The Beatles' 'Revolver' (Side 2): Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history a little known facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We are your tax men of trivia, your captains of the Yellow Submarine, the pop culture podcast hosts who are truly bigger than Jesus. My name is Georgian Muntalk. Wow, that gota that got an authentic hoot out of you? Well, I didn't know. Why are you putting that in there? It's a reference. And I'm Alex Heagle and we are back for the second installment of our two part episode about the Beatles six album Revolver, which is currently the subject of a massive five disc box set reissue overseen by Giles Martin, son of legendary Beatles producers so George Martin, and steward of the band's recorded legacy. Last episode we explored Side of This, my favorite album of all time, and today we are taking a look at Side too, which has some of my favorite Beatles songs. Ever, what do you think I go there? Any standouts for you? Andrew Berry can sing is probably my favorite from this Um Wow, that's to me. That's like a relatively deep cut. Oh so good. Look, you know I love Thin Lizzie. It makes sense. The harmony, guitars on the guitar harmony, this is like kind of ground zero for that style of guitar playing. And I really look for no one man. I think that song is just a stating song, so just beautiful, and the rest I really love. I know, you know what I tell you. I love Joe Pesci's Rendition of God to con In into my life. Yeah, man, that albums laughs. Somebody sent it to me and I wasn't even gonna dignify it by listening to it, and then I put it on and I forgot because he grew up with the Four Seasons guys, so he has a musical background. Yeah, it's pretty good. Check it out. It's on it. Pesci's got pipes, Yeah, little joke sure can sing. Yeah. Yeah, Oh my god. He does the fool Hill fixing a hole. It's all beats, it's it's a lot he does just to love. Somebody does the Peaches song. Oh dude, that would probably like actually crush me hearing Joe Pesci. I love that song. Well, did not expect that we'd get into a Joe Pesci detour this early episode. Well, I was lucky enough to interview Giles Martin about this reissue and I wrote about it for a pretty lengthy deep dive on people dot com. The Magic Circle Why the Beatles Revolver is a monument to the collaborative spirit. But if you're ento reading more about this era and Beatles history, which if you've come back for a second episode about this, I'm guessing you are. I have several things that I love to turn you onto. There's a fantastic website that isn't being talked about enough called Beatle's Books dot com, and they offer these insanely thorough track by track storey worrias of every song. It makes our research looks superficial. It's insane. Check that site out. If you're a Beatle nerd, you'll get lost on it for days. I have to tip my hat to the writer of I think all the pieces on that site, Dave Rabazuski is I think, how you say his name? Incredibly talented writer. Uh. They're Steve Turner's amazing book Beatles sixty six, which is a gripping and throw account of the most interesting and pivotal year in the Beatles career. Um Also, I think it's the most fascinating year in music history period. Mark Lewison's day by day books of their career are astounding. Anyone in the Beatles realm knows and loves Mark Lewison. He's the top rob. Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles is absolutely brilliant, as is all the Beatles stuff he does for Rolling Stone. Whenever there's anything new in the way of Beatle releases, he's always the first one I look to. Corey grow also at Rolling Stone did a fantastic deep dive review on this box set, as did Dorian Lynsky at The l A Times. UH. In the realm of podcasts, I cannot gush enough about the One Sweet Dream podcast by the wise, wonderful, brilliant talent to Diana Ericsson. Her series coming through Maurine Cleave's profiles of each of the Beatles in early six is so incredibly engaging and insightful and really changed my views on so many things as related to the band. Uh. It's a great way to learn where their heads are at as they entered the studios in April of nineteen sixty six to make Revolvers, so definitely check out her One Sweet Dream podcast. Anyway, enough nursery, it is time to dive in. We have so much to get to that I'm not even gonna give any teaser facts. If you want to get the album queued up and listen to each song as we go, please go right ahead. I hope we'll give you new things to notice and appreciate as you listen. So turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream as we dive in. Here's everything you didn't know about Side two of The Beatles Revolver it is not dying. Before we dive back into the track list, I just wanted to give a quick nod to the packaging that contains these sounds, starting with the title Revolver Revolvers, the Beatles album I think might have the most alternative title options that were floating around. There were some jokey ones that were nod too, recent albums by artists they admire. The Rolling Stones had recently released their album after Math, so Ringo suggested after Geography, I wish they would have gone with that one. A lot of the greatest records of all times as being a jokey pun on a Rolling Stones record. Come on, but I mean pet sounds a terrible album title cover. Yeah, it probably would have been imbued with all sorts of meeting and mythology if they've done after geography is pretty terrible, but it's hilarious. Uh. They also had Beatles on Safari, which I think was an honor of the Beach Boys album Surfing Safari. Uh. They also all love the Freewill and Bob Dylan album. They said that was the album that really got them in the Dylan so they batted around the Freewheel and Beatles, which is also pretty good. Only if it's all four of them walking down the street with like one of them arm in arm, like Susie Rode in drag, that would have gotten at the heart of like George Harrison's Monty Python thing. I like, it's it's two of them and then the other two are in drag as Susie Rodola. But in all honestly, I can't imagine that any of these album titles were seriously considered. The editor of The Beatles Monthly magazine was with the band in their hotel room during the German leg of their tour in late June. Nineteen sixty six, as they brainstormed album titles, Pendulums was one that was considered, and fat Man and Bobby now we're talking. Yeah, an early favorite was aber Cadabra, but it turned out that another band had taken that title, which I think title uh later, Yeah, you know that, Steve Miller. In nineteen sixty nine, the Beatles had a big fight in the studio when the rest of the band We're trying to get Alan Klein to manage him, and Paul didn't want to and he stormed out or no, the rest I think the rest of the band left him and he was just alone in the studio and he ran into Steve Miller who was also in the studio, and he recorded a song with Steve Miller in nineteen sixty nine called My Dark Hour. He's playing drums on it, and it was they recorded it together like as Paul's like heartbroken, realizing that the band might not make it because they just left him alone in the studio. As with many of us, Steve Miller is there at our darkenest to pick up the pieces. So Aberca Daver was out keeping on the theme of magic, Paul put forth the title Magic Circle, which I think is a really cool title, kind of mythologizes, you know, the vinyl LP. But John gave it a characteristically surreal twist. He called it four Sides of the Circle. Actually, that's a pretty good title. He continued to tinker, and it wasn't until the morning of July two, nineteen sixty six, when they were at the Tokyo Hilton for their shows at the Buddha Coan, that they telegram their label em I and inform them that the title of their upcoming record would be Revolver. It's a pun records revolve, but also in between the two rs on either side of the word, you have evolved in the center, which I think is cool. I love the art for this, I love the class form and stuff. Yeah yeah, basis to a bit Yes, yes, Yes, played on a lot of John Lennon stuff. Um. The cover art done by Clauss Form and it was a dear friend of the Beatles since they're Hamburg days. He lived with Georgian Ringo and their shared band apartment after John and Paul moved out, I guess right. When he first moved to London, went to work as a musician and Paul later said during the Beatles anthology, we knew he drew and he had been involved in graphic design. I must admit we didn't really know what he did, but he'd been to college. We knew he must be all right, so we said, why don't you come up with something for the album cover? And I guess Klaus was in the process taking over the base spot in the band Manfred Mann of Doua did he fame? Uh? And that spot had recently been vacated by Jack Bruce, who was leaving the Join Cream with Eric Clapton. So in the shuffles he's in the midst of joining this new band. Klaus very nearly declined to take on the assignment, but he went for it anyway. Uh. Class Warman's kind of directive was he wanted to come up with something that was visually convey how different these sounds were to anything the Beals have done before. And the black and white line drawing that he did bears the influence of this Victorian artist, Aubrey Beardsley, who was famous for his art nouveau pen and ink illustrations, and he was a subject of a big exhibit at London's Victorian Albert Museum in the summer of sixty six, so that may have been part of the inspiration for it. Hair obviously loomed large in the Beatles history, so that became the focal point of the