S$# 035 Beatles | Revolution

One could always depend on a Beatles b-side to be a great song, better than most other artists' a-sides. Revolution, the flip of the monster hit Hey Jude, certainly did not disappoint.

When my sister bought the single in the fall of 1968, I was impressed with both songs - especially the long fade-out on Hey Jude and John's distorted guitars and strident vocal on Revolution. (I had good taste even as a youngster.)

Not to be confused with the slow Revolution 1 (or the sound FX-laden Revolution 9), the single version of this song is for me more powerful than R1, which would appear on the White Album.

As Fab historian Mark Lewisohn wrote:

There were few more exciting, hard rocking Beatles recordings than the "single version" of Revolution. Perhaps the song's most distinctive sound was of two distorted lead guitars... "The guitars were put through the recording console, which was technically not the thing to do" [recalled tape operator Phil McDonald]....

After ten takes, and an overdub onto the tenth, the basic rhythm of Revolution was blistering, with the two distorted guitars, handclaps and two separate and very heavy drum tracks, compressed and limited and generally squahed to sound hard and uncompromising .... John superimposed a venomous lead vocal and, on another take, a second vocal take, manually double-tracking the odd word here and there ... to further force his points across. In this second overdub John also gave the song a screaming introduction.

You have to hear the results for yourself to really appreciate this message song:

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right

The Hey Jude / Revolution single was released 38 years ago this week. Revolution is also featured on Past Masters Vol. 2 and the 1967-1970 collection.