It was fifty years ago today...
...
...
...at the beginning of August 1966 that the Beatles released 'Revolver' upon an expectant world. England had just won the World Cup, the weather in the streets was summery and love was in the air.
Their 7th LP in less than four years, 'Revolver' was an album that perfectly captured the zeitgeist that was stirring from London to San Francisco. To this thirteen-year old it was both the fabbest and the coolest musical statement and for the record I still consider it probably the finest album ever made by anyone, anywhere, anyhow (with Jefferson Airplane's 'After Bathing At Baxter's' a close second.)
Its fourteen tracks are all wonderful compositions in themselves; as a collection, I think they are unsurpassed. Combining an anti-establishment stance ("Taxman") with wry social observation ("And Your Bird Can Sing", "Doctor Robert") and existential questing ("I'm Only Sleeping", "She Said, She Said", "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Tomorrow Never Knows") plus some of the band's most vibrant love songs ("Good Day Sunshine", "Here, There and Everywhere") and moving statements on the human condition ("Eleanor Rigby", "For No One"), the Beatles really nailed the yin and the yang for us proto-hippies.
'Revolver' also took popular music to a new pinnacle of artistic achievement and to my mind was a greater advance of the medium than was made with its more lauded successor, 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' For 'Revolver' was the album that changed everything (as the critics are wont to say), that turned pop music into rock music into art, no less. It was also the fanfare which heralded the dawn of a golden age and I still get an echoing sense of that boundless optimism whenever it is played.
The phrase "tomorrow never knows" is a runic Ringoism, a bit of colloquial phraseology in the same Scouse vein as "eight days a week" and "a hard day's night". John Lennon bagged it as the title to the song that closes out the album, a ground-breaking psychedelic raga that tilts at being the musical mimesis of a meditative trance.
Revolver Redux
1-2-3-4
When I was a boy
Everything was right
But all those words they slip away.
I took a ride
I didn't know what I would find there
All the lonely people
Running everywhere at such a speed.
My head is filled with things to say
A lifetime is so short
A new one can't be bought
To lead a better life
Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void.
...
...at the beginning of August 1966 that the Beatles released 'Revolver' upon an expectant world. England had just won the World Cup, the weather in the streets was summery and love was in the air.
Their 7th LP in less than four years, 'Revolver' was an album that perfectly captured the zeitgeist that was stirring from London to San Francisco. To this thirteen-year old it was both the fabbest and the coolest musical statement and for the record I still consider it probably the finest album ever made by anyone, anywhere, anyhow (with Jefferson Airplane's 'After Bathing At Baxter's' a close second.)
Its fourteen tracks are all wonderful compositions in themselves; as a collection, I think they are unsurpassed. Combining an anti-establishment stance ("Taxman") with wry social observation ("And Your Bird Can Sing", "Doctor Robert") and existential questing ("I'm Only Sleeping", "She Said, She Said", "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Tomorrow Never Knows") plus some of the band's most vibrant love songs ("Good Day Sunshine", "Here, There and Everywhere") and moving statements on the human condition ("Eleanor Rigby", "For No One"), the Beatles really nailed the yin and the yang for us proto-hippies.
'Revolver' also took popular music to a new pinnacle of artistic achievement and to my mind was a greater advance of the medium than was made with its more lauded successor, 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' For 'Revolver' was the album that changed everything (as the critics are wont to say), that turned pop music into rock music into art, no less. It was also the fanfare which heralded the dawn of a golden age and I still get an echoing sense of that boundless optimism whenever it is played.
The phrase "tomorrow never knows" is a runic Ringoism, a bit of colloquial phraseology in the same Scouse vein as "eight days a week" and "a hard day's night". John Lennon bagged it as the title to the song that closes out the album, a ground-breaking psychedelic raga that tilts at being the musical mimesis of a meditative trance.
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As poetic exercise this week, I've revisited the lyrics of those fourteen songs and fashioned what is effectively a cut and paste precis (not a pastiche) of the Beatles' "message" to the world circa 1966.
Revolver Redux
1-2-3-4
When I was a boy
Everything was right
But all those words they slip away.
I took a ride
I didn't know what I would find there
All the lonely people
Running everywhere at such a speed.
My head is filled with things to say
A lifetime is so short
A new one can't be bought
To lead a better life
Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void.
Well well well you're feeling fine
Stay in bed float upstream
Listen to the colour of your dreams
See the meaning of within
You may be awoken...
Love is all
Love never dies
And love is everyone.
(Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!)
Stay in bed float upstream
Listen to the colour of your dreams
See the meaning of within
You may be awoken...
Love is all
Love never dies
And love is everyone.
(Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!)
Thanks for reading. Have a groovy week, S :-)