illustration. Klaus asked the band to go through their personal photos to submit stuff for our collage that he assembled, which actually it would earn him up Grammy for Best Album Cover. Hilariously, Clouds Foreman was paid fifty pounds of the equivalent of a hundred and forty dollars, which was the maximum budget for an album cover in those days. Uh. He worked on it in his apartment for three weeks, and when the Beatles manager Brian Epstein first saw it, he reportedly wept, apparently because he thought it so beautifully captured their new music. You know who actually owns the original um artwork for Revolver George w Bush Joe Walsh, a friend of the Paul Joe Walsh Ringo's brother in law. Boy, just you wait till I get to my Joe Walsh segment later on. I can't, I don't don't tell me when it's coming. I want to be surprised. I don't know what it is or where it's gonna come from him, much like Joe Walsh himself. Okay, so now we are back onto the track list. We're on side to, which opens with your favorite Beatles song, good Day and Shine. Perhaps one of the least essential tracks on this album, but I've always loved it. It bears traces of the New York neo jug band The Lovin' Spoonful, whose recent hit Daydreams sparked McCartney's equally languid and luminous song. Uh. I always thought this was funny, I guess Love and Spoonful frontman John Sebastian was unaware that he had inspired this Beatles song for nearly twenty years, and when he found out, he thought it was really funny because he said that daydream was his attempt at copying the guitar part from Baby Love by The Supremes, which I can't really hear. I guess, do you believe in magic? Was heat Wave? No no no no no no no no no no no no no that I can kind of hear Baby Love? I can't. I was talking to this is just knowing the way to put this. I was talking to Giles Martin about some of the surprising influences on this album, and he invoked the famous Douglas Adams quote from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's an art to flying, or rather a knack the knack lies and learning how to throw yourself with the ground and miss, which is great. Uh. There's a similar phenomenon at play when great artists steal outright and therefore create something new inadvertently. You know. John Sebastian, thinking about the Supremes, came up with Daydream. Daydream inspired Good Day Sunshine, which I guess thematically are related, but doesn't really sound the same to me. So yeah, it's always interesting when you hear that people were inspired by something that is miles away from where they ended up. I love that. I'm just gonna let you punch yourself out at this section. I got there and made this song. I know, I know, unrelated, but sort of related. Did you know that John Sebastian and his fellow Love and Spoonful of bandmate was Alianowski were originally in a band called the Mugwumps with Cass Elliott and Denny Doherty, who would go on to be one half of the Mamas and the papas you may all those words up. And I actually watched the Beatles make their Red Sullivan debut at Mama Cass's apartment, being a fly on the wall there. John Sebastian from Love and Spoonful Mama Cass butts of the Beatles on Sullivan for the first time. I just think that's cool. It's cute. But Good Day Sunshine is a rare moment of brightness on what's otherwise a very dark album. As Beetle's Books notes, half the songs on the British track listing for Revolver have lyrics to contain the word death or die. But yeah, this was the era of Daydream and Summer in the City another Love and Spoonful song, and the Kinks Sunny Afternoon and Donovan had Sunshine Superman, so sunny songs are really in the air in the Summer of sixty six and Good Day Suncho. It is also kind of a throwback to those early kind of music hall soft shoot type numbers like on the Sunny Side of the Street always kind of seemed like the song that Paul would have written for, like you know, something that his dad would have enjoyed something like when I'm sixty four, or he wrote a Sinatra pastiche when he was a teen called Suicide, which when he later became famous. Sinatra reached out to Lennon McCartney and said, Hey, do you have any songs for me? And Paul got all excited. He dusted off the song that he wrote as a teen and sent it Sinatra, and Sinatra apparently never even got back to him. I guess Paul was like, yeah, he probably thought I was taking the piss because it was like not a good song. Well, Sinatra famously would introduce something at concerts as my favorite Lennon McCartney composition. So did you know that. I recently did an interview with Pattie Boyd and she told me that she and George were in the studio when Sinatra recorded My Way. One take went down in the studio for orchestra. He went down there, drunk, belted it, kind of belted it, came upstairs into the control room after the one take. Can we hear that back? All right? That's good, Let's go get a drink. That was and then they called him on Jack and Patty was like, wait a minute. Business when just after the Beatles have done like seven or eight months of doing the White album, and she was like, wait a minute, what one take. He was like, listen, Sugar, that's not out. Frank. Does it bring a ding dan to his third person? Yeah, well, of course listen Jackie calls. He calls patty boy Jack anyway, not mercifully for you. Not a lot to say about Good Day Sunshine. The recording was pretty uneventful, though apparently John sat this went out marketing yet another song that he didn't play an instrument on during the Revolver sessions. He didn't play on eleanor Rigby, he didn't play on Love YouTube, didn't play on Here, There and Everywhere, didn't play on for No One. And it's not totally certain if he played rhythm guitar and got to Get You Into My Life and he only added tambourines and handclaps, so I want to tell you so that's half the tracks on this album he might not have really played on, So that's interesting him. But yeah, there's not too much that's interesting about the recording, as evidenced by the fact that this is one of one of the first songs and any of these expansive reissue box sets that have no outtake material whatsoever. Paul I think originally plan to have a guitar solo in the song, at least outlined in the early lyrics manuscript, but he ultimately asked George Martin to throw in a jazzy piano solo that he recorded a half speed and sped it up to give it that honky tonk effect, which was similar to what he did for the solo on In My Life, although they'd speed it up to make it sound more like a baroque harpsichord piece. Adorably. Paul and his band played the song as a wake up call to the crew of the International Space Station in two thousand five, and mission specialist Rex Walheim said, people all around Earth love Paul McCartney's music, and boy, you can rest assured that people all above the earth love this music too. I would flush the oxygen out of this bass station if they did that to me. But now we are up to your favorite favorite and your bird can sing it's your favorite. But that's funny, because you know, I'm reminded of that great quote from Robert Chris Gal about the Eagles, and nothing can interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them. Another thing interests me about and Your Bird Can Sing is that John hates it. He's so good, he hates it. He's referred to it as another horror in the nineteen seventy one interview with Hit Parader, and his feelings hadn't softened by eighty when he described it to Playboy as quote another of my throwaways. But Paul really likes it, and it's apparently a favorite of Slashes too. Anybody who loves guitarist has to love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's you know, without getting into a complete digression on the use of harmony guitars or guitarmony, if you were guitarmony, if you oh yeah, I mean Keith Rochus has talked a lot about how the guitar parts to Chuck Barry's stuff. We're supposed to sound like stacked horn voicings, stacked in fourths. But you get a lot of these third id guitar harmonies that start popping up around this time. I mean, Guitar World no less an authority than Guitar World magazine. I das this is sort of the well spring for bands like Almond brothers who would in a few years be doing extensive harmonized leads along with Leonard Skinnered. I mentioned Joe Wall I mentioned friend of the pod Joe Walshirlier. Uh. Joe Walsh apparently was so obsessed with this song that he became a local legend growing up by learning how to play that solo, that harmonized solo by himself, never knowing that it was in fact two of them I and didn't learn until years later that it was harmony. And he often said, I'm the only person who can do that in the world, including George Yeah if I see if. When John had a particular rhythm pattern, they wanted Ringo to play and he played him a song that kind of demonstrated what he was talking about, and Ringoes it was like John, John, there's two drummers on that track. John's like, oh, oh, don't don't worry about that. Did you do you know about the seven levels things? Speaking of acid? Pot? But yeah pot sorry, yeah, yeah. Um. They were smoking weed with Bob Dylan the first time as as as many of us does who among us? And uh? Paul Paul McCartney said that he knew the secret of life and he told Matt Evans to write it down and they showed it to him. It just contained the line there are seven levels. I mean, the best part is I forget if it was in the anthology or in the Barry Miles book many years from now. Paula doubles down and he was like, well, you know, it's actually like kind of insciple because there's a lot of like