Background and Recording
"Revolution 9" was not the first venture by The Beatles into experimental recordings. In January 1967, McCartney led the group in recording an unreleased piece called "Carnival of Light" during a session for "Penny Lane". McCartney said the work was inspired by composers Stockhausen and John Cage. Stockhausen was also a favourite of Lennon, and was one of the people included on the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Music critic Ian McDonald wrote that "Revolution 9" may have been influenced by Stockhausen's Hymnen in particular.
Another influence on Lennon was his relationship with Ono. Lennon and Ono had recently recorded their own avant-garde album, Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins. Lennon said: "Once I heard her stuff—not just the screeching and howling but her sort of word pieces and talking and breathing and all this strange stuff ... I got intrigued, so I wanted to do one." Ono attended the recording sessions and helped Lennon select which tape loops to use.
"Revolution 9" originated on 30 May 1968 during the first recording session for Lennon's composition "Revolution". Take 20 lasted more than ten minutes and was given additional overdubs over the next two sessions. Mark Lewisohn described the last six minutes as "pure chaos ... with discordant instrumental jamming, feedback, John repeatedly screaming 'alright' and then, simply, repeatedly screaming ... with Yoko talking and saying such off-the-wall phrases as 'you become naked', and with the overlaying of miscellaneous, home-made sound effects tapes."
Lennon soon decided to make the first part of the recording into a conventional Beatles' song, "Revolution 1", while using the last six minutes as the basis for a separate track, "Revolution 9". He began preparing additional sound effects and tape loops: some newly recorded in the studio, at home and from the studio archives. The work culminated on 20 June, with Lennon performing a live mix from tape loops running on machines in all three studios at Abbey Road. Additional prose was overdubbed by Lennon and Harrison.
More overdubs were added on 21 June followed by final mixing in stereo. The stereo master was completed on 25 June when it was shortened by 53 seconds. Although other songs on the album were separately remixed for the mono version, the complexity of "Revolution 9" necessitated making the mono mix a direct reduction of the final stereo master. McCartney had been out of the country when "Revolution 9" was assembled and mixed; he was unimpressed when he first heard the finished track, and later tried to persuade Lennon to drop his insistence that it be included on the album.
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