Found this 1968 review of Revolution from student paper The Harvard Crimson. And they ain't happy. Bl**dy students, moaning all the time, wait till they've got to pay a mortgage....
JOHN LENNON claims that the Beatles' songs do not carry any messages and says he resents people who try to interpret them in that way. Neverheless, his latest song, 'Revolution', is so explicily and brutally to the point that one cannot help but sense a morning in it--and be painfully startled by this particular message. The song is a vicious and unqualified rejection of politics-in-the-street and its inevitable aspects of violence and disorder--a style that has been practiced supremely in the recent pass in France and at Chicago.
Apparently, this outburst of Lennon's in 'Revolution' was provoked by a request made by some radical organization for money and help from the Beatles. Since the Beatles, in their songs from 'We Can Work It Out' to 'All You Need Is Love' have consistently exhibited a semi-political concern for the state of the world and since they are reputed to hold sensible attitudes towards their unbounded wealth (they recently closed the Apple Boutique in London and gave away the store's entire stock of clothes free because, in Paul McCartney's words "We didn't want people to think that the Beatles had become mercenary") the radicals hoped that the Beatles would lend their wealth and influence to political causes.
The response the radicals got from Lennon was hardly the one they expected however. John obviously does read the newspapers from time to time and he seems to have brooded over the reports of the manifestations of he new political style, raucous and unbridled as it is. There have been several incidents in England, and the much greater disturbances in France, and Columbia University were surely widely reported there. In any case, 'Revolution' lashes out at the methods and the mentaliy of the politial radicals of today.
There's some truth, of course, in what the Beatles say. We all know that politics in-the-streets has its problems; that bruality and anarchy are risky and ugly. But we also know that far greater brutalities than any protesting students can bring about are committed everyday by governments, and that reality makes the Beatles' viewpoint trivial, insensitive, and unnecessary.
The Vietnam War does go on, it is immoral and murderous, and the Beatles have never spoken up about it. Sometimes institutions are repressive and rooted themselves in violence and indecency (yet the Beatles sneer, 'You say its-the institution/Well you know you better free your mind instead'). Racism is as much a problem in England as it in the United States, but the Beatles meekly accepted the grotesque MBE that was dangled before them by the peculiarly callous and avaricious British Environment.
IN SHORT, there are many evils in the world today--one should do something about them.
Abrasive confrontation-demonstrations are imperfect responses and their inadequacies both in terms of cost and achievements trouble all of us--but they, unlike the Beatles' snide noninvolvement, are a response.
For the Beatles to attack the militant protestors while ignoring, as they have done for too long, the objects of the protests reveals a weird sense of priorites.
Our sense of betrayal is made even more acute by the fact that the Beatles are such formidable anatagonists. 'Revolution' is a great record. The music is gripping and explosive from the Chuck Berry riff that opens the song, to the bar of feedback that ends it, and the lyrics are some of John Lennon's most rythmically controlled. And when at then end Lennon, rasping shouts, the challenge "All Right" over and over again one trembles in disbelief and honor that he is shouting at the wrong people.
