The White Album 50 Project: "Revolution 1"

(The following is my somewhat reworded commentary from when I featured the promotional clip for the single release version of "Revolution" as my Music Video Of the Week back in August 2018.)

The Beatles' "Revolution" has a long, convoluted history.  It was recorded twice, with two different arrangements, and the group probably never intended to issue two different interpretations of the same song, at least not at first.  The Beatles' alternate interpretations of songs, such as the original version of the White Album's own "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," usually went into the EMI vaults.  "Revolution 1" got released on the White Album after the fast version of "Revolution" was released as a single.  John Lennon wrote "Revolution" in India in response to violent anti-Vietnam War protests in America and Britain and anti-government protests in France and even Communist Poland.  John was against war and against oppression by the elites, and he didn't think violence was the answer to violence and that anarchy was the answer to oligarchy.  He said he wanted these demonstrators to show him the plan for a free and just society before he signed on to their cause, vowing not to give either money to hateful demagogues or support for brutal autocrats.  The song reflected a mainstream liberal take on politics similar to that of Harold Wilson in Britain and Hubert Humphrey in America.  John wrote the song long before Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics, and he also wrote it before the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations at the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago - which opened the day that the fast version of "Revolution" was released in the United States.  As it turned out, the Beatles were more in tune with the times than people already thought.

The song revolves around the chorus of "Don't you know it's gonna be . . . alright?", a reassurance that truth and justice would win out in the end. Many rock fans weren't so sure, and they dismissed the Beatles for their mainstream liberalism.  John would later become a radical leftist for a brief time in the 1970s, and he disavowed the song with a reference to it in his solo single "Power To the People" and later said he shouldn't have have slandered Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung in the lyrics of "Revolution."  (When Mao died in 1976 and the effects of his brutal rule of China became more obvious, Lennon's original disparaging of the late Chinese dictator was vindicated.)         

The subdued, low-keyed version of  "Revolution" was the first song to be recorded during the White Album sessions - on May 30, 1968 - with the intention of making it the Beatles' next single.  The four-minute, thirteen-second master was made from the eighteenth take, which ran for ten minutes; the final six minutes were full of discordant guitar noise and screaming.  (This segment of the tape would be used to form the basis of "Revolution 9.")  But Paul McCartney and George Harrison told John that "Revolution," if it was going to be the next Beatles single, ought to be recorded as a song with a loud, heavy-rock arrangement, as that would make a more declarative statement against the anarchy going on in the world.  John took their advice and led the band through just such a recording, on July 9, 1968, with session keyboard ace Nicky Hopkins on electric piano.  It only ended up becoming a B-side because "Hey Jude" was too good not to be the A-side.  The slower version of "Revolution" - retitled "Revolution 1" because that was the first version to be recorded - was to be saved for the White Album, likely in the interest of filling the extra time.

Both versions of "Revolution" are great, though I think the heavy-rock version is better.  "Revolution 1" is still worthy in its own right; "subdued" and "low-keyed" don't mean it's easy listening.  The guitars are still gnarling and biting, though not distorted, and Ringo Starr's heavy beat grounds the song in a blues-based groove.  "Revolution 1" is also notable for doo-wop style backing vocals, callback choruses of the words "Don't you know it's going to be . . ."  and John responding to talk about destruction with "Don't you know that you can count me out . . . in."  (John later explained that he wasn't sure which way to go, because "we all have that streak of violence underneath.")  Also, on "Revolution 1," John sings "We'd all love to change your head." And, in addition, "Revolution 1" contains a brass section.  On the faster version of "Revolution", the backing and callback vocals are gone, there's obviously no brass, John makes it clear that he wants "out" of destruction, and John sings, "We all want to change your head."  However, in the vocal track used on the promotional video for the heavy-rock version of "Revolution," the lyrical differences in "Revolution 1" - the backing and callback vocals, the "out . . . in" lyric, the variation on the lyric about changing heads - were employed . . . and in the video it was Paul, not John, who began the vocals with an opening scream.

One more thing I can't resist mentioning: John recorded the lead-vocal track on "Revolution 1" while lying on the floor to give his voice a different effect.

Did it work?  It must have.  When I first heard "Revolution 1" on the radio, I, having heard and loved the single-release recording of "Revolution" and being at the time completely unaware of the existence of an alternate Beatles recording of the song, was thinking, "Who the heck made this record?"

Whatever the tempo or the arrangement, "Revolution" was the most elegant political statement the Beatles ever made.  As a final footnote, it's kind of funny to think that "Revolution 1" was the first song taped in the sessions for the White Album and meant for a single but became an album track, because, paradoxically, "Strawberry Fields Forever" had been the first song taped in the sessions for Sgt. Pepper and meant to be an album track but became a single.

That's rock and roll for you.