1966 - The Beatles escape the madness of the road to create Revolver

The Beatles in '66

"You clink a couple of glasses together, or take bleeps from the radio, then you loop the tape to repeat the noises at intervals."

By 1966, the Beatles' music was starting to reflect their indulgence in marijuana and LSD. The extra time the band would have in the studio led to a much greater level of experimentation. The first fruits of this psychedelic vision appeared on Revolver in August 1966. It has come to be seen as their high point, musically. 

The band had begun recording sessions in the Spring of 1966, at a time when they were still playing live. They played their final show on August 29 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, concluding that they were stagnating as a band because they couldn't be heard above the screaming.

In his interview for the 20th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine, George Harrison said he had wanted to stop touring in 1965.

The NME's reappraisal in 1976

"I was getting very nervous. They kept planning these ticker-tape parades and I was saying I absolutely do not want to do that. I didn't like the idea of being too popular."

On one occasion, he said the Beatles landed in Houston. "There were thousands of kids - and four policemen. The kids were actually running along the runway. The pilot brought the plane to a stop and within minutes they were all over the outside of the plane, knocking on the windows and all over the wings. It was ridiculous."

The retrospective review of Revolver by the NME's Steve Clarke in 1976 (pictured here - click on it to read the clipping) reflects a growing appreciation of it as "their most listenable and durable work".

Revolver was still largely a Lennon and McCartney show, but George was tangibly more involved at this point, contributing three songs including the opening track 'Taxman' - "a tight, spare rocker," said the NME. Clarke notes how the band had evolved as players, with Paul's bass lines being "vibrant and imaginative" and the guitars harder and louder.

In the mid 60s, the majority of vinyl albums were still released principally in mono. Stereo was emerging but for bands like The Beatles it was still an afterthought. There were mono and stereo versions of Revolver released and the mixes were often very different between the two formats. 

For example, on Taxman, the mono version gives more prominence to the bass guitar and John's rhythm guitar has more attack. A cowbell appears prominently in mono but is buried in the stereo version. 

While John's songs reflected his increasingly cerebral preoccupations, Paul's work on Revolver showed a classic songwriter in the making. Songs such as Here, There and Everywhere, For No One and Eleanor Rigby would become standards covered by many other artists.

Eleanor Rigby is such a unique but assured piece of work, really one of their best compositions - probably more Paul than John but once again proof of their potency as a writing partnership. 

The psychedelia is turned up a notch for John's 'I'm Only Sleeping', with its dreamy feel the result of vari-speeding of the vocals and rhythm track, and some 'backwards' guitar (actually written out backwards and played as a melodic run by George).

The Fabs pay the price for standing up Imelda

World tours interrupted the sessions. On one leg of the tour, in the Philippines, the band failed to attend a reception arranged for them at the Presidential Palace by Imelda Marcos. "I'm very pleased to say that we never went to see those awful Marcoses," said George. 

"They sent people out there to beat us up. We couldn't even get a car ride to the airport. After half the people with us were beaten up, we finally got on the plane. Then they wouldn't let it take off. They announced that Brian Epstein and our road manager Mal Evans would have to get off the plane. 

"We sat there for what seemed like eternity. Finally they got back and they let the plane go. But they took all the money we earned at the concerts from us."

George and sitar master Ravi Shankar

On their return from Manila, The Beatles made their first brief visit to India, where George pursued his interest in the sitar, first used on Rubber Soul's Norwegian Wood. This resulted in the Indian raga-influenced track 'Love You To'. 

It is the wide variety of styles and the sheer quality of the songs that is so remarkable about Revolver. Even Yellow Submarine was "perfectly in tune with Ringo's persona," said Clarke. "It's simplicity was engaging, rather than dumb."

Yellow Submarine certainly captured the imagination of a younger audience. I started junior school in the Autumn of 1966 and one of my abiding memories is sitting next to the window in my classroom and hearing a young pre-schooler in his back garden singing "We all live in a Yellow Submarine" over and over again. 

