On August 5, 1966, the album "Revolver" was released in England. This was the seventh album of "The Beatles".
This is a very revolutionary and innovative album, especially for the time in which it was released. It was a creative and technological explosion of the band. On this album, the band went further than it had gone up until then. It experimented with different and varied musical directions and used innovative recording techniques such as effects, loops, dubbing, reverse, and backward playback, etc. It also added a variety of new musical instruments: strings, trumpets, flutes, instruments from India, etc., and assimilated a highly innovative approach to musical processing.
This album completely changed the face of rock music as it was perceived until then, greatly influenced everything that came after it, and even caused Brian Wilson from "The Beach Boys" to have a nervous breakdown, just three months after releasing the ingenious "Pet Sounds" album.
(Photo: BBC)
Here are 20 interesting facts about this revolutionary album:
1. The album cover was designed by Klaus Voorman, who would later play bass with "Manfred Man" and also with each of the Beatles' members on their solo albums. He was paid 40 pounds for it.
2. The cover won a Grammy Award for the most beautiful cover of the album in 1967.
3. The original album cover was supposed to be a painting of Paul McCartney sitting on a toilet in the bathroom.
4. One of the names suggested for the album was "Abracadabra".
5. The one who plays the guitar solo in the opening song "Taxman" is none other than Paul McCartney.
6. "Yellow Submarine" features Pattie Boyd (George Harrison's wife), Marianne Faithfull, Brian Jones, and Donovan on vocals. They did not receive credit for their contribution.
7. The sound of seagulls in the psychedelic song "Tomorrow Never Knows" is actually the distorted sound of Paul McCartney laughing.
8. John Lennon said he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama praying in the song "Tomorrow Never Knows". To achieve the effect, John Lennon's voice was recorded through a Leslie speaker amplifier connected to an effect and double the recording. This is the first time this technique has been used.
9. Another technique that was first used on this album was "automatic double tracking". Sound technician Ken Townsend composed two different tapes that recorded John Lennon's voice at the same time, with one tape being at a delay of 100 milliseconds from the other tape. This technique gave the singing a fuller and thicker sound and it was born in the face of John Lennon's hate to record the same singing roles twice. The technique can be heard in the song "Tomorrow Never Knows".
10. The guitar solos in the songs "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" are played backward. This is the first time such technology has been used with musical instruments.
11. During the pre-recording sessions, two more songs that were not included on the album were recorded, "Rain" and "Paperback Writer". They were released as a single and B-Side for the single. The song "Rain" was the first to use the backward vocal recording.
12. None of the songs on the album were performed live in real-time, although the band went out immediately afterward for their last tour in the United States. The songs were heavily produced and were too difficult to perform live.
13. The longest song on the album is 3.02 minutes long. Ten of the album's 12 songs are under 3 minutes.
14. All four members of the band contributed to the writing of the lyrics to the song "Eleanor Rigby", which is quite unusual for the band.
15. The band worked more hours on the song "Yellow Submarine" than on their entire first album. During the recording and in order to create the water effect, an attempt was made to insert a microphone into a condom and dip it into the water.
16. The song "She Said She Said" is based on John Lennon's Trip Acid with actor Peter Fonda and with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn from "the Byrds". Therefore, the song was originally called "He Said He Said".
17. The song "Doctor Robert" was written about Dr. Robert Freymann, a Manhattan celebrity doctor who used to give his patients B12 injections mixed with speed drugs.
18. The song "Got To Get You Into My Life", written by Paul McCartney, is not a love song for a girl but for marijuana.
19. The song "Here, There and Everywhere" was written by Paul McCartney while he waited for John Lennon to wake up. He came to Lennon's house to work on new songs for the album, but found that John was still asleep and wrote the song while waiting for him.
20. The character Father McKenzie in the song “Eleanor Rigby” was originally supposed to be Father McCartney but Pete Shotton, a childhood friend of John Lennon, explained to McCartney that all listeners would think the fictional character in the song is actually his father and eventually Paul McCartney changed the name.
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