This oft derided piece from The Beatles (White Album) seems to fill the hearts and minds of Beatles fans the world over with scorn, even hatred. So why - when The Beatles are regularly championed for their innovations during the sixties - is Revolution 9 treated with such distaste?
This June sees the 40th anniversary of the recording sessions that brought about, what was to become The Beatles longest legally released recorded track. Avant Garde/Experimental music was not a new thing at the time, though most pop music fans were probably unaware of it's existence. The likes of John Cage had been producing this kind of thing since the mid '50's. Paul McCartney had become an unofficial patron of the undergound Avante Garde movement in the mid sixties, extolling the virtues of Cage, Stockhausen, and experimental film. John Lennon was living with an experimental artist, and George Harrison had recorded an album of electronic music (Wonderwall Music), so it should not have come as a massive surprise that something akin to this might one day turn up on a Beatles record.
Far from being derided, should The Beatles not be praised for being the first 'popular' music act to release such a piece?
Discuss.
I don't think they should be praised for releasing it. I think (like always) they should be praised simply on the substance of the work. #9 is very interesting and also very fun. Do I listen to it every time I listen to the White Album? of course not. but I very much enjoy it when I do listen to it. and I have always cried foul at those who think it shouldn't be on the album....though I'll entertain arguments from people who think that What's the New Mary Jane should have made it instead.
It's great...it sold...it's the bloody Beatles' White Album, shut up
George seems to provide a lot of the, er, vocals for this. Did he have more to do with Revolution 9 than we realise?
PS Oh, and this is my first post here, hello fellow Beatle fans
I think all George did was provide voices and it was John (and maybe Yoko) who rounded up all the tape loops.
It's funny that George has always said that he hates Avant Garde music ('Avant Garde a clue' as he has put it) but he participated in the making of this track. He just loved any opportunity to work closely with John I think.
It's great...it sold...it's the bloody Beatles' White Album, shut up
I think you're right, ShesCominDownFastYesSheIs. George was having fun and was happy to help out John. He was very much a team player.
All you've got to do is choose love. That's how I live it now. I learned a long time ago, I can feed the birds in my garden. I can't feed them all. -- Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone magazine, May 2007
For all I know, Ringo might be a yogi disguised as a drummer! - George Harrison
I very much so like it The first few times I heard it I was like, what's this, then it turned into an "oh that's pretty cool". Now lately it's been - Why couldn't more artists do things like this? Really, the turning point for that song, for me, was hearing it with somebody playing a cello in the next room.
I love Revolution #9. At first when I first heard it it just seemed like a random racket, but when I read The Holy Bible (*also known as Revolution In The Head) and read Ian McDonald's excellent thesis on this track it all started to make perfect sense to me. It really really works well when you listen to it closely all the way with an eye on what Lennon was aiming for - it certainly isn't as 'random' as most people think and is actually pretty well structured - it is the 'revolution in sound' in the respect of introducing a huge (and mostly unwilling) audience to avante garde sound collages, and also for all the world is, with it's floating sounds, bits of conversation & snippets of music, what a young infant may pick up whilst being ferried about in a pram. Once I understood it, R9 became a highlight of the White Album for me and one I always listen to in its entirity - and often seek out on it's own. The tracks that surround it on the album (the eery Cry Baby Cry with that equally bitter sweet Can You Take Me Back outro into R9, and the overly lush Good Night) are also paramount to the whole experience of this track. Genius!
I wonder what we would think if Paul had insisted (against the others wishes) of filling up a great chunk of Pepper with Carnival of Light? His decision to not release it was wise, and I think John maybe should have done the same. But it sure has helped in his being branded the "radical one." ( I know John was involved, but it was Paul who instigated the track.)
i think paul was slightly afraid of releasing something very freeky like Carnival of Light, but John never gave a dam, he just put it out like Two Virgins.
It's been a Hard Days Night & i've been working like a dog!
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