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One of my favorite albums just turned 50...


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Wow...I saw the thread title, and thought to myself 'hmmm...the best album of 1966...had to be Revolver...' and Bingo!

Still one of my faves as well...outstanding songwriting, brilliantly engineered, letter perfect performances.

Considering the album competition that year, like Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds, Parsely/Sage and Freakout!....arguably the best damn year of rock releases...singles galore too...Rascals, Kinks, Stones, Standells, Lovin' Spoonful, Percy Sledge, Mamas and Papas, Donovan, the Byrds, the Monkees...a great time to be alive!

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I read this article on the Epi page last week. I'd already been a Beatlehead for 3 years when this album came out. I remember being absolutely blown away by it...And remain so. "Rubber Soul" was a watershed in their career. They'd given up the road, and they were so "Money" when it came to records that the label just stood back and let them and George Martin go where the art took them.

It took them to "Revolver". And "Revolver" took the entire music world to places it had not been. It brought George Harrison's blossoming as a musician and songwriter forward like had not been done previously. It changed the way I thought about music...Rock music anyway.

 

"Pepper's" was a whole different thing, a great thing to be sure. It stands alone, like "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul" stand alone.

 

For me personally...I think of their career as a great arch. Every single stone in the arch being great and strong and important.

 

I think of "Revolver" as the keystone in that arch.

 

The only Beatle song I ever attempted in a cover band was "She's a Woman"

 

The only Beatle song I ever did a solo cover of was "Tomorrow Never Knows" I still love that song.

 

 

 

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I read this article on the Epi page last week. I'd already been a Beatlehead for 3 years when this album came out. I remember being absolutely blown away by it...And remain so. "Rubber Soul" was a watershed in their career. They'd given up the road, and they were so "Money" when it came to records that the label just stood back and let them and George Martin go where the art took them.

It took them to "Revolver". And "Revolver" took the entire music world to places it had not been. It brought George Harrison's blossoming as a musician and songwriter forward like had not been done previously. It changed the way I thought about music...Rock music anyway.

 

"Pepper's" was a whole different thing, a great thing to be sure. It stands alone, like "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul" stand alone.

 

For me personally...I think of their career as a great arch. Every single stone in the arch being great and strong and important.

 

I think of "Revolver" as the keystone in that arch.

 

The only Beatle song I ever attempted in a cover band was "She's a Woman"

 

The only Beatle song I ever did a solo cover of was "Tomorrow Never Knows" I still love that song.

 

 

 

 

Great post Joe! :philthumb:

 

How did you guys / you do on the covers - She's A Woman and Tomorrow Never Knows?

 

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We did "She's a Woman" pretty much along the lines of the original arrangement, just rocked up a bit. It's a fun song to play, easy, but interesting. I did a solo cover version of "Tomorrow Never Knows" Nothing to brag about but I had a blast doing it. Did the solo guitar backwards as well. It's on my Soundcloud page if you really want to hear it. Did it on a 4 track cassette.

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Get in line... I can remember when songs from Help! were in "current / new rotation" on the radio. :lol:

 

I was there from the beginning.

 

Eleven years younger than George Harrison, with a guitar playing father who was into Les Paul and Chet Atkins, I was ready for rock 'n' roll.

 

I remember watching with my dad when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I had already been playing the guitar for a few years and was mesmerized. My dad was making comments on what type of guitars they were playing (I blame my chronic GAS on that event).

 

"Day Tripper" was something but when I figured out the opening riff from "I Want To Tell You" I felt like I was on the way.

 

The Ravi Shankar influence between Rubber soul and Revolver is monumental. It opened my ears and planted the seed for what was to become a spiritual journey.

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"Revolver was released only seven months after Rubber Soul and although there are similarities' date=' in many ways [b']it sounds as if it were made by an entirely different band
[/b]
."

 

 

Not by a different band but by Geoff Emerick.

 

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I think that the change in chief engineers had a notable influence on that record. Prior to Geoff taking over as the "balance engineer", the job had been handled (very competently) by Norman Smith, but Geoff brought in fresh ideas and an openness to experimentation that perfectly suited the state of mind and approach the band had at the time.

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I was 7 and already playing violin when the Beatles came out with Please, Please Me. I started playing guitar and got my first recorder a year later. Those early albums were full of hits that were on the charts. With the Beatles and Meet the Beatles, Introducing the Beatles. I'd hear them on the NY Am stations day and night. I had older siblings so I got to hear them on Records just as frequently.

 

I think the White album, had a big impact on me because I learned to play all of those songs.

 

One album few talk about is the The Beatles Again/Hey Jude album. It was out of print since 1980 and just released again on CD two years ago. It had a bunch of singles and B sides of 45's that were amazing like Rain, Paperback Writer, a different version of revolution, Old Brown shoe.