Eastern religions. That is absolutely the paul response to that, Here's some stoned bullshit that I will try and justify later. H Man. Incredible. Anyway, I think the songs are great. I don't know what. I don't know what. Uh, you know, I don't know he's talking about. They were going for like the kind of the birds thing on this, you know. We um we talked a lot about how mcgwin and Crosby were hanging out with them. Um supposedly turned George onto Robbie Shankar. But that isn't It's so funny because mcgwinn was supposedly turned on to pick up the twelve string after he saw George playing one with Hard Days night. Uh, And after they became buddies, mcgwyn goes over to George's house and holds that guitar posing for a picture with it, which is like a little polaroid. It's really cute, and he's like super adorable. It's like in the late eighties too, like he's not like young. It's like, yeah, it's cute. Uh. There's a documentary called McCartney three to one from last year where Rick Rubin makes the observation that the solo and this song sounds as if it has a bit of a Celtic flare, to which Paul says, we're Liverpool boys, and they say Liverpool is the capital of Ireland, so it's likely the solo is influenced. Sure, he said, we would just make up the solo in this case and then just learn the harmony on the solo and then play the two live. But that is a pretty simple way of describing a very complicated process. Uh. They spent twelve hours recording a version of this that they ultimately scrapped, which you can hear on the Super Deluxe set where it is labeled first version, Take two. Have you heard that? I'm really curious to see what you think about it, because this is the on this early version George uses is Rick and Bocker twelve string, and it really sounds like a bird song and it's it's very It sounds a lot more sixties in like a stereotypical way because he's using that come about the twelve string, but it sounds cool. It's a lot poppilier, no, I guess in the final version they moved to their casinos, which makes it a little less jangly. The Guitar World article I saw talk about this also being the ground zero for power pop as a movement, which again you can hear, I mean and within god, when did Big Star first come out? Seventy yeah, yeah, within seventy one, yeah, so yeah, within like four years, people were already doing the high harmonies and jangly guitars. John's an idiot. This song rules. I'm sorry, that's that's such a great tune. Anyway. Funny outtake why don't you take that part? Yeah, there's a funny outake that's included on the anthology and also on the new box set where John and Paul get the giggles uh sounds stone out of their minds to be honest, well, sharing a microphone to record the backing tracks and they're just owling with laughter for two straight minutes. We talked about it in the first part of this episode. It's so funny. It's impossible not to smile listening to them. It's just I said it in the first part of the episode. It's the most pure depiction of their friendship that I've ever heard on the record. They're just hooting. I think Rob Cheffield had a great line about just like laughing into each other's mouths on the mic that they're sharing. It's great. Yeah, I definitely listen to that. Uh. The exact meaning of this song is tricky because John never felt passionate enough about it to really deem it worthy of explaining. The most common explanations circulating among fans was that it was a pointed message to Mick Jagger, whose girlfriend, or in the parlance of swinging London bird Mary Anne Faithful, had started a singing career. It was also a really strange theory that the song is a digit friend of the pod. Frank Sinatra, who was I guess unkind about the Beatles in a recent interview that he'd get been with Esquire in which he bragged about being able to afford anything he wants, which is you know something that's a theme or line in the song, and adding to the supposed evidence, he repeatedly uses the word bird during this interview, uh, seemingly in reference to his uh, his his genitals. I guess like cock. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even think about that. People call him hogs back then. No, really really, and I was seventeen. I had a very good hog. So I did it my hog. Oh that's ludicrous, So that's all interesting. The likely explanation is that John is addressing an unknown and possibly non existent upper class woman who seems to have everything, and the title phrase is just merely hyperbole. You have all of the US and more always and your bird can sing. But then comes the repeated line you don't get me, which was apparently the original title of the song, one of the many instances of John in song talking about feeling misunderstood, like in Strawberry Fields, nobody I think is in my tree? Nobody? You know. It's basically no way of saying nobody gets me, which is a frequent thing that he would talk about in interviews about how he was a little kid he just felt like he was different than everybody. Up next is for no one One of the most devastating songs and the entire Beatles can and in terms of pure musical drama, it's not something like you know, the song Julia, where you have to know a bit of the back story or anything like that. It's just purely just the information that's given to you in the song. Undoubtedly inspired by Paul's problems with his girlfriend Jane Asher, but you don't need to know any of that to be profoundly moved by the song. The second person perspective is really interesting and it's used a great effect, although they also did use it on She Loves You. I always saw for No One as the flip side of and I Love Her, and you can really draw a line from I Love Her to the things we said today too, I'm looking through you do you won't see me? And we can work it out too. For No One, Uh, they're really all songs about his disagreements and not seeing eye to eye with Jane ash or his girlfriend, But and I Love Her has the line I love like ours could never die, and the working title of for No One was why Did It Die? I think it's just very poignant. He wrote this song on a Swiss vacation with Jane. After learning to ski a bit during the filming for Help, he wanted to give it another go, and he says that he went off into the bathroom of his little Swiss chalet and wrote this song. So just a recap, he went off on a romantic holiday with his girlfriend and wrote one of the most devastating breakup songs of all time. Um and hilariously, he has a history of doing this wall on the occasion with Jane. He wrote the deeply unsettled Things We Said Today while on vacation in the Virgin Islands with Jane and Ringo and his future wife Maureen. And he also wrote the heartbreaking lyrics to Yesterday during a holiday with Jane and Portugal after wrapping filming for Help in May of nineteen. But yeah, the fact that he went off to write for No One in the toilet leads me to believe that he was seeking some kind of refuge after an argument and just went into the bathroom and locked the door and just hit out who among us? It really gives credence to the Runnels bit with Eric Idol writing the writing and I love you, I love you. He's on his honeymoon. She's just like boredly staring off into the distance. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, Paul is a great quote about for No One in the authorized biography Uh Many Years from Now, which was written with his friend Barry Miles. It's basically like a like a co authored autobiography. He said, I suspect for No One was about another argument I don't have easy relationships with women. I never have. I talked too much truth Linda. Linda was alive at the time, so I um. He elaborated on this in his new book Lyrics that came out in He said, it's a song about rejection, the breakup, or marking the end of a relationship that didn't work. It's always been quite a rich area to explore in a song. Having been through it a few times, as I suppose a lot of people have, it was an emotion I could relate to, and it seemed like a good idea to put into a song because probably a lot of other people could relate to it too. In the song, I'm talking about two people who have broken up. But obviously, as with any writer, it all comes from your own experience, and inevitably you're talking about yourself, and he goes on to speak directly about his girlfriend, Jane Asher, who he had been dating since the end of nineteen sixty three, and he lived in her family house upstairs and befriended her older brother Peter, who was one half of the pop duo Peter and Gordon, for whom he'd write a bunch of hits, the World Without Love being the most famous. Uh. Jane Asher was this glamorous actress who was in Alfie with Michael Caine and came from this upper class or respectable academic family. And so Paul and Jane Asher we're seeing as kind of like the power couple of Swinging London, him and um Mick Jagger and Maryanne Faithful, probably vying for the top spot. But Jane and Paul ultimately broke off their engagement in nine eight, and he elaborated about this as much as he ever would in the lyrics book. At the time, you think any love affair could or shoot, or would or will last forever unless it's a quick wham bam, thank you, ma'am, one night stand, thanks Paul. But when you're going out with someone, when it's your girlfriend and you've been with her for a reasonable amount of time. It's very different. Jane Asher and I were together for around five years, so at the back of my mind expected to marry her. But as the time got closer, I think I realized it wasn't right. You can't ever put your finger on it. But when Linda came along shortly