# Revolution 9: Brilliant or Bust?



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I want to hear reasons some people like this. For me it's just a bad track, and I know some classic musique concrete.


----------



## Guest (Aug 11, 2018)

I like it. It's not the most inventive musique concrete, but for the time in which it was created it's certainly a good achievement. I believe that the only things at the time which are more interesting and more impressive for me are Stockhausen's 1960s electronic music.


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Monstrous magnificence... as cutting edge as anything else that was happening at the time in the avant-garde. It's the total antithesis of the Beatles' pop hit of "I Want to Hand Your Hand" and is full of all kinds of subconscious and unconscious references, brilliant backmasking, tape manipulations, personal references that are all virtually happening at the same time to boggle the mind like in a disturbing acid trip. (No need to drop acid after Revolution 9.) Such experimental works were not unprecedented and I consider Lennon's brainchild as one of the better ones. The world lost a brilliant creative artist when he was so senselessly murdered.


----------



## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

My guess is that few people find Revolution 9 enjoyable, rather than interesting or intriguing, on a first listen.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

It was certainly interesting on first listen, but with the passage of time I always edited it out when making cassette tapes of the album. The original rocker _Revolution _had and has much more staying power.

Maybe it's just too self-indulgent.


----------



## Guest (Aug 11, 2018)

Here's the entire story behind the making of the track - Interesting read - well-worth the time and effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_9

Here's one excerpt entitled "Reception" -

"The unusual nature of "Revolution 9" engendered a wide range of opinions.

Mark Lewisohn summarised the public reaction upon its release: "… most listeners loathing it outright, the dedicated fans trying to understand it."

Music critics Robert Christgau and John Piccarella called it "an anti-masterpiece" and noted that, in effect, "for eight minutes of an album officially titled The Beatles, there were no Beatles."

Jann Wenner was more complimentary, writing that "Revolution 9" was "beautifully organized" and had more political impact than "Revolution 1".

Ian MacDonald remarked that "Revolution 9" evoked the era's revolutionary disruptions and their repercussions, and thus was culturally "one of the most significant acts the Beatles ever perpetrated".

Among more recent reviews, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide said it was "justly maligned", but "more fun than 'Honey Pie' or 'Yer Blues'".

Pitchfork reviewer Mark Richardson commented that "the biggest pop band in the world exposed millions of fans to a really great and certainly frightening piece of avant-garde art."

While reviewing the most overrated albums of all time, where the White Album ranked at number 18, Edward Sharp-Paul of FasterLouder wrote that "'Revolution #9' is the sound of an illusion shattering: Yes, the Beatles are human, and sometimes they drop almighty turds."

The track was voted the worst Beatles song in one of the first such polls, conducted in 1971 by WPLJ and The Village Voice.

Writing for Mojo in 2003, Mark Paytress said that "Revolution 9" remained "the most unpopular piece of music the Beatles ever made", yet it was also their "most extraordinary [recording]".

Me? - I was the first one to vote "Don't Know"- could be either or neither or both...


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I lament that the Beatles did not release the first eight "Revolutions". But I give "Revolution 9" a spin every now and then, along with most everything else by the Liverpudlian Fab Four.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

bharbeke said:


> My guess is that few people find Revolution 9 enjoyable, rather than interesting or intriguing, on a first listen.


Interesting / intriguing, rather than enjoyable - but not a bust!

This is cool:






It's very '60s - doing for pop music what the last episode of _The Prisoner_ did for TV.


----------



## Guest (Aug 11, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> I want to hear reasons some people like this. For me it's just a bad track, and I know some classic musique concrete.


For this listener, since first encountering it as a 9 year old, it's never lost its power to fascinate. It's creepy, even a bit scary. It belongs firmly with the "adult" second disc rather than the "child" first disc.

As I've said elsewhere, I grew up with The Beatles and their evolution somehow corresponded with my growing up. It doesn't matter to me that someone somewhere else might have created better examples of musique concrete, because I've enjoyed _this_ piece for what it is.


----------



## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Pointless asking me. I dislike everything the Beatles ever released.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

If _Revolution 9_ was on a single LP I'd probably hate it for taking up too much room, but as the _White Album_ weighs in at over an hour and a half it fits in fine with the 'everything bar the kitchen sink'-like diversity of the whole thing.


----------



## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

It probably ranks among my least favorite tracks of theirs, but I like it, and I love all of their albums and almost all of their songs. I prefer when they're just doing rock music though.


----------



## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I skipped the stop at Revolution #9 and went straight to _910_.

