Unless there is some great Korean cultural taboo about images of dead people or somesuch, it's hard to imagine what thought process went through the art departments head when the original artwork arrived on their desk.
Some of the Asian versions of Sgt Pepper didn't have With A Little Help From My Friends, A Day In The Life and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds on it, because it was thought it had a connection with drugs. Instead it had I Am The Walrus, Baby You're A Rich Man and Your Mother Should Know in the tracklist. But I bet Lennonlegend could have told you that.
Attempt to recreate the finished drawing before collage
The album's title isn't decided until July 2nd 1966, while the Beatles are on tour, in Tokyo. At first Abracadabra was considered. But somebody else had used that title already. Other candidates were Magic Circles and Beatles On Safari, Bubble And Squeak and Free Wheelin' Beatles. In the end, everybody is happy with Revolver. The title suggests the movement of the record on the turntable. It has nothing to do with a gun.
For the back cover, a black-and white picture by Robert Whitaker shows the four well known faces, covered in sunglasses. It was taken during the shooting of the Paperback Writer/Rain promo films. For the Capitol version of Revolver a slightly different picture is used.
On 11 March 1967 Revolver is awarded with the "Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts of 1966", during the ninth annual Grammy Awards
At first the album was going to be called Everest, after the brand of cigarettes smoked by the engineer Geoff Emerick. It was suggested to make a photograph with the Mount Everest in the background. But none of the Beatles could be bothered to travel that far for an album cover.
When asked how far they wanted to go, the reply came: "Why don't we just do it in the street?"
Paul immediately made a rough drawing and freelance photographer Iain Macmillan, a friend of John and Yoko, was asked to make the picture.
Paul's drawing
On Friday August 8. 1969, at 11.35 am, Iain stepped on a small ladder in the middle of Abbey Road, while a police officer stopped the traffic. The Beatles walked up and down the zebra crossing in front of the EMI Studio and Iain took six pictures. The fifth being the best. Not only was it the only photograph on which all four were in step, but also they walked away from the studio. A matter which seemed important to some of them at the moment.
Thanks to the research of Mark Lewisohn we know now that Macmillan used a Hasselblad camera, with a 50 mm wide-angle lens, aperture f22, at 1/500 sec.
Linda Eastman took some extra pictures of the Beatles, while they were waiting for the session.
This time the album came without a title on the front cover, and no lyric sheet ... being quite simple, it just had one photograph on the front, and one on the rear. For the back cover Iain Macmillan took a photograph of one of the many old-style tiled street signs.
Abbey Road back cover photo - Iain MacMillan
On the original cover, the Beatles deliberately did not list 'Her Majesty' at the end of side 2. But no one informed the industry moguls in the US. As a result, the song was added to the eight track's listing and to some of the albums. It was eventually removed again from the cover. Thus, the album again differed ever so slightly from the British release.
A few months later every detail of this and the previous Beatles sleeves were studied the world over to search for clues for the dead of Paul McCartney. "I started to get letters and cards from people outlining how obvious it was that Paul was dead," recalled George Martin. "They said that they understood all our clues on the covers over the past few years years and, you know, I started believing it myself."
Peter Blake too was almost fooled: "We went to visit Paul. We talked about the rumors and he said, "You know I’m not Paul McCartney. You met Paul when you were working on Sgt. Pepper and he didn’t have a scar on his mouth. Look, I’ve got a scar. I’m a stand in." And just for a moment, I wasn’t sure. Then he told me that he’d fallen off his bicycle…"
In March 1970 Abbey Road won a Grammy for "Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording".
In the wake of the album title, the EMI Studios were later re-named as "Abbey Road Studios".
The celebrated cover was copied by Paul for his Paul Is Live album, in 1993.
I don't know if I could have lived with a "Beatles On Safari" album title. Apart from being sickeningly naff it would have invited too many Pet Sounds comparisons. Revolver is so cool a name.
On the original cover, the Beatles deliberately did not list 'Her Majesty' at the end of side 2. But no one informed the industry moguls in the US. As a result, the song was added to the eight track's listing and to some of the albums. It was eventually removed again from the cover. Thus, the album again differed ever so slightly from the British release
And, as another result, there's other versions of Abbey Road as well. I have a copy on vinyl which lacks Her Majesty! Made in the US, and they must have thought it was over after The End!
Home
Calendar
Search
Register
Login
Bobber
Male
Logged
:
... and in John's case, even more stoned