The Experimental Revolution 1 [take 20]

The Exper­i­men­tal “Rev­o­lu­tion 1 (Take 20)” Surfaces

Bea­t­les fans still patiently wait­ing for Paul McCart­ney to release the band’s 1967 sound col­lage “Car­ni­val of Light” were sur­prised by an even bet­ter gift recently as a 10-plus minute ver­sion of The White Album’s “Rev­o­lu­tion 1″ leaked onto the Inter­net, giv­ing fans a never-before-heard lis­ten of what the White Album ses­sions must have been like.

The track makes it clear why seem­ingly unre­lated “Rev­o­lu­tion 1″ and the mani­a­cal “Rev­o­lu­tion 9″ sound col­lage share the same name. In “Rev­o­lu­tion 1 (Take 20)” John Lennon steers an extended, more exper­i­men­tal ver­sion of “1″ to its break­ing point, using it as a con­duit before launch­ing into the avant-garde “no.9”



 

Note: The audio cuts in and out before the music begins

The song first sur­faced on an upcom­ing, Europe-only boot­leg “Rev­o­lu­tion: Take… Your Knick­ers Off”, a nod to Lennon say­ing “Take your knick­ers off and let’s go” before “Rev­o­lu­tion 1 (Take 20)” started rolling. As for how the song leaked out, that’s an even big­ger mys­tery. Accord­ing to Mark Lewisohn’s book The Bea­t­les: Record­ing Ses­sions, only two copies of the take were made when record­ing the song was com­pleted on June 4, 1968. One copy left the stu­dio with Lennon that day, and the other remained behind. It’s unclear which copy appears on the boot­leg, nor how the Rev­o­lu­tion mak­ers even acquired it.


The record­ing is sim­i­lar to the White Album ver­sion of Rev­o­lu­tion 1, with var­i­ous dif­fer­ences includ­ing the absence of the open­ing lead gui­tar. There are also a num­ber of sound effects and vocals which didn’t make the final ver­sion, includ­ing a cho­rus of “Mama, dada, mama, dada” sung by George Har­ri­son and, pos­si­bly, Paul McCartney’s then-girlfriend Fran­cie Schwartz.

The most fas­ci­nat­ing part of this record­ing begins where the album ver­sion fades out. In this mix the track becomes a bed for impro­vi­sa­tions and ad-libs, which later formed the basis of Rev­o­lu­tion 9. Although it lacks many of the sound effects of Lennon’s sound col­lage, the links between the two record­ings can be clearly heard.

This rough mix was taken away by John Lennon after it was made. A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the mix has been avail­able for some time, but fea­tured a Yoko Ono mono­logue over the top of much of it. This clean mix, of bet­ter qual­ity than previously-heard bootlegs, is being her­alded by Bea­t­les fans as a sig­nif­i­cant find.

“As some­one who’s heard, I’d say, 99.8 per­cent of the Bea­t­les music that has leaked onto boot­leg, this is really inter­est­ing,” Bea­t­les expert Richie Unter­berger told EW.com. The site also reports Lennon was lying on his back while record­ing the vocals to make his voice sound dif­fer­ent. 2009 is shap­ing up to be a big year for Fab Four fans still clam­or­ing for unre­leased mate­r­ial. Talk­ing about “Car­ni­val of Light” back in Novem­ber, McCart­ney said “The time has come for its moment. I like it because it’s like the Bea­t­les free.”

The arti­cle above was com­piled from var­i­ous inter­net sources | 27 Feb­ru­ary 2009