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'Revolution 9' was neither a Lennon
and McCartney song nor a Beatles' recording but an 8 minute
and 15 second-long amalgamation of taped sounds which John
and Yoko mixed together.
The album track of 'Revolution'
originally clocked in at over 10 minutes, more than half of
it consisting of John and Yoko screaming and moaning over a
range of discordant sounds, created to simulate the
rumblings of a revolution. Subsequently, they decided to
clip the chaotic section and use it as the basis of another
track, which turned into 'Revolution 9'.
At this point, homemade tapes of
crowd disturbances were brought in and other sound effects
were found in EMI's library. Due to the lack of
sophisticated multitrack recording, all three Abbey Road
studios had to be commandeered, with machines being
specially linked together and tape loops held in place with
pencils. John operated the faders to create a live
mix.
With so many overlapping sounds, it
is almost impossible to identify all the individual noises
and spoken comments. Mark Lewisohn. who studied the original
four-track recording, divided these into: a choir; backwards
violins; a backwards symphony; an orchestral overdub from 'A
Day In The Life'; banging glasses; applause; opera;
backwards mellotron; humming; spoken phrases by John and
George, and a cassette tape of Yoko and John screaming the
word 'right' from 'Revolution'.
The most memorable tape, (which
supplied part of the title), was the sonorous voice intoning
'Number Nine, Number Nine'. This was apparently discovered
on a library tape, which may have formed part of a taped
examination question for students of the Royal Academy of
Music.
Once again, Charles Manson thought
that John was speaking personally to him through the hubbub,
taking the number 9 with its vision of the coming
apocalypse. Manson thought John was shouting 'rise', rather
than 'right', and interpreted it as an incitement to the
black community to rise against the white middle class.
'Rise' became one of Manson's key phrases and was found
painted in blood at one of the murder scenes.
Paul was in America when
'Revolution 9' was put together and was disappointed at its
inclusion on The Beatles, particularly as he had been making
sound collages at home since 1966 and realized that John
would now be seen as the innovator.
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