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Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

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1966 Beatles Release Revolver

UK, August 5, 1966
US, August 8, 1966

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

1965

When we think of the 1960s’ powerful music, certain musicians and albums come to mind. Albums in particular, but it wasn’t until the mid-60s that performers released those albums.

1965 is the turning point.

Bob Dylan released “Bringing It All Back Home” on  March 22 that year. He’d recorded it over three days, January 13 – 15, 1965. Exclamation point.

The Beatles had recorded Rubber Soul between  October 12 and November 15, 1965. That album that changed the way many bands envisioned making music and created albums, . They released the album December 3, 1965.

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

Got Back

From 6 April 6 – June 21, 966, the Beatles were back in the studio to record again. As you hear above, Paul thinks of this album as Rubber Soul part 2.

I think it is, but then again not so much.

It’s a matured Rubber Soul if that’s true. The newness of Rubber Soul  isn’t new now. We know that the Beatles are still helping us explore places we didn’t know existed.

And using typical Beatle humor, why Revolver? What does a record do? Yup. That simple.

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

UK v US

The Brit kids heard Revolver two days before we Yanks, but they also heard the album that the Beatles created, not the album that Capital Records made out of that album.

Most now know that the British-released Beatle albums had 14 songs, unlike the typical 12 that Americans got. (That difference would change in 1967 with Sgt Pepper.)

Americans didn’t get I’m Only Sleeping”, “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Doctor Robert” on their album, but they’d actually already gotten those three on Yesterday and Today.

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

Cover

Klaus Voormann [BBC article], an old Beatle friend, did the cover. illustrations. Voormanb was a name that Beatle fans regularly saw over the Beatle years including occasionally playing bass.

Clever Voormann put his  own photograph and name (Klaus O.W. Voormann) into Harrison’s hair on the right-hand side of the cover. Click on the pic to enlarge and view better.

Robert Whitaker took the photos that are incorporated into Voormann’s drawings. He also took the back cover photograph as well as the infamous and belatedly cancelled butcher cover for Yesterday and Today.  [2011 NYT Whitaker obit]

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

Track by track

Think about what you heard on each of Revolver’s songs:
Side one
  • George Harrison’s “Taxman.” Few if any of us were in the same financial position as George and his mates were as far as taxation, but if George complained about the government then we were on board with that, too.
  • “Eleanor Rigby.” What were we listening to? If we’d read an English literature by now (and many of us had) we thought perhaps the Beatles had ripped off a Bronte sister. “Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.”
  • “I’m Only Sleeping.” Not as simple as the title.  And that backward guitar. More going on here than meets sleep. “Stay in bed, float upstream.”
  • George Harrison’s “Love to You” with its sitar dominating the instrumentation. We now knew that sitar was not a misspelling of guitar. “Make love all day long.”
  • Paul’s “Here There and Everywhere.” A slow song supreme. “Knowing that love is to share.”
  • Ringo’s “Yellow Submarine.” What fun! “So we sailed up to the sun
    Till we found the sea of green.”     Uncredited, Patti Boyd, Donovan, Marianne Faithful, and Brian Jones help with background vocals.
  • John’s “She Said She Said.” “I know what it’s like to be dead.”
Side two
  • “Good Day Sunshine.” “Then we’d lie beneath the shady tree
    I love her and she’s loving me.”     You hear it now and still sing along at the fading end repeating the title with Paul.
  • “And Your Bird Can Sing.” American fans likely didn’t realize bird meant girl. “You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is
    And your bird can swing, But you can’t hear me, you can’t hear me.”
  • “For No One.” Back to lost love. “You stay home, she goes out.”
  • “Dr Robert.” Amphetamines, but I’m not sure we knew that. “He helps you to understand.”
  • George’s “I Want To Tell You.” Is that piano out of tune? Cool. “But if I seem to act unkind, it’s only me it’s not my mind“
  • “Got to Get You Into My Life.”
  • In 1967 we’d have “A Day in the Life.” At the end of Revolver we have “Tomorrow Never Knows.” What is going on? Have I ever heard anything like this? Tibetan Book of the Dead we heard. George brought India to our ears. John put Tibet in our heads.
1966 Beatles Release Revolver

The best?

Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), said that the album found the Beatles “at the peak of their powers, competing with one another because nobody else could touch them“, and concluded that, “these days, Revolver has earned its reputation as the best album the Beatles ever made, which means the best album by anybody.” [Brackett, Nathan; with Hoard, Christian (eds) (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th edn). New York, NY: Fireside/Simon & Schuster.]

1966 Beatles Release Revolver

The future was close…

The Beatles started recording Sgt Pepper’s on Nov 24,  1966.

