Notes and Quotes: "Revolution"

Lennon had originally proposed this as a slower bluesy performance and the Beatles recorded a version that way. (It appears on The Beatles.) However, Martin and the others thought it unsuitable as a single, so Lennon returned with a sped-up version.

Lennon's non-violent comments on an increasingly violence-obsessed left, interpreted by the left as meaning that the Beatles (and Lennon in particular) had rejected their struggle against "the establishment."

Martin and Emerick purposely distorted the guitars by plugging them directly into the recording console and overloading the signal to create a rougher sound.

The measure count here is in twos, rather than fours, to accommodate the uneven phrase lengths. Consciously or not, the phrase lengths reflect the same rough feel that Lennon sought to achieve with the guitar sounds and his voice.

You can read my blog on this recording and the summer of 1968 at Oxford University Press Blog.

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23 April, 2012