Revolution 9

Revolution 9 was not the first venture by the Beatles into experimental
recordings. In January 1967, McCartney led the group in recording an unreleased
piece called Carnival of Light during a session for Penny Lane. McCartney
said the work was inspired by composers Stockhausen and John Cage.
Stockhausen was also a favourite of Lennon, and was one of the people included
on the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Music critic Ian McDonald wrote that
Revolution 9 may have been influenced by Stockhausens Hymnen in
particular.
Another influence on Lennon was his relationship with Ono. Lennon and Ono had
recently recorded their own avant-garde album, Unfinished Music No. 1: Two
Virgins. Lennon said: Once I heard her stuff not just the screeching and
howling but her sort of word pieces and talking and breathing and all this strange
stuffI got intrigued, so I wanted to do one. Ono attended the recording
sessions and helped Lennon select which tape loops to use.
Revolution 9 originated on 30 May 1968 during the first recording session for
Lennons composition Revolution. Take 20 lasted more than ten minutes and
was given additional overdubs over the next two sessions. Mark Lewisohn
described the last six minutes as pure chaos..with discordant instrumental
jamming, feedback, John repeatedly screaming alright and then, simply,
repeatedly screamingwith Yoko talking and saying such off-the-wall phrases
as you become naked, and with the overlaying of miscellaneous, home-made
sound effects tapes.
Lennon soon decided to make the first part of the recording into a conventional
Beatles song, Revolution 1, while using the last six minutes as the basis for a
separate track, Revolution 9. He began preparing additional sound effects and
tape loops: some newly recorded in the studio, at home and from the studio
archives. The work culminated on 20 June, with Lennon performing a live mix
from tape loops running on machines in all three studios at Abbey Road.
Additional prose was overdubbed by Lennon and Harrison.
More overdubs were added on 21 June followed by final mixing in stereo. The
stereo master was completed on 25 June when it was shortened by 53 seconds.
Although other songs on the album were separately remixed for the mono
version, the complexity of Revolution 9 necessitated making the mono mix a
direct reduction of the final stereo master. McCartney had been out of the
country when Revolution 9 was assembled and mixed; he was unimpressed
when he first heard the finished track, and later tried to persuade Lennon to drop
his insistence that it be included on the album.

Structure and Content

The piece begins with a slow piano theme in the key of B minor and a male voice
repeating the words number nine, quickly panning across the stereo channels.
Both the piano these and the number nine loop recur many times during the
piece, serving as a motif.
Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen
when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with

loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting
classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and
things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineers testing
voice saying, This is EMI test series number nine. I just cut up whatever he
said and Id number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky
number and everything. I didnt realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying,
number nine, it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, thats
all it was.
-

John Lennon, Rolling Stone, 1970

Much of the track consists of tape loops that are faded in and out, several of
which are sampled from performances of classical music. Works that have been
specifically identified include the Vaughan Williams motet O Clap Your Hands, the
final chord from Sibelius Symphony No. 7, and the reversed finale of
Schumanns Symphonic Studies. Other loops include brief portions of
Beethovens Choral Fantasy, The Street of Cairo, violins from A Day in the
Life, and George Martin saying Geoff, put the red light on. Part of the Arabic
song Awwal Hamsa by Farid Il-Atrash is included shortly after the 7 minute
mark. There are also loops of unidentified operatic performances, backwards
mellotron, violins and sound effects, an oboe/horn duet, a reversed electric guitar
in the key of E major, and a reversed string quartet in the kay of E-flat major.
Portions of the unused coda of Revolution 1 can be heard briefly several times
during the track, particularly Lennons screams of right and alright, with a
longer portion near the end featuring Onos discourse about becoming naked.
Segments of random prose read by Lennon and Harrison are heard prominently
throughout, along with numerous sound effects such as laughter, crowd noise,
breaking glass, car horns, and gunfire. Some of the sounds were taken from an
Elektra Records album of stock sound effects. The piece ends with a recording of
American football chants (Hold that line! Block that kick!). In all, the final mix
includes at least 45 different sound sources.

Album sequencing and release

During compilation and sequencing of the master tape for the album The
Beatles, two unrelated segments were included between the previous song (Cry
Baby Bry) and Revolution 9. The first was a fragment of a song based on the
line Can you take me back, an improvisation sung by McCartney that was
recorded between takes of I Will. The second was a bit of conversation from
the studio control room where Alistair Taylor asked George Martin for forgiveness
for not bringing him a bottle of claret.
Revolution 9 was released as the fifth track on the fourth side of the album The
Beatles. With no gaps in the sequence from Cry Baby Cry to Revolution 9,
the point of track division has varied among different re-issues of the album.
Some versions place the conversation at the end of Cry Baby Cry, resulting in a
length of 8:13 for Revolution 9, while others start Revolution 9 with the
conversation, for a track length of 8:22.

Reception

compare Lennons work with Luigi Nonos similar Non Consumiamo Marx (1969) to see how much
more aesthetically and politically acute Lennon was than most of the vaunted avant-garde
composers of the time.Nonos piece entirely lacks the pop-bred sense of texture and proportion
manifested in Revolution 9.
-

Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head

Revolution 9 is an embarrassment that stands like a black hole at the end of the White Album,
sucking up whatever energy and interest remain after the preceding ninety minutes of music. It is
a track that neither invites, nor rewards close attention
-

Jonathan Gould, Cant Buy Me Love

The unusual nature of Revolution 9 engendered a wide range of opinions.

Lewisohn summarised the public reaction upon its release: most listeners
loathing it outright, the dedicated fans trying to understand it. Music critics
Robert Christgau and John Piccarella called it an anti-masterpiece and noted
that, in effect, for eight minutes of an album officially titled The Beatles, there
were no Beatles. Jann Wenner was more complimentary, writing that
Revolution 9 was beautifully organised and had more political impact than
Revolution 1. Ian MacDonald remarked that Revolution 9 evoked the eras
revolutionary disruptions and their repercussions, and thus was culturally one of
the most significant acts The Beatles ever perpetrated.
Among more recent reviews, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide said it was
justly maligned, but more fun that Honey Pie or Yer Blues. Pitchfork
reviewer Mark Richardson observed that the biggest pop band in the world
exposed millions of fans to a really great and certainly frightening piece of avantgarde art.

Interpretation
Lennon described Revolution 9 as an unconscious picture of what I actually
think will happen when it happens, just like a drawing of revolution. He said he
was painting in sound a picture of revolution, but he had mistakenly made it
anti-revolution. In his analysis of the song, MacDonald doubted that Lennon
conceptualised the piece as representing a revolution in the usual sense, but
rather as a sensory attack on the citadel of the intellect: a revolution in the
head aimed at each listener. MacDonald also noted that the structure suggests
a half-awake, channel-hopping mental state, with underlying themes of
consciousness and quality of awareness. Others have described the pieces as
Lennons attempt at turning nightmare imagery into sound, and as an
autobiographical soundscape. The loop of number nine featured in the
recording fuelled the fallacy of Paul McCartneys death after it was reported that
it sounded like turn me on, dead man when played backwards.