It also had stuff like Don't Let Me down from the Let it Be sessions before that album was released and some hits from the hard days night album.

 

If you wanted a to get the single Hey Jude you could only get it by buying that album. It was a stereo mix too. The original radio issue was mono.

The songs "Rain", "Lady Madonna" and "Revolution" were also first mixed for stereo specifically for this album. Prior to the release of the "Get Back" single in the spring of 1969, all Beatles singles were issued in mono in the US.

 

There were all kinds of screw ups with the album artwork too. The front and back covers were swapped accidentally with only a couple printed the correct way. The album had its first covers printed The Beatles Again with sleeves saying Hey Jude.

 

I played that album to death as a kid. My father wasn't a big pop music fan at all. He was more into classical music mostly with some other oddball stuff we'd hear as kids like the old spike jones records. He did like the song Hey Jude however. It was a big turn around for him considering how McCartney rips it up with some major rock vocals on that one. I always thought that song had allot in common with the song I Am A Walrus at the end.

 

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I'm also an enormous fan of "Revolver." '66 was my birth year, and I like the coincidence.

 

BTW, I was thinking of starting another thread that was Beatles-related -- should I post here? I want to discuss the use of compression on the White Album.

 

Seems topical enough to me. :)

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I'm also an enormous fan of "Revolver." '66 was my birth year, and I like the coincidence.

 

BTW, I was thinking of starting another thread that was Beatles-related -- should I post here? I want to discuss the use of compression on the White Album.

 

I think the heavy compression started with Geoff Emerick on Revolver and is quite apparent on 'Taxman'

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I wonder how they employed it though...Do you think they used different compressors for the different instruments? Or perhaps even different vocals? You think they also added compression to the final mixes to tighten the overall sound? I realize they were working with four track machines and bouncing back and forth between them. I reckon they had to be judicious in the employment of same given the restrictions trackwise.

 

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I wonder how they employed it though...Do you think they used different compressors for the different instruments? Or perhaps even different vocals? You think they also added compression to the final mixes to tighten the overall sound? I realize they were working with four track machines and bouncing back and forth between them. I reckon they had to be judicious in the employment of same given the restrictions trackwise.

 

Yes, they used different compressors for different things. The RS124 was often used on McCartney's bass and on electric and (especially) acoustic guitars, while the Fairchild was a big favorite on practically anything, but especially vocals, piano and drums.

 

EMI also had the RS114 Limiter, which was used often on earlier sessions (up until '64 or '65) - after that the Fairchild came along and quickly gained favor over it.

 

Later in their career the mixing consoles (the solid state TG12345) also included a compressor / limiter (TG12413) on every channel. I believe they were among the very first consoles to have that feature.

 

Mastering often used compression back then, just as it does today, but to be honest I'm not sure if "bus compression" was ever used on their mixes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Beatles up until the Sgt Peppers album treated all their songs as singles. Peppers was the beginning of having a theme to albums.

 

The band was always experimenting in new ways of getting sounds. McCartney for example would pass his bass through compression several times to make it hyped enough to come through strong when played on low fidelity AM radios.

 

I think it really started to stand out when they did Paperback Writher, One of the first recordings done with a Rickenbacker. They also used a Woofer speaker as a microphone which added an element of inductive compression and drive to the sound. They likely used the comps Phil mentioned too. I read somewhere in Tape Ops or some other magazine where he chained comps together in series.

'Paperback Writer' was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement," said Beatles' engineer Geoff Emerick in Mark Lewisohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. "Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone. We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current."[

 

 

 

I found this tidbit too involving disk cutting.

'Paperback Writer' had a heavier sound than some earlier work – and very good vocal work, too," said producer George Martin. "I think that was just the way it worked out, that the rhythm was the most important part of their make-up by this time."{C} The studio itself was now a crucial instrument for the band, and this is one of the earliest examples of the Beatles learning how to play it, and play it masterfully. Consider ATOC – Automatic Transient Overload Control.

"It was this huge box with flashing lights and what looked like the eye of a Cyclops staring at you," explains Tony Clark, the man who cut the "Paperback Writer" master lacquer, in Sessions. But what this "monster" did was allow "Paperback Writer" to have an insanely high bass factor and still not make record player needles jump.

 

 

 

 

 

Other songs like Rain had a compressed sound by slowing the music down to make it sound like it sustained longer.

 

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The ATOC was new and first used on the Revolver-era recordings - I'm pretty sure it was Paperback Writer that was the first song to use it in the mastering. After that it was used on pretty much everything else for the remainder of their recording career as a band. It was basically a device with look-ahead capability that changed the width of the grooves depending on bass content and peaks.

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