TAXMAN (+ new alt mix)

[RLester]

Moe nice points. Thanks

Interesting observations Kwai! And i also agree with Mr Lester about Paul Klee (though I wasn't aware of him till now). Revolver must be one of the greatest album covers of all time. Pepper got all the attention but i think Revolver is just as good in its own unique way.

Thank you, all! I appreciate your appreciation. Most of REVOLVER's headiness had eluded me until the counting of money was brought to my attention by Lord Reith! I have to admit I am non-profit...and accept ALL donations. The best part is...this forum is very much a hovercraft of organic deduction. Bird of a feather flock together. I don't ever write anything except when I'm here. The polarity is real and suddenly my brain is like a pin ball machine. To be possessed by Beatles nuance is all that's happening. I couldn't do it for money...it just doesn't inspire or sort the logic properly. But, this forum is very unusual...like my fingerprints on a cheerleader...the discourse of many great thinkers is a catalyst and there is no egotism anywhere. I have many more new visions that will be written down very soon. They are just as good. But Lord Reith's note above: Pepper got all of the attention...I love the picture of the group taking a break from work to examine the satin swatches that the Pepper uniforms will be tailored from. The REVOLVER equivalent would be Klaus at the stationery store selecting the proper pens and glue sticks for the cover. And that's how much the two albums have in common. Psychedelic IS black and White! Parody is satin. It's not a game because everyone wins.
Stay tuned!
KC

[Darth Kybiel]

Something I hadn't noticed until now is how many Revolver songs mention death:

Taxman
Eleanor Rigby
Love You Too
She Said She Said
For No One
Tomorrow Never Knows

Clearly they were in a morbid state of mind!

Something else mildly funny is that for most of my life I could not understand the line "He'll make you" in Dr Robert. I don't know about anywhere else, but when I was growing up, to "make" someone was to have sex with them. I thought that was pretty kinky even for John.

Of course, now that I am older and less stupid I realise he's actually in Yoda mode, putting words at the start of sentences that belong at the end: "He'll make you well".

Here There And Everywhere - 'Love never dies' the word dies is there even though it's not death directly.

[Kwai Chang]

Something else mildly funny is that for most of my life I could not understand the line "He'll make you" in Dr Robert. I don't know about anywhere else, but when I was growing up, to "make" someone was to have sex with them.

Well, then, we're in luck. He says of Dr. Robert "if you're down, he'll pick you up Dr. Robert".
Sounds like we're going to score "something gold, something true, something ha'penis, something blue"
I know it's not about Viagra...but, it's not necessarily about controlled substances.
I've always wanted to hear a Beatles rewrite of Rupert Brooks' The Soldier called The Grim Reeperbahn
where the plight is very tangible and ambiguous. The song would foreshadow imminent doom for the detached troop heading
out of the front line in agony...
"And If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field. That is for ever England"...
After the last verse we would learn that the person in the song is allergic to Penicillin!
You may disagree, but I am positive that Drive My Car is about asking the girl to
"do something in between!"
Baby you can drive my c@ck
and baby I LOVE YOU!
Beep beep mmmm beep beep, Yeah! <-----(very clever literary censorship,,,the beeps).
That song is on the Rub Her Soul album!
Tit tit tit tit tit tit tit
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, Michelle!
The only difference is you're down there!
Under the circumstances...
next to her tulips.
In the Biblical sense!
Tithe me up, tithe me down?
KC

[Fab4]

I've just listened to the great remixes of Paperback Writer and You Won't See Me. They sound so fresh and well balanced. Thank you Lord for these and all your other mixes. I was wondering, do you ever sleep?
Unfortunately i've missed the revised mixes of Taxman, Rain + more. Can you or someone else please reupload this for me? Thanks in advance

[Lord Reith]

I've just listened to the great remixes of Paperback Writer and You Won't See Me. They sound so fresh and well balanced. Thank you Lord for these and all your other mixes. I was wondering, do you ever sleep?
Unfortunately i've missed the revised mixes of Taxman, Rain + more. Can you or someone else please reupload this for me? Thanks in advance

Glad you liked them. Here are all of them again:

https://tinyurl.com/expiro-27th-aug

And yes I do sleep... occasionally...

[Fab4]

Thank you Lord for the quick response. They sound amazing. I specially like what you did with Rain. The 2nd version with the sped up version of the drums must have given Ringo blisters on his fingers.