For those ancient ones among us: Do you remember on American Bandstand when Dick Clark would interview a teenager and ask them what they thought about the single that was just played? And they would say something like, "I'd give it an 85 Mr. Clark. I liked the song but I don't think you can dance to it."


----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> Here's the entire story behind the making of the track - Interesting read - well-worth the time and effort.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_9
> 
> ...


Reading about how John made it and his own intent just now makes me feel it is quite haphazard. I remember according to their biography video The Compleat Beatles, all the other members other than John, including George M. wanted to keep it out of the album. But at John's (or is it really Yoko's?) insistance it stayed on.


----------



## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

It's on a double album, where such things have been tolerated. It's not that good of an album either, rather incoherent in a way that signals "we're just having fun learning how to imitate other songwriters", plus a few hits that aren't even that good. 

But George Harrison was becoming more than a guitar player, and they would perfect the collage method on the suite side of Abbey Road.

The Clash, unable to resist the temptation, made a triple album that was just as good if not better, and showed off similar mix-and-dub tricks on the 3rd LP that are interesting if you really like that kind of thing. It's through Sandinista! that I discovered Lee Perry who may be the most neglected innovative producer in music history.


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

For those of you who don't like "Revolution 9", try playing it simultaneously with something you _do_ like. I think this will provide you with something to enjoy in the sound.

By the way, for those who do like "Revolution 9," if you play it simultaneously with something else you like, you'll find double pleasure in the sound. And I think John Lennon would appreciate that.


----------



## RogerExcellent (Jun 11, 2018)

Its Ok but other did this type of thing better


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

SONNET CLV said:


> For those of you who don't like "Revolution 9", try playing it simultaneously with something you _do_ like.


Or, as some suggest, smear it with Vaseline petroleum jelly and play it backwards. That should tell the story. Best to use an LP, since your CD player may never recover.


----------



## Guest (Aug 15, 2018)

RogerExcellent said:


> Its Ok but other did this type of thing better


Who ?


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

RogerExcellent said:


> Its Ok but other did this type of thing better





MacLeod said:


> Who ?


Nurse With Wound, perhaps?


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I don't think I've ever sat down and listened to it. Is it on the White album?


----------



## Norman Gunston (Apr 21, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> Nurse With Wound, perhaps?


Zappa Lumpy Gravy and predates Rev#9 May 13, 1968


----------



## Norman Gunston (Apr 21, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Or, as some suggest, smear it with Vaseline petroleum jelly and play it backwards. That should tell the story. Best to use an LP, since your CD player may never recover.


well here it is backwards


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Norman Gunston said:


> well here it is backwards


At about the three-minute mark, six-minute mark, and 6 1/2 minute mark, there is an excerpt from Schumann's Symphonic Studies/Etudes. Quite clever. There is also the singing of Happy Birthday before that, probably to Paul. Quite fascinating that just about everything but the kitchen sink was crammed into this fantastic collage. It would've taken days, perhaps even weeks, with help from others technically, to put something this complicated together using analog tapes. Lennon seemed to know exactly what he wanted and it was about as far from a commercially produced track as it could be, but as what I can only describe as pure art. And why not? The Beatles had more money than could be spent in a lifetime and they seemed more popular than God. They could do whatever they wanted and still have an audience. They were a global phenomenon and the first time I heard them play _Love Me Do_, I knew I was hearing something unique in spirit. But I wrote this because of the surprise of hearing the Schumann.

.


----------



## Norman Gunston (Apr 21, 2018)

Ono & Harrison and possibly Martin were involved


----------



## Guest (Aug 16, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> Nurse With Wound, perhaps?


Don't know it/them. Looking up the band, they (he?) came well after The Beatles. I assumed the idea that someone did this better than The Beatles would have been referring to prior or contemporary.



Norman Gunston said:


> Zappa Lumpy Gravy and predates Rev#9 May 13, 1968


Decent call. I don't know that it's 'better'. Was there any crossover at the time? I suspect not, as they were recording the pieces at broadly similar times, it's unlikely that either knew about what the other was doing, though it's just conceivable that the 1967-release of Lumpy Gravy made it across the Atlantic while Ono and Lennon's were experimenting. It's not like the way _The Beatles _and _The Beach Boys _fed off each other earlier in the decade.


----------



## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

For people who came before, there's Pierre Schaeffer of course, also some Pauline Oliveros and Bernard Parmegiani. My favorite for strange experimental musique concrète type stuff is the group :zoviet*france: and NWW is up there as well, though I haven't gotten into them as much.


----------

