snobs" prefer Abbey Road and "The White Album") but also rather endearing, as when he relays a tale about trying to clear the floor at a DJ gig by playing "Love You To", which has quite the opposite effect. Klaus Voorman, who created what I will go to my grave insisting is the best album cover of all time, also contributes a charming, sketched comic about his involvement in the project.
And that's it for complements for and complaints about a set that mostly gets it right, down to the fact that the vinyl box once again follows the CD one to a T. I'm still hoping for vinyl reissues of the complete Sgt. Pepper's and "White Album" sets, but for now I'll just wait for that Rubber Soul set rumored to be coming down Abbey Road next year.
