Unpublished Rehearsal of Revolution 1

On Thursday, 30 May 1968, George Martin and The Beatles started to work on their next album, following Sgt Pepper. As the session got underway on 30 May, Lennon debuted a new song that would come to be known as “Revolution 1”, a standout composition from the Esher demos. With Martin and a whole array of people up in the booth, The Beatles perfected a rhythm track in eighteen takes, including Lennon’s lead vocal, McCartney’s piano, Harrison’s acoustic guitar, and Starr’s drums. As the longest performance of “Revolution 1”, the eighteenth and best take clocked in at more than ten minutes.
The following days, they continued to work on Revolution 1, and finally split off the ‘outro’ of Revolution into a new track, Revolution 9.

Th following Tuesday, June 4th, 1968, Yoko Ono attended these rehearsals and recorded them on a portable tape recorder. Unfortunately for Beatles fans, she also recorded her own voice, talking to herself, mainly about her relationship with John. She had met John not long before, and this was the first time she accompanied him into the studio. The one place where the Beatles had some privacy….. Although Yoko Ono was not the first (girl) friend that the Beatles had admitted there; McCartney had brought Francie Schwartz, Harrison had admitted his wife Pattie, and musicians such as David Crosby and Brian Jones had been invited. But in general, the studio was a place for the Beatles only.

Although it is not entirely clear, it seems likely that Yoko sat in the control room on that day, listening to the Beatles through the speakers there. We can hear others (including George Martin) on the tape, who appear to go about their business as usual, not bothered by Yoko or even noticing her. Later, she would go into the studio, and sit on McCartney’s amplifier and stroke Lennon’s hair while they were recording……..

In total, Yoko recorded more than an hour of these rehearsals. The Beatles went through Revolution 1 and played some jams in between. As far as I know these rehearsals have not been released or bootlegged elsewhere; possibly, these rehearsals were not even recorded by George Martin and his team.
Yoko’s voice obliterates the music in many places, but technology has now progressed so far that we can separate Yoko’s voice from the music and reveal these unknown White Album Rehearsals. At some later time, we may collect Yoko’s ramblings and analyse these; it might make Yoko blush to hear these today…….

For the moment we focus on the music of the Beatles. The jams (that seem to go on forever) are very repetitive and not very interesting. But the early rehearsals of Revolution are worthwhile. It is not entirely clear exactly on which date these recordings were made. Yoko says at some point “ This is Tuesday, sixth of June 1968”. That doesn’t help us much, since June 6 was a Thursday (not a Tuesday) in 1968. It seems likely that this part of the tape was recorded on June 4th, since it is less likely that she would make a mistake in the day of the week. Furthermore, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed on June 5th, so she would probably have commented on that. Yoko does mention the shooting of Andy Warhol, which took place on June 3rd.

During much of Yoko’s tape, the Beatles are remixing what would become the sound collage Revolution no 9. At this stage, it is still the outro of Revolution 1. Recently, these early takes of Revolution no 9 have become available in good quality. Listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XIRWpmqQV0 how Yoko captured the mixing of Revolution 1.

Although some part of the tape was probably recorded on June 4th, it is possible that some of the tape was recorded earlier. Yoko started to come along to the studio as they began work on the White Album, on May 30th. On May 31, they recorded much of what would become Revolution 9, and Yoko was in the studio to add some vocals (“if I become naked…”). According to Lewisohn, organ and vocal overdubs (with John lying on his back on the studio floor) were done on June 4th, suggesting that the instrumental part of Revolution 1 was more or less finished on May 31st.

Since some of Yoko’s recordings appear to be of an earlier version of Revolution 1, these fragments were probably recorded on May 30 or May 31st. Unfortunately, the usual reliable sources (Lewisohn, Emerick) don’t mention Yoko making any recording in the studio at all. Emerick remarks: “For the next couple of hours Ono just sat quietly with us in the control room. It had to have been even more uncomfortable for her than it was for any of us. She had been put in an embarrassing situation, plunked right by the window so that George Martin and I had to crane our heads around her to see the others out in the studio and communicate with them. As a result, she kept thinking we were staring at her. She’d give us a polite, shy smile whenever she’d see us looking in her direction, but she never actually said anything.”

Therefore, we looked closer at the rehearsal of Revolution 1 itself. There is a prominent organ part, probably played by Paul. At some point, he tries some different chords (probably to avoid too much repetition) but these did not make it onto the finished take. The organ plays long chords, as in – later – Pink Floyd style. The guitar part (played rather loud) is probably Lennon; he has not arrived yet at the ‘boogie-woogie’ rhythm that would characterise the finished take. But overall, the structure of the song is pretty much there.

There are no vocals on the tape, and since Paul played organ, there is no bass either. So we lifted the bass and vocals from the released version, maintaining the loosely played character of the rehearsal as much of possible.

So here it is, a hitherto unknown rehearsal of Revolution 1. We should be grateful to Yoko Ono for preserving the session for posterity.