[Lord Reith]

I like the way they played Rain fast. It was a great idea and really gave it a strange quality when they slowed it down. I can remember buying the rarities cassette in the early 80s to get that song and Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand, and when I heard Rain after so many years of reading just the lyrics I was really blindsided. It didn't sound like any other Beatles song. I thought the song itself was rather ordinary, but the sound of the record was amazing.

[JoeWadley]

I like the way they played Rain fast. It was a great idea and really gave it a strange quality when they slowed it down. I can remember buying the rarities cassette in the early 80s to get that song and Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand, and when I heard Rain after so many years of reading just the lyrics I was really blindsided. It didn't sound like any other Beatles song. I thought the song itself was rather ordinary, but the sound of the record was amazing.

At full speed, Rain sounds like a Byrds song.

[Rupert Pupkin]

I like the way they played Rain fast. It was a great idea and really gave it a strange quality when they slowed it down. I can remember buying the rarities cassette in the early 80s to get that song and Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand, and when I heard Rain after so many years of reading just the lyrics I was really blindsided. It didn't sound like any other Beatles song. I thought the song itself was rather ordinary, but the sound of the record was amazing.

I think that Eric Clapton with did later such things (like Frank Zappa at the same era) : for "Deserted Cities of the Heart" by Cream, he recorded probably his solo at a slower speed and it is played faster like you have something private but to do quickly in the toilet ASAP (also called the chili-con-carne syndrome). His guitar has a strange tone; but it fits perfectly with the song.

There is no way to do a mix of "Rain" with the "real-live" tempo (= way faster than the original) and mix John's voice ? Of course John overdubbed his voice later, so I don't know how it would sound.
I wonder if John sings on the real-live tempo version takes (we can't hear it on this track) and if they would have (like on the White Album) a distant voice while they were recording the fast-tempo real-live take, it would be great if for the Revolver box set they put such take out!

I think that the Rolling Stones were influenced by this song for "Child Of The Moon" : you have the same atmosphere, same kind of texture of sound and vibe; and the melody of the verses is close to" Rain".

But I'm not a fan of John's work on Revolver. To me, it marks the peak of Mccartney "Phase 1" Jane Asher : the highest number of unsurpassable "ballads" : Eleanor Rigby, For No One (and a third person song, nihilist, like a movie scenario), and the magnificent "Here There And Everywhere".
John was "only" sleeping (sounds like another "Nowhere Man") and if there was not "Tomorrow Never Knows" which invented rock-prog in 3 minutes (Syncopated Pandemonium part from A Saucerful of Secrets by Pink Floyd comes from this song; like the insane reversed tapes which sounds like seagulls and surfaced on Echoes)
"She Said She Said" is nice, but I prefer the demos.
In a nutshell, I think that this album is not well-balanced and not cohesive - besides the guitar-sound- contrary to the White Album which was eclectic. For instance I'm not at ease with "Got To Get You Into My Life"; not that it's not a good song, but the horns arrangement does not make it with the rest of the album. Even Johnny Hallyday in France covered this; and "translated" in French "je veux te graver dans ma vie" or something like that; that's not a good sign.
On the other hand the opening song "Taxman" is bombastic. Probably the best Beatles's album overture with Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road.

I remember this early take of "I'm Only Sleeping" where the sound reminds me A LOT Brian Wilson's masterpiece "Smile". Especially one particular piece of Smile but I can't put my finger on it at this very moment.

[Tex]

Vari-speeding vocals still involves singing with the backing track in RELATIVE pitch. The backing track can be playing slightly fast or slightly slow but you are still singing WITH the track in pitch and tempo. It's not something done later with tape magic it still requires a real performance.

I think people believe you can just take any vocal off a tape and manipulate it's pitch while keeping tempo. You can only do that digitally and only in the last 40 years or so.

The easiest example is "When I'm 64" where Paul's vocal was vari-speeded to be higher. This required Paul to sing to a slightly slow playing backing track. This ALSO required Paul to stretch out his vocal phrasing to match the slowed down tempo of the backing track. If you slightly slow down the finished song you'll hear Paul exactly how he performed it.

If you listen to the stereo mix of "She's Leaving Home" you'll hear a live performance with the stretched out vocal phrasing. That's why they are singing that way. Thankfully they chose to release the stereo mix as is (backing track closer to performed speed) without the mono version's speed up. By this time they were deliberately making differences between mono and stereo to increase sales. Paul even said as much in an interview in regards to the White Album.