In defense of “Revolution 9”

I come neither to praise nor to bury “Revolution 9”: only to argue for its inevitability.

The Beatles’ eight-minute sound collage “Revolution 9” is an easy target for mockery. Fab Four fans and detractors alike intone the looped opening voice Number nine… number nine… as a shorthand way of saying that here, the brilliant Beatles went too far or just plain went wrong.

I happen to like “Revolution 9” — as did Beatles producer George Martin — and whether you like it or not, it’s worth noting, as Ian McDonald does in his wonderful book Revolution in the Head, that with one stroke, The Beatles put an avant-garde musical composition in front of millions of people, something that John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen could only dream of doing.

But I come neither to praise nor to bury “Revolution 9.” No, my defense of it is an examination of how it was bound to happen, and that as such, it deserved to be on a Beatles record.

“Revolution 9” was John Lennon’s brainchild. Combining his own home and studio recordings with sound samples from the EMI library, Lennon mixed several tape machines running simultaneously to combine chance operation, backmasking (i.e., sound played backward), noise, multilayered sound, sound effects, spoken word, and nonverbal vocalization.

The Beatles (John in particular) had been taking baby steps toward “Revolution 9” for years.

A look at The Beatles’ catalogue pre-White Album shows the boldfaced elements above leading toward “Revolution 9.”

1. A chance occurrence in the studio of guitar feedback (theretofore considered unwanted noise) inspires The Beatles to reproduce the effect for the opening of “I Feel Fine.”
2. “Tomorrow Never Knows” makes liberal use of tape loops, backmasking, and distorted music and voice (what sounds like a seagull is a distorted recording of Paul laughing).
3. The fadeout of “Rain” features John’s vocal backmasked, singing the song’s opening line in reverse.
4. Sound effects abound in “Yellow Submarine,” along with a sampled fragment of a brass band reportedly playing the French march “Le Reve Passe,” presumably from the EMI library.
5. The 30-second coda at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever” is practically a “Revolution 9” in miniature: music, backmasking, multilayered sound, noise, and gnomic spoken word (either “I buried Paul” or “Cranberry sauce”).
6. “Carnival of Light,” a 14-minute instrumental of sound and music is Paul’s contribution to a London rave in early 1967. (It’s never appeared on a Beatles record or collection.)
7. The orchestral buildup that occurs twice in “A Day in the Life” is a form of chance operation, as each orchestra member was told to start on their instrument’s lowest note and end on its highest note within a certain number of measures.
8. The animal sounds that open and close “Good Morning Good Morning” again make use of sound effects from the EMI library. The goal, as with other songs and “Revolution 9,” is to create imagery with sound.
9. The closing 30 seconds of “Lovely Rita” feature John’s breathing sounds and nonverbal vocalizations.
10. “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” a B-side rarity, is a pastiche of humorous musical fragments, closing out with more non-verbal vocalization: John imitating a jowly, posh British type, and what sounds like Paul making grunting noises.
11. The end of “All You Need is Love” is a building, multilayered wave of melody fragments (“Greensleeves,” “In the Mood”), song fragments (Paul singing “She Loves You”), and John chanting “love is all you need” over and over, not unlike how “number nine” is repeated in “Revolution 9.”
12. More than any other Beatles song, “I Am the Walrus” anticipates “Revolution 9” with its use of sound effects, backmasking, shifting dynamics, and, at the end, its crescendo of noise and multilayered sound.

Not to be forgotten, in assessing what may have influenced or led to “Revolution 9,” are The Beatles’ annual Christmas messages, distributed to members of their fan club. Starting in 1966, these messages become increasingly fragmented and surreal, combining music, tape effects, audio clips, sound effects, and spoken word.

Stylistically, The Beatles were always looking toward a new horizon: with each album and sometimes song to song, they stretched themselves to try a new musical approach. But whenever they took a bold step into the avant-garde or experimental, they would soften this step with humor: a wink, or a joke. It was as if the lads from Liverpool were wary of appearing too “arty” or as performers who took themselves too seriously.

Thus, the solemnity of “Within You Without You” ends with a jovial round of laughter, the fadeout of “Tomorrow Never Knows” is a frenzied ragtime piano, and the final chord of “A Day in the Life” is followed by (at least in the original UK presses of the album) a sound only dogs could hear and several seconds of gibberish.

This approach also applies to “Revolution 9,” which may be The Beatles’ most sinister-sounding recording: within those eight minutes we hear flames, machine gun fire, frenzied car horns, echoing moans, and unsettling phrases such as “You become naked” and “Take this brother, may it serve you well.” In this respect, “Revolution 9” sounds like an acid trip gone wrong or a nightmare from which we are trying to awake.

And yet, there are also moments of humor: the solemn recitation of dance names (“the Watusi … the Twist”), Lennon’s tale of someone who needed to get a new pair of teeth, the frenzied backward orchestration, the cackling women, the repeated “Shh!” and the outro of football fans chanting “Block that kick!”

The White Album could have ended with “Revolution 9,” but once again, to soften things with humor, The Beatles tack on the swelling strings of the lullaby “Good Night,” sung by Ringo of all people, as if to assure us that we will have sweet dreams after all.

If “Revolution 9” were to make it onto any Beatles record, it had to be The White Album, which is a double-record Revolver for its shifting musical styles. After 1968, The Beatles never got weird again: They were back to basics with Let It Be, followed by the polish of Abbey Road. “Revolution 9” had no place on either of those records.

Reportedly, Paul didn’t want “Revolution 9” on The White Album, and nearly 30 years later, he was outvoted to have his “Carnival of Light” on The Beatles Anthology.

To quote a line from The Office: “Well, well, well: How the turntables…”

Tim Lemire is the host of the podcast The Beatles’ English, available on Apple Podcasts and from his website.