Backwards Tape During Revolver Sessions
The big claim to fame of Revolver is the unique tape techniques used in recording. The one that gets a lot of attention is the backmasking technique, where the tape is fed in backwards for the reverse tape sound. It appears on Tomorrow Never Knows and I’m Only Sleeping for guitar solos and Rain for John’s vocals.
Looking up the recording dates on BeatlesBible…
April 6: First day of Revolver sessions; they record takes of Tomorrow Never Knows, which has Paul’s guitar solo backwards
April 16: Working on Rain, where the backwards tape is used on John’s vocals
May 5: Working on I’m Only Sleeping, where it is used a third time on George’s dual guitar parts
Who has the idea to play the tape backwards first?
There’s two conflicting accounts on the backwards Rain vocals.
In his David Sheff interview (1980), John mentions it was a stoned idea he had:
I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana and, as I usually do, I listened to what I’d recorded that day. Somehow I got it on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, ‘I know what to do with it, I know… Listen to this!’ So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. [Singing backwards] Sharethsmnowthsmeaness… [Laughter] That one was the gift of God, of Ja, actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.
In his interview with Lewisohn (1988), George Martin says it was his idea:
I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it onto another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed. Again, it was backwards forever after that.
So is the conflict a case of bad memory or bullshit?
I would assume the scales tip in George Martin’s favor just by virtue of him being sober. Not to say the stoned accident couldn’t have happened, but that John may be misremembering the sequence of events. That said, a happy accident sounds more reminiscent of other unique sounds the band used than an intentional one.
However, it’s not like the idea of putting tape in backwards for a different sound was a new discovery. It’d been known since the introduction of sound playback, the technique was used in experimental music in the 50s/60s, but it just wasn’t used intentionally in pop music. George Martin had already been recording sound effects in comedy albums and may have used it for weird sounds before.
Yet, if this wasn’t really new to George Martin, would he even remember what led to the decision? And why the oddly specific mention of John being out of the room at the time?
Also, both of these accounts are about John’s vocals for Rain. But Tomorrow Never Knows is recorded before Rain and includes Paul’s guitar solo backwards. So was Rain not the first time they use this technique?
Paul’s account in MYFN about backwards guitar solos seems to suggest a happy accident like John’s:
It played backwards, and, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Those effects! Nobody knew how those sounded then. We said, ‘My God, that is fantastic! Can we do that for real?’… So that was what we did and that was where we discovered backwards guitar. It was a beautiful solo actually. It sounds like something you couldn’t play.
But Paul stops short of naming the tape operator.
Geoff Emerick had been tape operator since 62 but was just been promoted to engineer before Revolver sessions begin (at the wise age of…20?!). In his book, he names Phil McDonald the tape operator. He was also relatively new.
But Geoff Emerick’s book backs up John’s story:
So we have John claiming his stoned accident for his vocals supported by Emerick vs George Martin’s claim he intentionally had the idea while John was out of the room vs Paul claiming an accident via an unnamed third party (that may have been newbie Phil).
Have any others weighed in to confirm or deny either account?
To be overly generous, I could see how Paul could be right about this being an accident initially. And then John and George separately have the idea to use it for vocals 10 days later.
But then I wondered about the timeline and how three accounts single out Rain vocals. Maybe Rain *was* the initial backwards tape and then they applied it to the Tomorrow Never Knows guitar solo later, such as when they did it for I’m Only Sleeping?
Turns out, overdubs with the reverse guitar solo on Tomorrow Never Knows were added April 22. So Rain was indeed their first use of backwards tape.
So the timeline actually looks like this:
April 6: First day of Revolver sessions; they record initial takes of Tomorrow Never Knows, which will later include Paul’s guitar solo backwards
April 16: Working on Rain, they use the backwards tape for the first time on John’s vocals
April 22: They use it a second time for the overdub of Paul’s guitar solo on Tomorrow Never Knows
May 5: Working on I’m Only Sleeping, they use it a third time on George’s dual guitar parts
This order makes me suspect John’s account is actually the more credible one.
