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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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