1966 Beatles Release Revolver
Beatles, Music of the 60s, Today in history

John Lennon Opines Jesus

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John Lennon Opines Jesus

July 29, 1966

August 1966 interview about his March opinion 
John Lennon Opines Jesus

Looking for trouble

By 1966, it could seem that the whole world  knew who Beatles were and that most of the world liked their music and them, too. Of course there were many who did not like the Beatles’s music nor the Beatles themselves. Critics made wise cracks about them needing a haircut, looking like girls,  their looks in general.

Rock and Roll was just a teenager and there were plenty of people who were suspicious of the music and anyone associated with it. The Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1950s still echoed in the early 60s, the Soviet Union was still our arch nemesis, and the re-invigorated civil rights movement threatened the status quo, however unjust that status quo was.

Parents warned their teenagers, “If you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.” Teenagers knew, “If you want to find a reason to dislike my music, you’ll find a reason.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Maureen Cleave

Journalists knew that a Beatle interview was money in the bank.  Maureen Cleave, of the London Evening Standard, ran a series of interviews called “How does a Beatle Live?”

On  March 4, 1966, Maureen Cleave interviewed John Lennon for the series.

During the interview, Lennon, who had been reading about various religions said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

The article appeared and that was that.   No outrage by the British.
John Lennon Opines Jesus

US reaction

Tony Barrow was the Beatles press officer. He offered the rights to all four interviews to US teen magazine, Datebook.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

On July 29, 1966 the article appeared with a headline featuring the Lennon Christianity quote, which was only a small part of the entire interview.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

It became national news on August 4. A NY Times article lead sentence read: “Dozens of radio stations throughout the United States are banning music by the Beatles because of a statement by one of the rock ‘n’ roll singers that his group is more popular than Jesus.”

The article’s last sentence read: “Several radio stations scheduled bonfires for the burning of Beatle records and pictures.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Some support

The US negative reaction was not universal. A Kentucky radio station declared that it would give the Beatles’ music airplay to show its “contempt for hypocrisy personified”, and the Jesuit magazine America wrote: “Lennon was simply stating what many a Christian educator would readily admit.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Aftermath

The Beatles toured that summer, but it was their last. While the Christianity comment alone did not cause that cessation, it was a part of it.

And in 2008, the Vatican issued the following statement: “The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation, mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll. The fact remains that 38 years after breaking up, the songs of the Lennon-McCartney brand have shown an extraordinary resistance to the passage of time, becoming a source of inspiration for more than one generation of pop musicians.” [BBC article]

John Lennon Opines Jesus
Beatles, Marijuana

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

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Beatles Say Legalize Grass

July 24, 1967

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

Controversy and the Beatles

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

By 1967, the Beatles were used to media scrutiny and controversy. Sometimes the media thrust it upon them; sometimes the Beatles put themselves out front. John’s 1965 comment comparing the Beatles’ popularity to that of Christ resulted in some radio stations banning their music and some record stores refusing to sell their records.

The original 1966 album cover for “Yesterday and Today” with them sitting in bloody butcher smocks holding pieces of meat and broken baby dolls was so controversial that Capital Records immediately withdrew the album, re-covered it, and only then re-released it.

Beatles Say Yes To Grass

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

John Hopkins

In 1967, most people and their govenments continued to view marijuana as a gateway drug, addictive, and deadly. While research had already suggested that none of those views were accurate, society continued to legislate against its use, sale, and production.

Those familiar with the substance saw it in a different light.

John “Hoppy” Hopkins was a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist. He used marijuana and a jury found him guilty of its possession and use. The judge sentenced Hopkins to 9 months in prison.

A “Free Hoppy” movement resulted.  [2015 Guardian obituary]

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

Stephen Abrams

Stephen Irwin Abrams was an American drug policy activist living in the United Kingdom. He led the “Free Hoppy” movement and wrote a full page advertisement that demanded cannabis law reform.

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

Beatles join

Among the dozens of researchers, academics, scientists, and other well-known people, Abrams sought out the Beatles imprimatur. They not only granted the use of their names to the petition, Paul paid for the advertisement in  The Times. Paul did not want it known he had done so, but having such an illustrious person sponsoring such a controversial piece in a major paper meant the secret was poorly kept.

The text’s lead sentence read, “The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice.”

It went on to speak to the view of marijuana’s danger and dispute those views.

64 signatures appeared.  After each of the Beatles’ names, the initials M.B.O. appeared: Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Queen Elizabeth had honored them with the award on October 26, 1965.

Click on the following to view the entire text, from the excellent Beatles Bible site.

Beatles Say Legalize Grass

John Lennon, ex-M.B.E

Two years later, on Nov. 25, 1969, John Lennon returned his MBE medal stating, “Your Majesty, I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon of Bag”

Likely, many of the same people who had criticized the Queen’s honoring John with the award because they felt him unworthy, again criticized Lennon for returning it.

Gosh darn it. The Beatles: damned when they do. Damned when they don’t.

Beatles Say Legalize Grass