The Beatles Revolver

Harrison wrote "Taxman" as a protest against the high marginal tax rates paid by top earners like the Beatles, which, under Harold Wilson's Labour government, amounted to 95 per cent of unearned income (i.e. interest on savings and investments) above the top threshold. The song's spoken count-in is out of tempo with the performance that follows, a device that Riley credits with establishing the "new studio aesthetic of Revolver". Harrison's vocals on the track were treated with heavy compression and ADT. In addition to playing a glissandi-inflected bass part reminiscent of Motown's James Jamerson, McCartney performed the song's Indian-style guitar solo. The latter section was also edited onto the end of the original recording, ensuring that the track closed with the solo reprised over a fadeout. Rodriguez recognises "Taxman" as the first Beatles song written about "topical concerns"; he also cites its "abrasive sneer" as a precursor to the 1970s punk rock movement. Completed with input from Lennon, the lyrics refer by name to Wilson, who had just been re-elected as prime minister in the 1966 general election, and Edward Heath, the Conservative Leader of the Opposition. Womack describes McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" as a "narrative about the perils of loneliness". The story involves the title character, who is an ageing spinster, and a lonely priest named Father McKenzie who writes "sermon[s] that no one will hear". He presides over Rigby's funeral and acknowledges that despite his efforts, "no one was saved". The first McCartney composition to depart from the themes of a standard love song, its lyrics were the product of a group effort, with Harrison, Starr, Lennon and the latter's friend Pete Shotton all contributing. While Lennon and Harrison supplied harmonies beside McCartney's lead vocal, no Beatle played on the recording; instead, Martin arranged the track for a string octet, drawing inspiration from Bernard Herrmann's 1960 film score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. In Riley's opinion, "the corruption of 'Taxman' and the utter finality of Eleanor's fate makes the world of Revolver more ominous than any other pair of opening songs could." Author Peter Doggett describes "I'm Only Sleeping" as "Half acid dream, half latent Lennon laziness personified." As with "Rain", the basic track was recorded at a faster tempo before being subjected to varispeeding. The latter treatment, along with ADT, was also applied to Lennon's vocal as he sought to replicate, in MacDonald's description, a "papery old man's voice". For the guitar solo, Harrison recorded two separate lines: the first with a clean sound, while on the second, he played his Gibson SG through a fuzzbox. Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould views the solo as appearing to "suspend the laws of time and motion to simulate the half-coherence of the state between wakefulness and sleep". Musicologist Walter Everett likens the song to a "particularly expressive text painting".

"Love You To" marked Harrison's first foray into Hindustani classical music as a composer, following his introduction of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood" in 1965. He recorded the track with only minimal contributions from Starr and McCartney, and no input from Lennon; Indian musicians from the Asian Music Circle provided instrumentation such as tabla, tambura and sitar. Author Peter Lavezzoli recognises the song as "the first conscious attempt in pop to emulate a non-Western form of music in structure and instrumentation". Aside from playing sitar on the track, Harrison's contributions included fuzztone-effected electric guitar. Everett identifies the song's change of metre as unprecedented in the Beatles' work and a characteristic that would go on to feature prominently on Sgt. Pepper. Partly influenced by Harrison's experimentation with LSD, the lyrics address the singer's desire for "immediate sexual gratification", according to Womack, and serve as a "rallying call to accept our inner hedonism and release our worldly inhibitions". "Here, There and Everywhere" is a ballad that McCartney wrote towards the end of the Revolver sessions. His inspiration for the song was the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds track "God Only Knows", which, in turn, Brian Wilson had been inspired to write after repeatedly listening to Rubber Soul. McCartney's