The American version was significantly shorter

Three tracks from the Revolver sessions - I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing and Dr. Robert were omitted from the North American release of Revolver, having been used on a US release 'Yesterday..And Today'. This definitely spoils the flow of the album for those of us who were used to the UK original release. 

Yellow Submarine aside, there was a maturity about the songwriting and the subject matter. The extra time in the studio allowed the band to work on arrangements and to get the bass and drums sounding more solid. Most importantly, it gave them the freedom to experiment, which culminated in the album's final statement, Tomorrow Never Knows.

Ringo created an iconic drum track

This was where the various influences - psychedelia, Indian raga, electronic music, came together. It starts with a drone and Ringo's drum pattern, which is absolutely essential to the atmosphere and feel of the song. The seagull-like noise is a distorted and sped up guitar. John said he wanted the vocals to sound like he was singing from a Himalayan mountain top.

There is all manner of sound effects, sped up and run backwards - primitive stuff by today's standards, but an act of true artistic creation in the context of the very basic analogue recording techniques they had at their disposal.

The willingness to not only try new ideas, but work out a way of getting the required sounds, is credited to Geoff Emerick, then just 20 years old and newly installed as The Beatles engineer, working under producer George Martin's direction. 

According to Mark Lewinsohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, "Geoff walked in green, but because he knew no rules, tried different techniques. The chemistry of George Martin and Geoff was perfect. With another producer and engineer, things would have turned out quite differently."

The Beatles all had their own home tape machines and Emerick recalled that Paul in particular would come into studio 3 at Abbey Road with little reels of tape saying 'listen to this'.

"We did a live mix of all the loops," remembered George Martin. "All over the studios we had people spooling them onto machines with pencils, while Geoff did the balancing. There were many other hands controlling the panning". 

This was a performance in itself. "I laid all the loops onto the multi-track recorder and played the faders like a modern-day synthesiser," said Emerick.

The solution to John's request to sound like the Dalai Lama on top of a mountain was to feed his vocal through a Leslie speaker. "It meant breaking into the circuitry," said Emerick. "I remember the surprise on our faces when the voice came out of the speaker. After that, they wanted everything shoved through the Leslie!"

The lyrics left no doubt as to the direction The Beatles were headed.

But listen to the colour of your dream
It is not living
It is not living

In the 1970s, after their break-up, the Beatles were still held to be at the pinnacle of pop music. The 1975 list of the 100 greatest albums, voted on by the writers of the NME, had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band  at number one, Blonde on Blonde at two, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds at three and Revolver at four. 

Sometime in the 1980s, this hierarchy changed and Revolver eclipsed Sgt. Pepper, to judge from lists compiled of the greatest all-time records. 

In 1985, hipsters had hijacked the NME listings, placing John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album at number 9, two places above Revolver. (Yeah, right. I mean, come on). And Sgt. Pepper? Nowhere to be seen in the '85 top 100.

But by 1993, a degree of sanity had been restored to the NME writers' list, with Revolver up to Number 2 behind Pet Sounds. Sgt. Pepper was back in at 33.

It's all down to personal taste, of course, but it's hard to disagree with the view that Revolver is their high point, when you consider the scale of their musical maturity in 1966.

However, this new mature and experimental sound was something many Beatles fans found less appealing. This was a long way from "She Loves You, yeah yeah yeah!" though it would be a few more months before their loyalty was severely tested.

The following year, during the making of Sgt. Pepper, a Life Magazine profile noted that the group "are stepping far ahead of their audience," but the possibility of losing support "does not bother them in the least."

Elsewhere on this blog:

LIFE magazine reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles', 1967

Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?
 
At Home With the Lennons, 1967

A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's artistic peak in the 1960s 

Neil Finn - New Zealand's own Beatle

Neil Finn is almost certainly New Zealand's greatest popular music export. For the sheer quality of his songwriting over a 40-year career, there's no one to touch him. Finn is New Zealand's Paul McCartney, the creator of a great many memorable tunes, including 'I Got You' for Split Enz, 'Don't Dream It's Over', 'Weather With You' and many others for Crowded House.

