The dynamics of relationship have always been central to the Beatles’ discography and career. They hold hands, they speak their hearts and sing their minds, they carry that weight. In every phase of their existence as a band, there were interactions and push-and-pulls between the musicians, the music, and the listener—what the band once was and what it was becoming. Though they remained for the most part grounded in a love of music and community, these relationships shifted in color and shape throughout their careers. The pivotal 1966 album Revolver seems to be the first clear instance of these four men, in the eye of a celebrity vortex that threatened to mechanize them into a bouncing, bobbing Beatles enterprise, taking the reins into their hands and redefining many of these musical relationships in ways that would refocus—but not necessarily transform beyond recognition—their purpose as a band and as individuals.
Perhaps most immediately, Revolver finds the Beatles solidifying the musical relationships they fostered with one another. It is often thought that a whole is the sum of its parts. How does this dynamic work when each “part,” separated from the others, constitutes a “whole” in his own right? It results in a complex interaction between creative minds that is strongly present on Revolver. On the album, the Beatles simultaneously grow more independent and interdependent as musicians. On one level, the tracks on Revolver offer the clearest examples hitherto of the developments of John, Paul, and George into rather distinct songwriters. It is easy to take the first three tracks of the album (“Taxman,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and “I’m Only Sleeping”) as stand-alone musical representations of three composers growing apart. Devin McKinney alludes to this fact when he discusses 1966 as the period when the three songwriting Beatles were discovering their “personal essences” as men and Beatles more closely than ever.1 Yet despite this, there is truly a particular kind of magic that results from the collaboration of these four particular people. The complementarity of their respective styles shines through on even the most individualistic tracks of Revolver. Paul’s throbbing bass line lurks beneath the whole of “Taxman,” sustaining a mellow anger beneath George’s blunt guitar and voice. “She Said She Said” (a trademark Lennon track) would sound incomplete—or at least a little less intriguing—without Ringo’s peculiar drum fills punctuating John’s lines. Unusual as it is, the contributions of the other Beatles make each song sound more distinctly like its singular songwriter; in relying on the others, each Beatle is finding himself. Thus, it seems that while each individual Beatle was undergoing an unprecedented period of personal growth at this time, the musical gems that are the sum of these parts, particularly on Revolver, actually serve to strengthen and hone their singularities.
The musical maturation present on Revolver was instigated by a combination of two changes in the lives of the Beatles in 1966: their growing wariness of their celebrity, and their introduction to mind-altering drugs, particularly LSD. The latter will be discussed in later sections of this paper. Regarding this first change—the Beatles’ meteoric rise as public figures—it is true that all good things must come to an end. It follows that the end of something as “good” and euphoric as Beatlemania would be equally intense in feeling. This is certainly true on the part of the fans, as they increasingly focused new and sometimes negative sentiments (no longer only uncomplicated love) on the wide-open, public target of the Beatles. An example of this is the anti-Beatle movement of the American South, which entirely misconstrued John Lennon’s offhand remark about their rock and roll becoming more popular than Jesus Christ.2 For the Beatles, the heights to which their persons—and more importantly, personas—had risen were alarming and exhausting. A look at the behavior and lyrics of George Harrison, perhaps the most introspective of the Beatles, can offer insight into what the band members themselves were feeling on the other side of this fame. George’s dispirited body language in interviews of the time (like that in Hamburg, 1966) as well as his biting lyrical allusions to this period in the band’s career (“When We Was Fab,” etc.) reveals a fearful hesitancy to let this whirlwind relationship continue much longer, for fear that they may be swallowed whole by it.
The second relationship the Beatles began to redefine with Revolver is that between their music (and thus, themselves) and the fans. Revolver upholds the strange dichotomy of what we will call “communal intimacy” between the band and its listeners. This dichotomy began on their earlier albums, but it manifests in an entirely different way starting with Revolver and continuing into their later albums. The first half of the 1960s saw the Beatles developing a “persistent and resolute connection” to their mostly female followers.3 This intimacy presents itself in any young Beatles fan, caught between “fantasy and reality,” garnering the impression that her favorite Beatle is singing his love song directly to her.4 The communal aspect of this personal connection to the band took form in Beatles fan clubs, record parties, sing-alongs, etc. Thus, the audience of the early Beatles career was a macrocosm (the crowd) of effectively identical microcosms (the devoted fan with a personal relationship to the Beatles). Moreover, the Beatles’ earlier albums were speaking lyrically in terms their audience could easily understand. The songs mirrored exaggerated versions of each fan’s reality. The Beatles saw her standing there, loved every little thing she did, and were happy just to dance with her.
