Backwards Tapes
As the Beatles pioneered the use of musique concrète in pop music (i.e. the sped-up tape loops in "Tomorrow Never Knows"), backward recordings came as a natural exponent of this experimentation. "Rain", the first rock song featuring a backwards vocal (Lennon singing the first verse of the song), came about when Lennon (claiming the influence of marijuana) accidentally loaded a reel-to-reel tape of the song on his machine backwards and essentially liked what he heard so much he quickly had the reversed overdub. A quick follow-up was the reversed guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping", which features a dual guitar solo by George Harrison played backwards. Harrison worked out a forward guitar part, learned to play the part in reverse, and recorded it backwards. Likewise, a backing track of reversed drums and cymbals made its way into the verses of "Strawberry Fields Forever". The Beatles' well-known use of reversed tapes led to rumours of backwards messages, including many that fueled the Paul is Dead urban myth. In fact, only "Rain" and Free as a Bird (see below) include intentional reversed lead vocal in Beatles songs.
The stereo version of George Harrison's "Blue Jay Way" (1967, Magical Mystery Tour) also includes backwards vocals, which is actually a backwards copy of the entire mix, including all instruments, which is faded up at the end of each phrase.
In an homage to the Beatles' experimentation with reversed tracks (and those rumoured), the "reunion" track "Free as a Bird" featured a backward message that sounds like "Made by John Lennon." This is only a coincidence, and the phrase that was reversed to achieve this was "Turned out nice again" (a catchphrase of George Formby; George Harrison was a great Formby fan http://www.theukuleleman.com/index-page2.html). The Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil show LOVE included the song "Gnik Nus," which was the vocal track to "Sun King" played in reverse, which was accidentally created when Giles Martin (George Martin's son) flipped the cymbal from "Sun King" for an effect used on the "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" mashup and discovered he'd also flipped the vocal track. Also, the mashup track "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" utilizes reversed cymbals, as well as reversing one of the tamboura riffs from "Within You Without You."
Read more about this topic: The Beatles' Recording Technology
Famous quotes containing the word tapes:
“Everything our children hear, see, and feel is recorded onto a cassette. Guess who is the big star in their movie? You are. What you say and, more important, what you do, is recorded there for them to replay over and over again. We all have videocassettes. Adults just have larger libraries of tapes available.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)