double-tracked vocal was treated with varispeeding, resulting in a higher pitch at playback. The song's opening lines are sung in free time before its 4/4 time signature is established; according to Everett, "nowhere else does a Beatles introduction so well prepare a listener for the most striking and expressive tonal events that lie ahead." Womack characterises the song as a romantic ballad "about living in the here and now" and "fully experiencing the conscious moment". He notes that, with the preceding track, "Love You To", the album expresses "corresponding examinations of the human experience of physical and romantic love". McCartney and Lennon wrote "Yellow Submarine" as a children's song and for Starr's vocal spot on the album. The lyrics were written with assistance from Scottish singer Donovan and tell of life on a sea voyage accompanied by friends. Gould considers the song's childlike qualities to be "deceptive" and that, once in the studio, it became "a sophisticated sonic pastiche". On 1 June, the Beatles and some of their friends enhanced the festive nautical atmosphere by adding sounds such as chains, bells, whistles, tubs of water and clinking glasses, all sourced from Studio 2's trap room. To fill the portion after the lyrics refer to a brass band playing, Martin and Emerick used a recording from EMI's library, splicing up the taped copy and rearranging the melody. Lennon shouted part of the mid-song ship's orders in an echo chamber. In the final verse, he repeats Starr's vocal lines in a manner that Gould likens to "an old vaudevillian with the crowd in the palm of his hand". Riley recognises the song as mixing the comedy of The Goon Show with the satire of Spike Jones. Donovan later said that "Yellow Submarine" represented the Beatles' predicament as prisoners of their international fame, to which they reacted by singing an uplifting, communal song. The light atmosphere of "Yellow Submarine" is broken by what Riley terms "the outwardly harnessed, but inwardly raging guitar" that introduces Lennon's "She Said She Said". The song marks the second time that a Beatles arrangement used a shifting metre, after "Love You To", as the foundation of 4/4 briefly switches to 3/4. Harrison recalled that he helped Lennon finish the composition, which involved joining three separate fragments of song. Having walked out of the session, McCartney may or may not have contributed bass guitar to the recording. In addition to lead guitar and harmony vocals, Harrison possibly performed the bass guitar part. The lyric was inspired in part by a conversation that Lennon and Harrison had with actor Peter Fonda in Los Angeles in August 1965, while all three, along with Starr and members of the Byrds, were under the influence of LSD. During the conversation, Fonda commented, "I know what it's like to be dead", because as a child he had technically died during an operation. "Good Day Sunshine" was written by McCartney, whose piano playing dominates the recording. The track was one of several contemporary songs that evoked the unusually hot and sunny English summer of 1966. Music critic Richie Unterberger describes it as a song that conveys "one of the first fine days of spring, just after you've fallen in love or started a vacation". The verses reflect aspects of vaudeville, while McCartney also acknowledged the influence of the Lovin' Spoonful on the composition. Overdubbed by Martin, the piano solo on the track recalls the ragtime style of Scott Joplin. The song ends with group harmonies repeating the title phrase, creating an effect that Riley likens to a "cascade" of voices "enter[ing] from different directions, like sun peeping through the trees". "And Your Bird Can Sing" was written primarily by Lennon, with McCartney saying he helped on the lyric and estimating the song as "80–20" to Lennon. Harrison and McCartney played dual lead-guitar parts on the recording, including an ascending riff that Riley terms "magnetic ... everything sticks to it". Riley describes the composition as a "shaded putdown" in the style of Dylan's "Positively 4th Street", whereby Lennon sings to someone who has seen "seven wonders" yet is unable to empathise with him and his feelings of isolation. According to Gould, the song was directed at Frank Sinatra after Lennon had read a hagiographic article on the singer, in Esquire magazine, in which Sinatra was lauded as "the fully emancipated male ... the man who can have anything he wants".