after Jane and I broke up, I just thought, oh, I don't know, maybe this feels more right king of the understatement. And then when Linda and I got to know each other, I felt, this is more me, I'm more her. That's a beautiful way to put that. And there were little things with Jane that we felt just didn't match up. I love a lot of things about her, and I will always admire a lot of things about her. She's a wonderful woman, but a little bits of the jigsaw weren't quite fitting. It's a horrible moment when you've broken up with someone and you look at them this person used to be in love with or thought you were in love with, and none of that old feeling is there. It's like it just switched off too and it's not great to be on the receiving end of that supposedly end of him and Jane came when Jane came home early and found them in bed with an American woman named Francy Schwartz, who was trying to get a script sold the Beatles Corporate Free for all Apple. She claims that Paul and Jamee are already technically split. Understandably, I've never actually seen Paul talk about his relationship with this Francy woman, or really about his breakup with Jane any more than what I just quoted. But back to the song. I always loved the rhythm of the lyrics, how the first two lines in the verse, with these short declarations, as if he's just weary and groggy and depressed and trying to find the energy to say more. You know, she wakes up, she makes up, and then he final she takes her time, and and and then it pours out of him. But it takes in a minute to to rouse himself. And and just the way that the most explosive line in the song, her Love Is Dead, is just buried in the middle of a verse because the man in the song doesn't believe her, doesn't want to believe it. He's in denial, he's eluding himself. He thinks she needs him. Then the day breaks at the end of the song, and all the things that she said will fill your head and it's us the dawn on him. It's over, and you let her go, but you won't forget her. It's so good. I mean, something about the way this is written makes it almost seem like's the Harold Pinter Player or something. And Paul said that his nineteen seventy one solo song Another Day, his debut solo single, was sort of a sequel to for No One, the song about a woman getting ready and going about her boring day on her own. And yeah, I just I love Paul's little playlists. And I know that some of Paul's the tractors suggest that it makes him seem, you know, a bit phony, because it's it's not real man, you know. But I've always admired his eye like a novelist, on stuff like Another Day and Lovely Rita and eleanor Rigby and especially for No. One. And John loved it too, He called it one of his favorite tracks of Paul's. A nice piece of work, he said, And McCartney loved the Belgian surrealist Renee Ma Greet and not long after sessions for Eleanor Rigby. In April of nineteen sixty six, Paul went to Paris to purchase two of Magerite's oil paintings, and I think he actually end up buying Magreit's old easel that he paints on. Now he's a huge Magreek fan. And there's a quote from Magreet that really, to me seemed to perfectly sum up Paul's m O when it comes to some of the stuff he writes. Agreed said, I want to show reality in such a way that it evokes mystery. I look for poetry in the world of familiar objects. The past and present are united in the imagination. But who can explain such a poetic moment. I just feel like that's that's very Paul to me. I mean, even the line and Ellena Rugby wearing a face that she keeps in the jar by the door, that this to me, that that sounds like a Magreek painting. It sounds like the picture of the man on the ball or hat with the apple in front of his face or something like that. It's just it's something always very ordinary things given a little surreal twist. Like Penny Lane is another great example too. Anyway, I just love that it's Paul, this decent, straight seeming man who had the power to shock people with his sideways visions. I just I was always into that. And after you waxing deeply sincere on Paul's humanistic embraceive finally sketched portrait of humanity, let's talk about the time he nearly got into a little pissy match with one of London's top session musicians. Um Yeah, Ringo and Paul are the only Beatles who play on this song. Um. Paul plays uh piano and also an instrument belonging to George Martin called a clavichord, which is similar to the better known harpsichord harpsichord plus the strings. While a clavichord has metal tips at the end of its hammers. Um they hired a session player named Alan Sivil to play this French Horden part, and while he was writing the solo, George Martin was telling Paul about the range of the instrument so that he could know what kind of notes to work with. I mean, every you know, if you're playing piano or guitar, those are concert key instruments, and then every wind instrument has a range on it that is dictated by the very nature of the horn, and it can be difficult for people who write on concert pitch instruments to understand that. So Paul includes a note in this solo that is technically out of the range of the french horn. You know, it would be a reach for a player, but Alan Sivil made it. He literally played a note that the high note of that solo that should be out of reach for a French horn player. Paul was not impressed. Uh. In the Beatles and the Beatles anthology, George Martin said, Paul didn't realize how brilliantly Alan Sivil was doing. We got the definitive performance and Paul said, well, okay, I think you can do it better, can't you, Alan? And Alan nearly exploded. Of course he didn't do it better than that, And the way we'd already heard it was the way you hear it now. Uh. And he is credited on the album's sleeve, which was a rarity in that time for people doing session work. Um, but dangle Paul off the stairs of studio too by his ankles. I love the ideas this French horn player for like the London philarmonic. But he's this like East End tough who talks like the Gray Brother. Yeah, pulls out brass knuckles from his from his horn case and like pounds up the controls. Ray Winston, all right, Paul, I've ended up to him with your excuses. Uh. There there were no hard feelings though, because Alan Civil worked with the Beatles again in nineteen seven as one of the orchestra musicians. On a Day in the Life, I told you I'd be back. Pol'm gonna get my pound of flesh from you. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment, Joe, and tell us about Dr Robert. Yeah, not one of my favorite tracks on Revolver. In fact, I think it's probably my least favorite partial because I grew up with the American vinyl release version and Dr Robert wasn't on there. The American albums always shaved off. I think if the British albums usually had fourteen tracks, the American ones had eleven or twelve, and then the American record label would collect the ones that they shaved off the original British albums and release American only albums to try to squeeze a little more money out of their acts. So yeah, I I didn't really grow up hearing this song very much. And um, I don't know. To me, it seems like one of the songs, probably the only song on Revolver that could have been on an earlier Beatles albums said the same thing. It just has like a touch of the Mersey beat to it. There's nothing really like you know, it's a guitar basing drum song. Yeah, I don't know, something very complicated about it. I don't think it has a very good melody. It's it's a jokey song. I mean, this song has written about this drug pushing doctor, and Paul even said I think even at the time in the in the The Beatles the Authorized Biography book by Hunter Davis, I think he said, you know, Dr Robert's kind of like a joke. Um. So yeah, I don't know. It's just not one of my favorite songs. Well, it's noteworthy because it's one of the earliest overtly druggie songs from the band. You know, they have the line turned me on that pops up in the B side to the I Feel Fine single, She's a woman. That's the end of sixty four. And then of course Day Tripper in December sixty five is really pretty on the nose. But you know why, Uh. Bob Dylan when he went to go meet him in August sixty four and he the famous trip when he turned him on the marijuana, he thought they already smoked pot and they were like no, And he said, well, what do you mean? What about that line? And I want to hold your hand. Uh. It's such a feeling that my love I get high and they're like no, No, that was I was. It's such a feeling that my love I can't hide. So given that this clearly about a man with a liberal prescription guide, it earns the distinction of being one of the first undisguised songs about drug use in the Beatles. Cannon Uh John took to claiming that this song was actually about himself. Towards the end of his life. He said, I was the one that carried all the pills on tour and always have done well in the early days. Later on the roadies did it. We just kept them in our pockets loose in case of trouble. Paul, on the other hand, frequently said that it was about a doctor that who just kept New York high by dealing with or two high society Manhattan Heights. After years of speculation of the real life Dr Robert was idd in the authorized Paul McCartney biography Many Years from Now and his Name is Robert. Author Barry Miles says he was one Dr Robert Freeman, whose discreete East Street clinic was conveniently low hated for Jackie Kennedy and other wealthy Upper East Siders from Fifth Avenue and Park to stroll over for their Vitamin B twelve shots, which also happened to contain a massive