In contrast, beginning in the Revolver era, the primary mode of connection between the Beatles and the fan is pure music—there are no more stadium concerts where the Beatles present their bodies for absorption. There are no more lengthy press tours to hear them squabble with reporters. In short, the relationship between the Beatles and the fan becomes less physical and more conceptual. The Beatles’ budding romance with psychedelic drugs heavily influenced this new direction. Steven Stark describes LSD as having lent a boost in studio creativity to the Beatles.5 These mind-altering drugs, combined with the Eastern philosophies that George was beginning to introduce into their lives and music, opened new avenues of consciousness for the men to explore. As the drug experiences broke into and turned off their minds, there grew a new awareness of, and appreciation for, the soul. What better way to communicate these experiences than by using the language of the soul, music? Here we arrive at a crucial juncture in the shifting relationship between music and fan: the music is no longer speaking their language. According to Stark, the songs of Revolver intentionally introduce a “pseudo-reality” to the listener, one to which they could escape and sit inside (“Yellow Submarine,” “Tomorrow Never Knows”) as opposed to one they could recognize and to which they could relate.6 McKinney likewise echoes this presence of a “new reality” in the Beatles’ new music.7 The evidence is in the songs. Using unprecedented levels of studio effects, songs like “Love You To” and “She Said She Said” (as well as its cousin also released in ‘66, “Rain”) sound like sonic representations of states of consciousness; they buzz and drone and lull. Thus, communal intimacy becomes less external. It no longer resembles 56,000 girls packed into Shea Stadium on a warm Sunday night. On Revolver, communal intimacy now takes the form of a generation of youth being invited to venture, individually, beyond what popular music had challenged them to thus far.
What is it that the Beatles are inviting their fans to enter into? The answer is tied to the third relationship the Beatles transformed with the music of Revolver. In changing the relationship between their music and their fans, the Beatles consequently hope to change their fans’ relationships with themselves. With Revolver’s new, more contemplative music, the Beatles invite their listener to consider a richer inner life. The Beatles seem to be encouraging listeners to look inward to find a settling of some sort, to slow down the pace of their bodies and minds and appreciate all they can discover for themselves in terms of truth. In pursuit of this inner journey, almost every track on Revolver is either a lamentation of the woes of the modern world (“Eleanor Rigby,” “Taxman,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “For No One”) or a celebration of what life could be like when listeners experience the higher void (“Here, There, and Everywhere,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and “Got to Get You Into My Life”). Revolver is “an album dedicated to personal freedom and mind expansion,”8 with the Beatles now appealing to our “psychospiritual and aesthetic sensibilities.”9 Through Revolver, listeners are introduced to “another kind of mind, another kind of cultural world.”10
The implication of these shifts in the Beatles’ musical pursuits is that Revolver makes an impression on its listener unlike any previous Beatles album. Though well-oiled and practiced, the Beatles’ music and performances prior to Revolver felt spontaneous and immediate—as if they could reorder the songs on the record and give a rousing live performance of them using only their eight onstage hands. The embodiment of this was the unbridled 1964 musical film, A Hard Day’s Night; in it, the Beatles offered a “utopian space of unrestricted playfulness and rebellion.”11 Audiences were invited to partake in the immediate thrills that occur in such condensed, organic moments of fun. Revolver strikes the listener as having one element that the Beatles’ music, until then, did not have: calculation. This album marks the first time the Beatles appear to have a deliberate purpose in their composition and arrangement of the songs. They have something to say (“turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream”), and they have orchestrated an effective way to say it. Relatedly, Revolver is a harbinger of a new compositional trend seen in the coming decade of experimental rock music: the concept album. The album finds “unity within diversity,” as the first thirteen tracks do not appear to be interrelated until they are heard within the context of the overstimulating grand finale: “Tomorrow Never Knows.”12
A consequence of the redefinitions of these three, key relationships is a shift in power dynamics regarding the band and the world. Through the first half of the sixties, the Beatles were—in a sense— fueled by their fans and their fame, relishing the inimitable energy of partaking in a love affair with the whole world. More pragmatically, the commercial aspects of tour revenue, Beatles merchandise, and record sales practically created and sustained the Beatles’ early career. The decision to stop touring in 1966, however, took this power out of the hands of the fans and placed it squarely in those of the music-makers. The Beatles themselves now controlled the messages they sent to their fans and, having silenced the deafening, pubescent roar of the concert hall, both band and fan could finally hear the music. While McKinney may be hyperbolic in asserting that by this time the “Beatle dream” had entered a dark and violent phase, Revolver certainly reveals at least some degree of the Beatles’ disenchantment with their fans.13 They seem to be entreating their listening base to follow them into new ways of engaging with—and thus appreciating—each other. This necessarily entails an element of trust on the part of the fans. By the release of Revolver in 1966, the Beatles devotee—ideally a few years matured since her (and increasingly his) days of screaming—will trust that their beloved band, who had forged new pathways just a few short years earlier, will make this second adventure just as worthwhile. With the privilege of hindsight, it is plain to see that the Beatles achieve just that. In the latter half of their condensed and pioneering career, propelled forward by the shifting of relationships that began with Revolver, the Beatles and their cohort wade with one another into new depths of music, mentality, and meaning.
