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The Beatles White Album and controversial Revolution No. 9

There is huge controversy over this album among Beatle fans. The sprawling double album with its range of styles, solo efforts, experimental tracks and spontaneous jams, divides opinion, Some rave about it and enjoy the rawness, versatility and daring. For them the variety piques the attention. Others see it as being full of fillers and unhoned numbers and would have preferred a single album of more carefully crafted songs. I’m firmly with the former. For me the album shines precisely because of its range and rawness.

The most controversial number of all was Lennon’s Revolution No.9. Many people wrote this off as a Lennon indulgence, a meaningless pile of junk – and I must admit that I used to feel the same. It was one of a few tracks that I used to skip.

Not anymore. When I came to write the book I had to study each track in detail. Here’s an extract from the book that might help explain:

Revolution 9 (Lennon McCartney)

There is no doubt that Yoko really turned John on. He’d become lost, searching and feeling desperate, as we heard in ‘Yer Blues’. Yoko, with her uncommercial avant garde approach, quirky humour and zany perspective provided a stimulating life-line. It awakened aspects of John that had lain dormant. Suddenly he had a desire to be authentic, say what he thought, and do what he wanted, regardless of the consequences. She’d unshackled him. It was no longer about image and creating commercially successful songs. He wasn’t just a Beatle; he was John.

   The other Beatles, press and public, found this new Lennon hard to understand. He wasn’t following the rules. Yoko unleashed a new burst of creativity and it did not always head off in the direction people wanted. Being accessible and commercial were no longer considerations. Being artistically authentic was all that mattered. Nowhere was this more obvious than on this Beatles track and the three experimental albums he released with Yoko in 1968/69 – Unfinished Music No.1 – Two Virgins, Unfinished Music No.2 – Life With The Lyons and Wedding Album.

   ‘Revolution 9’ and these three albums largely used the same techniques – cut-up, backwards sections, tape loops and spoken word. The two of them were having fun producing soundscapes – painting abstract aural compositions with noise. It might leave the other Beatles, critics and the public bemused but they were enjoying themselves.

   Saxonmotherson summed up the situation perfectly: ‘Sigh…where were YOU in 1968? I was 17. MLK & RFK were assassinated, there were race riots, cities burned, Anti-Vietnam demonstrations, all over Europe, there were student demonstrations. When MLK was killed, there were army tanks (ARMY TANKS!) in the field behind our house. There was a police riot in Chicago. First time I heard R #9, it made perfect sense to me. In retrospect, it still does. It is 1968. It is the aural version of Guernica by Picasso.’- comment on Beatles Bible.

   At the time, 1968, with the French fighting in the streets, and black riots in a number of US cities, there was much talk of revolution. Violent revolution really seemed a possibility. Speaking to Jan Wenner in his 1971 Rolling Stone interview John articulated his thoughts on violent revolution: ‘At 17 I used to wish a fuckin’ earthquake or revolution would happen so that I could go out and steal and do what the blacks are doing now. If I was black, I’d be all for it; if I were 17 I’d be all for it, too. What have you got to lose? Now I’ve got something to lose. I don’t want to die.’ ‘Revolution’ was a really important song for him. He was breaking out of the straitjacket and saying something from the heart. The Vietnam War and Civil Rights issues were exploding and he was determined to have a voice in it. He had been dismayed by the overcautious reaction of the rest of the band and their rejection of it as a single.