Me with Neil messing about on the river in 2008

Comparisons with McCartney are not so far-fetched. Neil's melodies are clearly influenced in some ways by The Beatles and Neil is a big fan of Paul. On my one meeting with Neil, on a boat cruise along the River Thames in 2008, he talked about McCartney and in particular how much he loved the album 'Ram', Paul's 1971 solo album. 

In his solo career, Neil has also collaborated with his brother Tim and American songwriters such as Shawn Colvin, Jeff Tweedy and Wendy & Lisa. 

 

I first saw Neil live in 2001, just a few weeks after my family and I had emigrated to New Zealand. He was promoting a new solo album, One Nil, which featured songs he had created with Prince's former associates Wendy & Lisa. It's a great album and you can hear the positive influence that Wendy & Lisa had on his music. I wish he had done more work with them. The Beatle influences are there too, on songs such as Wherever You Are, Last To Know, and Turn And Run. The whole album is rich in melody and harmony, it deserves to be better known.

The live shows in Auckland to promote One Nil, at the St James Theatre, were billed as '7 Worlds Collide, Neil Finn & Friends', featuring Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Johnny Marr from The Smiths, with Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway from Radiohead. Neil was clearly very comfortable in this collaborative setting and the concept was extended in 2008 when he convened a second '7 Worlds Collide' project. 

This yielded the double CD 'And The Sun Came Out'. Singing and songwriting contributions were divided amongst the group, which featured Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of Wilco, Radiohead's Phil Selway, Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall and New Zealand songwriters Don McGlashan and Bic Runga. 

I mentioned to Neil when I met him on the Thames that I have enjoyed these collaborations, including the work with Wendy & Lisa, almost as much as his regular solo gig and the Crowded House albums. He said it was all part of keeping things fresh and interesting, for him as much as for the listener. 

When Crowded House reformed in 2007, I saw them play at Hyde Park in London. The show was notable for the fact that when they played 'Weather With You' Neil was rapping with the crowd about how the sun was shining in Hyde Park, while it was raining at Glastonbury - huge cheers. Soon enough, the dark clouds loomed overhead. A little later, after Neil had told the black clouds to go away (he didn't say it as politely as that..) the heavens opened.

I've seen him a few times since then, on the boat in London, playing with his wife and son Liam as the group 'Breakfast Club' - and back in Auckland with Tim when they had an album out together. 

Then he joined Fleetwood Mac in 2018, which came right out of the blue. He wouldn't have been on anyone's list of people likely to replace Lindsey Buckingham - except for the one person who mattered, Mick Fleetwood. 

Here's TVNZ's interview with Neil about how he got the gig.

When the live shows were announced for Auckland, I grabbed some tickets, mainly because I wanted to see Neil coming home to play in NZ. 

And it was emotional. On the Thursday night, the first of four shows at Auckland's Spark Arena, Fleetwood Mac - with NZ boy Neil Finn fronting them - put on a great show. From the moment he first engaged the crowd with "Kia ora, Auckland!" and launched into a hearty version of 'Second Hand News' it was clear Neil was fired up for this homecoming. 

He got a lovely reception from his home crowd and it really was emotional to see him fronting the Mac, belting out the Split Enz classic ‘I Got You’ and the wonderful ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ - watch this clip:

In their between-song chat, Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks showed the utmost respect for Neil, his songs and what they meant to audiences around the world. Referring to 'Don't Dream It's Over', Fleetwood said, "Many years ago, I heard the most beautiful song. I had no idea who was singing it ... or from whence they came ... but it stayed right in my heart and all these years later, we play it together, now with a dear, dear friend of mine, who came from these parts here."

What a proud moment.

Here are two different views of 'I Got You' in Auckland:
Part 1

and Part 2