Was ‘Revolution 9’ just John Lennon being petty?

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Was ‘Revolution 9’ just John Lennon being petty?

Dale Maplethorpe

FAR OUT Magazine

Mon 26 August 2024

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / Wonderlane)

While The Beatles were an experimental band that enjoyed pushing the boundaries of music, many consistencies exist within their discography. Some of the most obvious are harmony and melody; regardless of what Beatles album you’re listening to, whether in the early days of Help or the later more experimental movements in The White Album, you can guarantee the Fab Four will deliver sweet-sounding music.

The band’s aim was always to make something they liked the sound of and were happy to put their name on to. Though there were some creative differences within the band, the aim was always to make good music; it didn’t matter how that manifested itself.

Kiss once compared themselves to The Beatles because Gene Simmons believed they shared a similar mindset. “We also took pride in having the same freedom The Beatles had,” he said, “Their philosophy was, ‘No matter what kind of music we do, it’s still The Beatles’. That’s what was amazing about them… The Beatles were not trapped in that way. They could do music hall, psychedelia – anything – and they did. Yet somehow, it always sounded like The Beatles.”

Because they understood that they just wanted to make good music that people connected with, they had free rein to put forward whatever ideas they saw fit. While this allowed the band to expand themselves creatively and push the boundaries of music, it also led to some creative differences forming.

One of the things that made Paul McCartney and John Lennon such a good writing duo was that they had differences in how they approached songwriting. This meant they could overcome writer’s block and put together pieces of music that neither could do alone. However, combine these differences with complete creative freedom, and you eventually get friction, which is precisely what happened in the Beatles.

(Credits: Far Out / Parlophone)

One album that highlights their differences more than others is The White Album. This is a haphazard approach to making a consistent record. Granted, it’s still viewed as a classic, as some of the band’s best songs are on that record, but it also acts as a good example of the tension that was present within the band. 

One of the main differences between Lennon and McCartney was that McCartney had an affinity for the single, which meant he liked to make sweet, snappy and catchy songs. That worked well for a period, but Lennon wanted to move away from it. When McCartney came forward with the track ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’, while it had the qualities of a catchy single, Lennon (and the rest of the band) resented it.

“John Lennon came to the session really stoned, totally out of it on something or other, and he said, ‘All right, we’re gonna do ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’,” said engineer Richard Lush, recalling one of the White Album recording sessions. “He went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they’d done it before, and said, ‘This is it! Come on!’ He was really aggravated.”

Lennon was starting to get bored with how McCartney wrote songs, which is best reflected in one of his offerings on the album, ‘Revolution 9’. Ironically, the song that took the longest time to record is barely a song, as Lennon put together an eight-minute clip that showed snippets from previous recordings and some spoken word over the top of it. It’s a tough listen that many fans didn’t take to. Now, knowing what we know about The Beatles during this period, it may also have been the product of John Lennon being petty. 

The track couldn’t be more the antithesis to a pop song. There is no melody, no chorus to latch onto, and no consistent rhythm whatsoever. Even the most devout fans struggle to get through the whole thing, as Lennon admits that he was attempting to accurately represent a musical revolution.

When asked about the song, Lennon claimed that it was “an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; that was just like a drawing of revolution,” he said, “All the thing was made with loops, I had about thirty loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects.” 

Lennon also said he believed this was “The future of music”. What you are more likely listening to is John Lennon being petty and rebelling against the kind of music that McCartney liked to make. ‘Revolution 9’ is very much a revolution but against his writing partner instead of against music as a whole.