A Review of The Beatles Revolver

Genre- Psychedelic Rock, Baroque Pop, World Music, Proto-Prog Rock, Experimental Rock and Psychedelic Pop

This is really the beginning of the Psychedelic Rock movement as we know it today and it came a full year earlier in 1966! This LP introduces pop fans to things that were to come in rock music way before they became a staple. Case in point: The horn section that was later to be a constant in the Chicago Transit Authority's first and subsequent Lps ( in the tune Got To Get You Into My Life), the first Drum-n-bass recording (with no machines, in Tomorrow Never Knows, rock-meets-world music (Love To You with it's pre-Sgt. Pepper sitar/tabla workout), the heavily distored Indian style guitar solo by Paul on the Harrison penned, Taxman....the backwards guitar in I'm Only Sleeping.

Tomorrow Never Knows Psychedelic/ Electronic Rock fusion was the most radical departure from previous Beatles' recordings for its skeletal bass/drums propulsion enhanced only with tape loops (contributed by all four Beatles and added in the mix-down process), more backwards guitar, mellotron and an eerie John Lennon vocal. Experimental music based on Indian music with Tomorrow Never Knows (which also contains the opinions according to the first rhythm of techno music history). Also notable for the use of tamboura drone sustained throughout the song. Organ drones dominate the drone in addition.

Eleanor Rigby with it's chamber music. It is quite unlike anything previously recorded by The Beatles, or by any other main-stream guitar-rock artist, not so much an extension of In My life's baroque beauty, but something quite of its own.

"I'm Only Sleeping" a sort of psychedelic folk-raga rock song with a slowed cymbal sound, tiptoeing bass figure and ending fadeout with just backward guitars. The use of backward tape in creating another Indian texture on the guitar was also new in music.

Many other recording techniques and devices that were previewed on this LP for the first time. Overall this record they upped the ante for groups that came after which led to the world getting to hear the most advanced musicians in rock with the dawning of the Progressive rock and later the fusion era.....for better or worse...