dose of amphetamine. Dr Robert's reputation spread, and it was not long before visiting Americans told John and Paul about him. From miles description, this guy seems like quite the quite the proverbial character. Yeah. He was born in Germany and he was known as the Great White Father because of his hair. At least I hope that's why. Uh. He bragged about having quote probably a hundred famous names who come here, but was ultimately kicked out of the New York State Medical Society for what else, malpractice. Still, he didn't let that keep him down. He published a book called What's So Bad About Feeling Good? Before he died in nine seven. That's a great title for a book by doctor field Good. Paul denied that any of the Beatles ever visited Dr Robert in real life, which you know, and they were usually pretty open about their experimentations. I'm inclined to believe him, he said, As far as I know, neither John nor I ever went to the doctor for those kinds of things. But there was a fashion for it, and there still is. Change your blood and have a vitamin shot and you'll feel better. That means, I mean they're dentist, turn them onto acids. So I guess they did a different doctor for that they used to. I don't know if it was the Beatles. I know they're manager. Brian Epstein had a special discreet pill pocket tailored into all of his suits that he had made that he could just like discreetly reach into and I mean pocket. There's a photo in this Charles Mingus book of just him with a briefcase full of them with like straps. Yeah, Mingus and Brian Epstein backstage holding this little briefcase that's just like folds open and has like all these pill bottles. Um, this brings us to I want to tell you the third track by George on this record. This really blows my mind because apparently he submitted a fourth. Pre Eminent Beatles historian Mark Lewis and has claimed that the song Isn't It a Pity, which would later surface on George's All Things Must Pass album? One of my favorite records. Uh. That dates back to this period in sixty six and was initially offered up for considerational Revolver, but ultimately turned back down. He tried to revisit it during the White Album era, put it forward again during the Getback sessions, and said he considered offering it to Frank Sinatra. Uh, I can't see that working out. I can't believe that. Isn't It a Pity? Was rejected three times. Man, that sucks. All Things Must passed slaps? We should do one on that, actually, yeah, Um, do you want to read the Ladies tramp thing? Oh? Yeah, I mean we get all the Sinatra anectotesy fan in this episode, uh ringo for his wife Marine's birthday, got Sinatra. I guess she was a big Sinatra fan. Got Sinatra to record a new version of the Lady as a Tramp with new lyrics written by his longtime lyrics is Sammy Kahn Um Marines a Champ. He recorded this beautiful, hilarious song with lines like she married Ringo and she could have had Paul. That's why the Ladies a champ. And they had it pressed for her on a record for Marine's birthday. And it was right when Apple Records was launching, and it was the first record ever pressed for Apple. They gave it the catalog number Apple one, which between the fact that there's only one of them, it's the first record ever made for Apple Records done by Sinatra, specifically for Ringo. It's one of the rarest records on the planet. I just think that's so cute, medium funny you tell YouTube. Actually, anyway, we said this earlier when talking about Love You Two. George never had any titles for his songs in this era. I Love You Too was initially Granny Smith, named for engineer Jeff Embrick's favorite Apple, and when it came time to recording I want to tell you George was asked on the talk back by I think George Martin, So what are you gonna call this and John just laughs in the background Granny Smith Part freaking two. You never have any titles for your songs. So Jeff Emrick was called upon to come up with another kind of Apple, and this time it was Laxton's Superb which, to be fair, it's kind of a killer name. What is it lax? What's the taste profile? I think it's another green kind of tart one. I think this title was later changed to I don't know on the tape box before they landed on the ultimate title I want to tell You, which is kind of a gimme because that's the most repeated phrase in the song. Uh, this is serious Beatle nursery. Here. We've talked about the Ruddles, the Monty Python adjacent project that makes fun of the Beatles on the TV special. They are masterminded by not only Eric Idol of Monty Python, but also the singer, songwriter comedian Neil Innes. He happened to be at Abbey Road the day that the Beatles were recording I Want to tell You. He was there with his multimedia comedy pop group, the Bonzo Dog Doda Band, who would later appear in the Magical Mystery Tour movie they're the band at the end of the movie in the strip club segment, and they would also have a single produced by Paul McCartney. I'm the Urban Space Man in but uh yeah, I want to tell you not too much to share about this track. Um. Speaking of strange names attached to this song, did you know that Ted Nugent did a cover of it inteen seventy nine. Yeah, it's not very good. Quick reminder to anyone who didn't know about it. Ted Nugent just pants to get out to go in to Vietnam. I actually didn't know that. Oh yeah, when he was shown up to the draft board, he was like he like didn't shower for like a week and just wore the same clothes for like a month and like pooped and pete and his pants and make himself a look crazy. That's the standard issue, except for the actual the pants pooping. Yeah yeah, he super pooped his pants. Probably liked it too well from that too. My I think, if you really forced me to choose, if you really really forced me to choose my favorite song of all time, I got to get you into my life, I think, Yeah, I know, Okay, it's funny. How the most drug oriented song that Paul McCartney contributed to Revolver is actually one of the most straight sounding songs on the record. From its triumphant opening brass fanfare courtesy of Georgie Fame in the Blue Flames, one of my favorite groups. Um, Got to Get Into My Life an exuberant, soulful blast of optimism that perfectly encapsulates that first thrilling encounter with a potential new romance. But did you know? You probably did if you've listened this far, that the you McCartney references in the title is not a real human being, but a psychotropic substance. Paul later said, got to Get You Into My Life was one that I wrote after I had been first introduced to pot. It's actually an ode to pot, like someone might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret. What was it, Shelly, Shelly write a poem to h clar Well. I think so well. George writes, uh savoy truffle about chocolate. That's about Eric Clapton loving chocolate. Yes, this is where I start poking my nose where it doesn't belong. Um. It's perhaps worth noting that Paul McCartney's first serious exposure to marijuana, as we mentioned, came through Bob Dylan in August, some eighteen months and three albums before Revolver, which kind of makes it seem like if you had that song laying around, you had three albums release it, what took you so long? Also, the title got to Get You Into My Life seems like kind of a reference to the Solomon Burke song Gotta Get You Off of My Mind, which is a hit in mid sixty five, which again it was like nine months after Paul was introduced to marijuana. Given this timeline, there are many, including John Lennon, who have theorized that God to Get You Into My Life is actually about McCartney's first experience with L S D. He was the last Beatle to try it, doing so in December of nine with the Guinness Brewery air Tara Brown, who was later immortalized as the Man who Blew his mind out in a car on the Sergeant Pepper Closer A Day and of Life, and also the band The Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince. I guess he was there too. From a lyrical perspective, the lines about taking a ride to see another kind of mind seem more illustrative of a psychedelic trip than Getting Stones, But I don't know. It's silly to quibbal about poetic license. To me, the real tell about the song is its place in the Revolver track list alongside Lennon's overt owed to the psychedelic Experience Tomorrow Never Knows Heard back to back. The two tracks are similar, to me, at least to the nineteen sixty seven double A side Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, in which the two men revisit nostalgic childhood haunts in their own very unique ways, landing through the audio impressionism of Strawberry Fields and McCartney with the hyper realism of Penny Lane, and much in the same way that Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane with the first two tracks recorded for the sessions that yielded Sergeant Pepper. Although they didn't actually make it on that album, they were released as singles beforehand. Tar Never Knows, I'm going to get into My Life with the first two tracks recorded for Revolver, and to me, it just seems like they're in conversation with one another, regardless of the specific type of drug. They're obviously covering the same type of emotional terrain. I always think of it as like two painters in their own style, sketching the same still life from alternate sides of the room. McCartney sings have had the experience changed him, whereas Lennon sought to convey the experience itself on Tomorrow never knows with all the crazy effects. Also, it's worth interesting that both songs are composition le the Miller because they both have a single drone note