"For No One" was inspired by McCartney's relationship with English actress Jane Asher. Along with "Good Day Sunshine", which similarly dispensed with guitar parts for Harrison and Lennon, Rodriguez cites the track as an example of McCartney eschewing the group dynamic when recording his songs, a trend that would prove unpopular with his bandmates in later years. The recording features McCartney playing piano, bass and clavichord, accompanied by Starr on drums and percussion. The French horn solo was added by Alan Civil, the principal horn player for the Philharmonia Orchestra, who recalled having to "busk" his part, with little guidance from McCartney or Martin at the overdubbing session. While recognising McCartney's "customary logic" in the song's musical structure, MacDonald comments on the sense of detachment conveyed in the lyrics to this "curiously phlegmatic account of the end of an affair". MacDonald suggests that McCartney was attempting to employ the same "dry cinematic eye" that director John Schlesinger had adopted in his 1965 film Darling. "Doctor Robert" was written by Lennon, although McCartney has since stated he co-authored it. A guitar-based rock song in the style of "And Your Bird Can Sing", its lyrics celebrate a New York physician known for dispensing amphetamine injections to his patients. On the recording, the hard-driving performance is interrupted by two bridge sections where, over harmonium and chiming guitar chords, the group vocals suggest a choir praising the doctor for his services. Harrison said he wrote "I Want to Tell You" about "the avalanche of thoughts" that he found hard to express in words. Supporting the lyrics, his stammering guitar riff, combined with the dissonance employed in the song's melody, conveys the difficulties of achieving meaningful communication. The prominent backing vocals from Lennon and McCartney include Indian-style gamak ornamentation in McCartney's high harmony, similar to the melisma effect used in "Love You To". Reising and LeBlanc cite the song as an early example of how from 1966 onwards the Beatles' lyrics "adopted an urgent tone, intent on channeling some essential knowledge, the psychological and/or philosophical epiphanies of LSD experience" to their increasingly aware audience. According to author and academic Nick Bromell, "I Want to Tell You" and the next two tracks on Revolver are the first examples of pop music "giving voice to the complexities of the breakthrough experience" afforded by LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Described by Riley as the album's "most derivative cut", "Got to Get You into My Life" was influenced by the Motown Sound and written by McCartney after he had seen Stevie Wonder perform at the Scotch of St James nightclub in February. The horn players on the track included members of Georgie Fame's group, the Blue Flames. To capture the desired sound, microphones were placed in the bells of the brass instruments, and the signals were heavily limited. A month later, a tape copy of these horn parts was superimposed with a slight delay, thereby doubling the presence of the brass contributions. Rodriguez terms the completed track "an R&B-styled shouter". Although cast in the form of a love song, McCartney described the lyric as "an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret". The initial version of the song, as issued on Anthology 2, featured acoustic backing and organ, and a harmonised refrain of "I need your love", which was replaced by Harrison's guitar break on the more uptempo remake. Rodriguez describes Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" as "the greatest leap into the future" of the Beatles' recording career up to this point. The recording includes reverse guitar, processed vocals, and looped tape effects, accompanying a strongly syncopated, repetitive drum-beat. Lennon adapted the lyrics from Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which equates the realisations brought about through LSD with the spiritually enlightened state achieved through meditation. Originally known as "Mark I", and then briefly "The Void", the eventual title came via one of Starr's malapropisms. Lennon intended the track as an evocation of a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony. The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based on a high-volume C drone played by Harrison on a tambura. Over the foundation of tambura, bass and drums, the five tape loops comprise various manipulated sounds: two separate sitar passages, played backwards and sped up; an orchestra sounding a B♭ chord; McCartney's laughter, sped up to resemble a seagull's cry; and a Mellotron played on either its flute, string or brass setting. The Leslie speaker treatment applied to Lennon's vocal originated from his request that Martin make him sound like he was the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a high mountain. Reising describes "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the inspiration for an album that "illuminates a path dedicated to personal freedom and mind expansion". He views the song's message as a precursor to the more explicitly political statements the Beatles would make over the next two years, in "All You Need Is Love" and "Revolution". "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Doctor Robert" were the tracks omitted from Capitol's version of Revolver. In the case of "I'm Only Sleeping", the version issued on Yesterday and Today was a different mix from that included on EMI's Revolver. Due to the exclusion of the three Lennon tracks, there were only two songs on the Capitol release for which he was the principal writer, compared with three by Harrison and six by McCartney. In Riley's opinion, aside from underplaying Lennon's contribution, his voice is thereby confined to a "sudden swing to the surreal" at the end of each LP side, which distorts the intended mood across the album. The eleven-song North American LP was the band's tenth album on Capitol Records and twelfth US album in total. The release of Revolver marked the last time that Capitol issued an altered UK Beatles album for the North American market. When the Beatles re-signed with EMI in January 1967, their contract stipulated that Capitol could no longer alter the track listings of their albums.