Revolution 9 (Lennon/McCartney)
Quotes
“Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, “This is EMI test series number nine.” I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn’t realize it: it was just so funny the voice saying, “number nine”; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was.” – John Lennon
“The slow version of Revolution on the album went on and on and on and I took the fade-out part, which is what they sometimes do with disco records now, and just layered all this stuff over it. It was the basic rhythm of the original Revolution going on with some 20 loops we put on, things from the archives of EMI.” – John Lennon
“I don’t know what influence Revolution 9 had on the teenybopper fans, but most of them didn’t dig it. So what am I supposed to do?” – John Lennon
“Revolution 9 was quite similar to some stuff I’d been doing myself for fun. I didn’t think that mine was suitable for release, but John always encouraged me.” – Paul McCartney
Personnel
- John Lennon – vocals, tape loops, sound effects, piano, mellotron, cymbals
- George Harrison – vocals, tape loops, sound effects, electric guitar
- Yoko Ono – vocals, tape loops, sound effects
- George Martin – vocals
- Alistair Taylor – vocals
- Unidentified EMI engineer – vocals
Release history
- The Beatles (1968)
- The Beatles Anniversary Edition (2018) [2018 stereo mix]