as the backdrop got to get into My life keeps g in the bass while cord moves above it and uh Tomorrow every nose famously is like you know, in an Indian modality, only uses one chord um. But yeah, anyway, enough of all that nerdery. I just have always loved Paul singing on that song, and Jeff Emerk recalled in his book Here, There and Everywhere. At one point while Paul was recording the lead vocal, John actually burst out of the control room. The shadows encouragement evidence of the camaraderie and teamwork that was so pervasive during the Revolver sessions. I love that it's at the end of of Twist and Shot at the very end. On the fade out, you can hear Paul go yeah, adorable. Um McCartney talked about how he was into very clean quote clean recordings around this time. Thanks for the influence very clean, old Man. Thanks to the influence of Brian Wilson pet sounds. The horns on Got to Get You Into My Life our courtesy of Georgie Fames back in group the Blue Flames, who are the band playing at the bag O Nails Club in nine seven on the night that Paul McCartney met his future wife Linda. They were playing the Billy Stewart song Sitting in the Park Waiting for You if you are interested in uh recreating the sound trick of Paul Linda's first meeting, a few days before the famous Sergeant Pepper launch party that she attended as a photographer. Yeah. My favorite part of the new box set is they do a full band performance I've Got to Get Into My Life without the Horns. It's done almost like a garage band track, and Paul's vocals are much more raw. On that little guitar figure that George does at the end of the song on the release version repeats all the way through where the horns would be sounds awful like a lead guitar and paperback writer. Actually, um, but yeah, that rules. It's so good. Um, but so do the horn and sell both versions of it. Yeah. And you know, in keeping with his habit of getting microphone uncomfortably close to studio musicians, Jeff Emery jammed the MIC's right down the bells of the instruments in the horn section for extra intensity. Uh. In the Lyrics book, Paul explains, I've been listening to a lot of American R and B and soul and there were horn sections on those records Joe Text, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, people like that. That was enough impetus for me to think I'll have a go with that. That's often how things happened with me. I'll hear something on the radio and think, oh wow, I'm going to do my version of that. So we got some horn players, trumpets and saxophones, I think, into Appey Roads Studio two, and I explained to them how I wanted it, and they got it immediately. But as you alluded to at the top of the first part of this, I've already lost correct. Yeah, as it was alluded to earlier. At some point the Beatles were big fans of the sound of these American records. Stacks is mentioned, Motown was marketed as tam law over in UH in the UK, and UM Paul has spoken about his admiration for we mentioned earlier, for James Jamerson's bass playing on those records in particular, Um. But the sort of grittier, earthier compatriot to that was, of course Stacks Records in Memphis, home of book or T and the MG s ortis reading Rufland, Carla Thomas, so many more. And there actually had been tentative plans to get the Beatles to record Revolver at Stacks in Memphis. And though the equipment in the British studios at the time it's far superior, because I mean, Road had been doing all these orchestral recordings and everything. And I think at the time wasn't Stacks a former movie theater. Yeah, they still had the slope floor where the seats used to be. But you know, there was a certain with the French calls certain I don't know what to the facilities at Stacks. The Stones had recorded at Chess Records in Chicago and did their aftermath at r c A in Hollywood, and they encouraged the Beatles to check out studios in a mayor. Stacks was the most obvious choice. You know, Paul earlier had mentioned uh liking Sam and Dave, Joe Text, Wilson Pickett, John specifically like Steve Cropper and Duck Dunne. He name dropped them in an interview with Newsweek in nine six and you can hear the influence of that kind of music and stuff like the word and drive my Car and Rubber Soul. And Brian Epstein appendently flew to Stacks in late March to suss out the possibility the Beatles recording there, and there was talk of Steve Cropper, who was at this point the producer and de facto you know, musical director of Stacks, who you know didn't knock on Wood in the midnight hour Green Onions. I think that's him playing on soul Man to producing the sessions with Tom Dowd engineering. It was even a start date put in the studio diary April nine, and rumors that even Elvis had offered to host the Beatles at Graceland, which again oh to be a fly on that wall. Uh. There was talk also with them about recording at Atlantic Studios in New York, but that also sort of fell apart. Would that have been Would that have been at the point when Wexler would have stolen the Muscle show? Guys, what's the timeline there? Right or right? Yeah? I mean this if this was April sixty six, I think right around yeah. Man, that would have been wild oh man. Uh. The official reason was that they mentioned in the press frequently, is that Stax wanted too much money, or that the American Musicians Federation the Musicians Union would have taken too big of a cut. George Harrison wrote a letter to an Atlanta DJ saying, do you hear we nearly recorded in Memphis. We would all like it a lot, but too many people get insane with money ideas at the mention of the word beatles and it fell through. But it's never really been explained fully. Um. The only tracks on Revolver, to your mind that would have been served would have been tax Man and got to Get You Into My Life? I agree with that. Yeah, you mentioned you think Abbey Road is a good environment for them, precisely because it was so straight laced. If they had been recording somewhere that maybe would have been a little funkier and a little more permissive. They wouldn't have had such an obvious uh nemesis or at least foil to to buck up against. Yeah. I mean also you mentioned the abbey Road was technical superior. Yeah, they had some of the greatest minds of recording that they could just enlist as co conspirators. I feel like at Stacks they would have just been clients. But I feel like abbey Road they had all these young I'm sorry, like like the sixties equivalent of like computer geeks that incredibly technologically plugged in who probably wanted an excuse to like try something new and weird and out of the box, and the Beatles gave them. What they should have done was track at Stacks with the book or t in the MG. Can you imagine how sick the rhythm tracks would have been had they let, like gotten Paul off the base, I would have I would have kept Paul in the base. No dust done, Ringo ringo on drawings, duck done, Steve Cropper, Lenning can play, I guess on this album, Lennon didn't want to play any rhythms, so let George take it. That's a hell, that's it, and then you take it. You take it? Oh man, you tell me you book or t on Keys were considering where they went off base. Absolutely, he was trying to do duck done on this. For Crab. We're gonna give him something, give him lead guitar, he would have said. But my my fantasy casting of this is that they just track the basics it Stacks and then they like the Stones did it, Muscle shoals, and then they bring it somewhere else to mix. I mean, the other thing that I shudder to think about is what the Stacks guys would have done with something like Tamar never knows. I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, dude, the Beatles, they could have just like cut two songs there and left. You know. That's I don't know if that was like how they did it back then. I know that's that's much more of a Stones thing is to just kind of fly through and visit different studios for the sounds and then leave. As Paul himself said in six when we finished Revolver, we realized that we had found a new British sound, almost by accident. So you know, I think something so that came out of the Revolver sessions. But yeah, the whole team at Abbey Road, we're really just all m v ps, case and point. After the five horn players recorded their part Forgot to Get Into My Life, Paul felt like he one of the brass to sound bigger, and rather than call everyone back to redo it, Jeff Emerk, the engineer, had the idea of doubling the part onto a second piece of tape, which he then played back alongside it on the multi track, but just slightly out of sync, which had the effect of doubling the horn sounds out, sounded thicker and sort of noting that the practice of artificial double tracking, which is known as a d T and now standard at studios all over the world, was developed during sessions for Revolver by the engineer Ken Townsend. I think it was for the song Dr Robert, and it came about because Lennon was just moaning about all the time that they had to spend double tracking vocals, and Lennon himself hated the sound of his own voice. That's why on so many of his solo songs he's got a lot of slap back elvis echo on it. Because he just wanted something to disguise the sound of his own voice because he hated hearing it. So whenever he had to double track his own vocals and hear him singing to himself in his earphones right into his ear it was just super painful for him. So he was moaning about it, and this guy Ken towns and developed this artificial double tracking technique to eliminate this painful chore, and hilariously, this gives you an idea of what Abby Road was like at this time. Ken Townsend was technically forbidden from employing his own invention until it had been cleared by the proper channels for approval, but I guess Townsend ignored him anyway, because they were the Beatles and they could get away with whatever they wanted. And Jeff Emrick had to get special permission to put a delicate and very expensive ribbon mike graphone really close to ringoes bass drum to get that huge drum whack hurt on stuff like tomorrow and ever knows, And she said, she said, uh, Townsend item often risk getting the risks slapped front authorized use of equipment in an effort to make the Beatles whims of reality. But they're all champions. They all invented these sounds that people are trying to get to this day. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages, and this brings us to the closer Tomorrow Never Knows. A Revolver could only ever close with Tomorrow, never knows what else could possibly follow it. It's the first song the Beatles repertoire and possibly the first song in the pop rock realm. It made no attempt at commercial accessibility whatsoever, and it also made no attempt to be replicated in front of a paying audience. It was purely a studio enterprise, which paved the way for the rest of their career. As we said, this was the last album that was released while the band were still a touring entity, although none of these songs were ever performed. It was released three weeks yeah, a little over three weeks before their very last concert. It's amazing to me that Tamara and Never Knows was done on the first day of sessions for Revolver in April nineteen sixty six. And you know, over the last half century, a day in the life office Sergeant Pepper's on the reputation as the song that really crystallizes the Lennon McCartney partnership, and it's kind of an obvious choice because the division of labor is clear on that song because of the shared vocal duties. Paul has his bit in the middle of these sings, John has the verses. I think Tomorrow Never Knows goes one better. It utilizes the unique gifts not just of John and Paul, but have pretty much all four Beatles and equal pleasure just amalgamating their interests with truly invaluable help from George Martin and the production staff. Tomorrow Never Knows began with John Lennon and his tireless exploration of his own psyche in dogged pursuit of inner peace. Having embraced the fashional yet dubious promise of LSD is enlightenment in chemical form, Lennon visited Indica, the bookshop run by friends of McCartney's, who no doubt introduced him to the spot, and among the proto New Age titles on offer, he picked up The Psychedelic Experience, a book by former Harvard professor turned self proclaimed acid guru Timothy Leary, along with fellow academic psychologist Richard Albert later known as Ramdass and Ralph Metzner. This was based on a n translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and it functioned as a kind of LSD for dummies guide. Uh Lennon would himself sarcastically referred to it in later years as Learies how to take a trip book. Whenever you're endowed, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream, It advised, beyond the restless, flowing electricity of life is the ultimate reality, the void. Since Leary himself had nabbed the words from an ancient text, Lennon felt free to borrow them liberally, so with the lyrics mostly in place, The music came largely from Harrison's fascination with Indian music, which made use of long ten perud drones. Indian music was like all just on one chord, Harrison explained, it didn't modulate. John wanted to try a tune like that. At first, the band worried about bringing the idea to George Martin, then still seen as the responsible, respectable adult in the room. He had shepherded them through simple rock and roll progressions, but this was as Paul McCartney would later reflect, a radical departure. We'd always had at least three chords and maybe a change for the middle eight. Suddenly this was John just strumming on sea rather earnestly, and the words were all very deep and meaningful, certainly not thank you girl. A bit of a change from all that. It was a song about transcendence. There were no verse chorus structure or end line rhyme scheme, but George Martin was unfazed. In fact, he was intrigued as he listened to his young charges rather interesting John jolly interesting. When he had signed them four years earlier, George Martin wasn't totally convinced they had what it took to write a proper song, and now they were the ones challenging his very understanding of what a song could even be. George never freaked out when we brought him even the most crazy ideas McCartney says in the deluxe edition liner notes to Revolver. He was very supportive that way. Now John had a habit of speaking in pictorial terms to evoke the sounds that he wanted to hear, and George Martin would later say he'd make whooshing sounds and try to describe what only he could hear in his head, saying he wanted a song to quote sound orange. And for this song, which was at this point tentatively titled Mark One, Lennon announced that he wanted his voice to sound like the dollar lamba chant from a mountaintop, and the accomplish this wobbly effect, Lennon hopefully suggested that they suspend them from a rope attached to the studio ceiling and fling him around the microphone like a human tether ball as he sang. By all accounts, he wasn't joking, and he was never the most technical of the group, and the other Beatles used to joke that he couldn't even change a light bulb. Engineer Jeff Emwerk had the slightly less dangerous idea of putting his voice through a rotating Leslie speaker cabinet, which is usually used for Hammond Organs, and that's the thing like that spins rather than actually spinning John himself. But the principles are actually kind of similar. So as they're working on this track, it was decided that typical guitar break just wasn't appropriate for you know what was shaping up to be the most unusual song the Beatles had ever done at this point. For a different kind of solo, they considered Paul's home experiments with tape loops and McCartney's influences. At the point, We're becoming extremely vast, especially in the Beatles downtime in early nineteen sixty six, when he was soaking up anything and everything that fell outside the traditional pop purview. He was the only Beatle who lived in London at this time, so we took full advantage of his residence in what Time magazine had recently dubbed the Swinging City, and he embarked on a rigorous program of self education, attending galleries, seminars and underground happenings nearly nightly. He told journalist Marine Cleave of The Evening Standard in this period, I vaguely mind people knowing anything I don't know. I'm trying to cram everything in all the things I've missed. People are saying things and painting things and writing things, composing things that are great, and I must know what people are doing. I love that sentiment. His girlfriend, the actress Jane Asher, provided access for the upwardly mobile, Paul into the world of upper class dinner parties and theatrical openings. Well. Her older brother Peter Asher welcomed him into London hipster elite, and before long Paul's rubbing shoulders with beat poet heroes like Alan Ginsburg and William S. Burrows, and some of this was for self education, but he hoped some of it would come through in this work with the Beatles. In February of nineteen sixty six, Paul tended a lecture by the Italian avant garde composer Lucciano Barrio, and he frequently dropped in on free form music, concrete performances by disciples of John Cage, Edgar Vaisy and Carl Heinz Stockhouse and very famous avant garde performers, and he later said during the Beatles anthology, people were starting to lose their pure pop mentality and mingle with artists. A kind of cross fertilization was starting to happen, and major result of this was tomar Never Knows, and Paul used to I love this. He used to make these little home movies and he would take songs by free jazz artists like Ornette Coleman or Albert Ailer to use as the soundtrack, and George Martin used to hate Albert Ailer and uh, I guess whenever he'd come over to McCartney's house for dinner, Paul used to put on Aylor's Spiritual Unity album. Yeah, it's a tough record to get into. But even though he might not have liked the sounds themselves, George Martin really appreciated his open mindedness. Uh. And he later said, you know, we usually think of John as being the avant garde one with Yoko and so on, But the time Paul was heavily in the stock housing and John Cage and all the avant garde artists, well, John was living a comfortable suburban life. Yeah. It was John Lennon who was later credited for declaring avant garde the French word for bull. Um. Paul McCarney, thanks largely to stock housing, develops this interest in tape loops. Um. This is, of course, when tape was literally the fragment of what you would record music onto, and with certain players you could jury rigged them so that they would loop endlessly back on themselves. Um. And there are a couple of different people who are really again, I I just want to point out that I want to point out that American people had been doing this very early on Steve Reich and all that Steve Reich Uh, Steve Reich's violin phase is sixty five sixty seven, but It's Gonna Rain is actually sixty. Terry Riley had been using this as early as the as the late fifties, using the Woolen Sack tape recorder friend of the pod, the Woolen Sack tape recorder famous from the demo of Monster Mash