#date questions

So it was like one creative burst. Was this 1979?

Yeah, ’79. And so I agreed that I would listen to the stuff. And he said, “Yoko has it” and she handed me an envelope that said, “For Jack’s ears only.” And I took it home and he called me at home the next day and asked, “What do you think?” And my honest opinion was that they were very primitive, a whole bunch of cassettes, there was narration in it, he talked me through it. The songs all began with an explanation, a lot of it funny, and all of them ended with, “What a piece of crap. I’m going to give it to Ringo for his solo album.”

Were these all songs that ended up being on the album?

No, there were still a few more. And there was so much on that tape that I didn’t put on the album. But the Beatles had completed "Real Love" many years later, from that cassette. They built off of that cassette. Actually, I had the original so they built that off of a copy that maybe Yoko had.

Were there any songs from that tape that immediately hit you?

Oh yes, there were so many. So many. There was so much material on that tape. Two cassettes.

Do you still have that tape?

Yes.

Did you ever digitize it?

Yes. But they’ll never be—it’s property of Yoko. Period. It’s her property. So anyway, most of it’s been released.

On the box sets [John Lennon Anthology and John Lennon Signature Box]. Yes, most of those demos have been released... Maybe not with his dialogue, which is quite funny, but he’s singing into a tape machine like a beat box, like a Panasonic from back in the day. He’s singing into it, playing guitar, and then playing that into another, just from the speakers and then singing along with it, like playing percussion or doubling his vocals. It was so primitive. Banging on pots and pans. Very primitive. And my first reaction was, “I don’t think I can beat it, to tell you the truth. It’s so good.” And he’s like, “Oh, no, no, no, that’s not—“ and I said, “John, put this out. It will be sensational. Just put this cassette out. I’m putting myself out of the greatest job I’ve ever had in my life, but I’m just telling you.”

If you could turn any world landmark upside down forever, which would you choose?

If you could go back in time and change one thing about your life, would you do it?

If you had to go back in time and change one action you took, what would you change?

What kind of music do you listen to?

What was your first pet and what was their name?

If the world were ever overtaken by intelligent hippos, would you bend to their will?

If the world were overtaken by intelligent hippos, would you be willing to date one of the hippos?

If you were a cyborg, what would you want your robotic abilities to be?

Do you believe in god?

What music did your parents raise you on?

If you could socially acceptably wear any object as a hat, what hat would you wear?

Who do you love most in the world right now?

Do you believe in soulmates?

What ways do you want to change yourself in the next few years?

What are you looking for in a romantic partner?

Do you like your parents?

What color is your toothbrush?

What is the ideal way to eat a potato?

If you could meet any historical figure from the past, who would you want to meet?

What is your favorite era of classic rock?

The big claim to fame of Revolver is the unique tape techniques used in recording. The one that gets a lot of attention is the backmasking technique, where the tape is fed in backwards for the reverse tape sound. It appears on Tomorrow Never Knows and I’m Only Sleeping for guitar solos and Rain for John’s vocals.

Looking up the recording dates on BeatlesBible…

April 6: First day of Revolver sessions; they record takes of Tomorrow Never Knows, which has Paul’s guitar solo backwards

April 16: Working on Rain, where the backwards tape is used on John’s vocals

May 5: Working on I’m Only Sleeping, where it is used a third time on George’s dual guitar parts

Who has the idea to play the tape backwards first?

There’s two conflicting accounts on the backwards Rain vocals.

In his David Sheff interview (1980), John mentions it was a stoned idea he had:

I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana and, as I usually do, I listened to what I’d recorded that day. Somehow I got it on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, ‘I know what to do with it, I know… Listen to this!’ So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. [Singing backwards] Sharethsmnowthsmeaness… [Laughter] That one was the gift of God, of Ja, actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.

In his interview with Lewisohn (1988), George Martin says it was his idea:

I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it onto another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed. Again, it was backwards forever after that.

So is the conflict a case of bad memory or bullshit?

I would assume the scales tip in George Martin’s favor just by virtue of him being sober. Not to say the stoned accident couldn’t have happened, but that John may be misremembering the sequence of events. That said, a happy accident sounds more reminiscent of other unique sounds the band used than an intentional one.

However, it’s not like the idea of putting tape in backwards for a different sound was a new discovery. It’d been known since the introduction of sound playback, the technique was used in experimental music in the 50s/60s, but it just wasn’t used intentionally in pop music. George Martin had already been recording sound effects in comedy albums and may have used it for weird sounds before.

Yet, if this wasn’t really new to George Martin, would he even remember what led to the decision? And why the oddly specific mention of John being out of the room at the time?

Also, both of these accounts are about John’s vocals for Rain. But Tomorrow Never Knows is recorded before Rain and includes Paul’s guitar solo backwards. So was Rain not the first time they use this technique?

Paul’s account in MYFN about backwards guitar solos seems to suggest a happy accident like John’s:

It played backwards, and, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Those effects! Nobody knew how those sounded then. We said, ‘My God, that is fantastic! Can we do that for real?’… So that was what we did and that was where we discovered backwards guitar. It was a beautiful solo actually. It sounds like something you couldn’t play.

But Paul stops short of naming the tape operator.

Geoff Emerick had been tape operator since 62 but was just been promoted to engineer before Revolver sessions begin (at the wise age of…20?!). In his book, he names Phil McDonald the tape operator. He was also relatively new.

But Geoff Emerick’s book backs up John’s story:

So we have John claiming his stoned accident for his vocals supported by Emerick vs George Martin’s claim he intentionally had the idea while John was out of the room vs Paul claiming an accident via an unnamed third party (that may have been newbie Phil).

Have any others weighed in to confirm or deny either account?

To be overly generous, I could see how Paul could be right about this being an accident initially. And then John and George separately have the idea to use it for vocals 10 days later.

But then I wondered about the timeline and how three accounts single out Rain vocals. Maybe Rain *was* the initial backwards tape and then they applied it to the Tomorrow Never Knows guitar solo later, such as when they did it for I’m Only Sleeping?

Turns out, overdubs with the reverse guitar solo on Tomorrow Never Knows were added April 22. So Rain was indeed their first use of backwards tape.

So the timeline actually looks like this:

April 6: First day of Revolver sessions; they record initial takes of Tomorrow Never Knows, which will later include Paul’s guitar solo backwards

April 16: Working on Rain, they use the backwards tape for the first time on John’s vocals

April 22: They use it a second time for the overdub of Paul’s guitar solo on Tomorrow Never Knows

May 5: Working on I’m Only Sleeping, they use it a third time on George’s dual guitar parts

This order makes me suspect John’s account is actually the more credible one.

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