and Brian Wilson's Beach Boys demos. Anyway, I used to have a couple of brennel tape recorders, Paul McCartney told Barry Miles. I used to experiment with them when I had an afternoon off, which was quite often. It was very free, formless time for me formative yet formless. I didn't have to be up for the baby. At that time, there was none of that, so I would sit around all day creating little tapes. McCartney would dub these sound collages onto Phillips cassettes, which were at that point in new invention, and play them at particularly hip parties. It was really kind of a stone thing, he admitted, and for tomorrow never knows. He brought in a few dozen of these tape loops in a plastic bag, from which five were selected to form the surreal sound bed for the track. For years, it was a mysterious to what these actually were, until digital technology allowed us to undo that tape manipulation and reveal that the loops in question are a B flat major chord dubbed from an orchestral record, a scaler phrase played on a star flute, and string notes recorded on the early sample based synthesizer. The melot on this next sound, I believe is also from a melo tromp, but I've heard it called a couple of different things. I'm just gonna use my ears and say that I think it's a trumpet and McCartney himself laughing, which is sped up and manipulated to the point where it sounds like a seagull. What a time to be alive. Um. But capturing this uh somewhat cacophonist symphony of manipulated sounds was a tall task. Thankfully Jeff Emrick was up for it. He wrote in his memoir Every Tape Machine in the studio was commandeered, and every available E m I employee was given the task of holding a pencil or drinking glass to give the loops the proper tensioning. In many instances this meant they had to be standing out in the hallway looking quite cheapish. Most of these people didn't have a clue what we were doing. They probably thought we were daft. Adding the fact that all the technical staff were required to wear white lab coats, and the whole thing became totally surreal. Choreographing the operation in any kind of meaningful way was out of the question. On the first attempt, heard on the box set, George Martin can be heard announcing here it comes stand by as the enlisted staffers hit play on their respective tape machines. So, just to point out to anyone, he probably these are this is a quarter inch tape. We think that he would did on a real, real quarter inch or one inch tape. So he brought in reels, not the actual cassettes, right, he was bringing the actual source. So you have to stretch those out to the proper length, find where they were gonna be tense enough to loop, and then anchor them the pivot points of these around which they would loop with a drinking glass, pencils or pencil. So you have someone holding all of these individual loops taught at their individual points spatially spread out across Abbey Road, and then they have to hit play on all of them at once. George Martin explained the Beatles anthology. These machines were going all the time, the loops being fed to different faders on our control panel on which we could bring up the sound on any time. As an organ this haphazard activation of these sequences ensure that it could never be reproduced exactly the same again, making each time they hit play a specific phenomenon never to be repeated. The randomness of it all appealed to the Beatles. It followed in the spirit of William S. Burrows is cut up poetry technique, wherein text would be snipped out of newspapers or magazines and rearrange to read something new when you cut into the present. Burrows once explained the future leaks out. Oh was that a big Dylan thing too? He wrote stuff like that, Well, the future leaks out and Tomorrow never knows was definitely the sound of the future. But Lennon found himself stuck for a name. The working title Mark One had been discarded in favor of The Void, which is a cool track name, especially for nineteen sixty six. But that struck Come was a little bit ominous. So then his thoughts turned, as they often do, to Ringo, whose sage words of humor and humility grounded the band in much the same way that his stickwork anchored the track. John later said, I felt a bit self conscious about the lyrics he's talking in right before his death, so I took one of Ringo's malaprop isms to take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics. Now, Ringo was notorious for uttering phrases that were memorable, if not completely sensical. Hard Day's night, It's another one Tomorrow never knows fell out of his mouth during a press conference on February twenty two, nine four, the day the Beatles returned home from their first trip to the United States, which was you know the trek that made beatlemanny a truly a global phenomenon, and the phrase came as a response to a reporter's question about an unfortunate incident that occurred at a gala event Washington, d C. When a stranger stuck up behind Ringo and snipped off a lock of his hair, and Ringo and you know, talking about it to this reporter took a very you know, zen approach to it. L what can you say? You know, what can you say? Tomorrow never knows? This is just his way of trying to shrug it all off. And you can see there's a news real footage of this conversation taking place, and you can just see John behind him, just doubling over with laughter when he hears him say that. So clearly the phrase stuck with John because two years later, two plus years later, he used it as the song title. And you know, it's fitting this, this hair snipping incident. It's an early taste of the type of inhumane treatment that the Beatles would be forced to endure over the next few years, especially while on the road. And uh, eventually, by the time they were recording Revolver, they were prisoners of the Presidential Suite. They were you know, just locked in their rooms basically until showtime. And then by their last tour, they were being transported onto the field of baseball stadiums in armored trucks without even any seats, like would be like Wells Fargo vans used to transport money into banks and they would just be sliding around this like metal inside of a truck. I mean, it was just really dehumanizing um And just mere weeks after Tomorrow Never Knows was released, they gave up touring altogether. So given the origin of the phrase Tomorrow Never Knows, but this really kind of unfortunate incident where the Beatles were treated really like animals. I think it's the perfect title for a song that basically waved goodbye to Beatlemania. But I have always loved this song because I would argue that it's each Beatle at their best. You have Lennon's fearless internal probing, you have McCartney's boundless search for the latest cutting edge ideas, and Harrison's passion for India and his spiritual connection to his music and ringoes, rock solid rhythm and homespun homilies that added a human element that anchored some of these way out concepts, and that to me is the blend, that's the bond, that's what makes the Beatles the Beatles. But unfortunately, as we all know, it couldn't last. We all know how The story ends the year after Revolver was released. During sessions for Sergeant Pepper in the band were visited in the studio by Clauss Form and the artist responsible for the Revolvers sleeve, as we mentioned, and he'd been a friend to there since their pre fame days, so he knew them really well as people, and he says that there was a change that had come over them as he dropped in on the Sergeant Pepper sessions and he's talking to the l a times earlier this year. He said he realized that everybody was living separately. They didn't play live anymore, so all they did was meet in the studio. It was a different sort of atmosphere, and by his account, Revolver really marked the last truly unified push as four friends before being Beatles became just one of the things that they did, rather than who they were. And George himself would later say of this period, I was losing interest to being fab at that point. And Giles Martin, when I interviewed him from People Magazine a few weeks ago, he told me the reason why the Beatles were good is because the four of them made the most extraordinary sound. They did it consistently in different styles and Revolver is a great example. What's happened with Paul over the last few years, and I don't think he'd mind me saying this, is that he's realized that the Beatles were the best band he was in and took him a while to accept that. He really really respects the others playing and what they did. He really enjoys it. He'll go, ah, listen to George's guitar, that's a great part. Or listen to ringoes drums. It's like, you know, we were a good band. I think we can just leave it there. How do you feel about that? I I just I just love that quote so much. I mean, you know, it's funny leaving it onto our ever knows, because it is catching them at the outset of some of them more high falutin stuff. But yeah, I mean coming off just being this tremendous group of musicians, catching them on the cusp of becoming a group of individuals who occasionally came together to make music. Yeah, great record man tunes. Tunes still slap most importantly, and it's got Yellow Submarine which rips it sure does, Sure does, buddy, And you know, four hours later. After we start this. Now I can also convincingly say I know what it's like to be dead. Uh well, folks, thank you for listening. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming next week. I'm Alex Hegel and I have Jordan run Talk. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Four