Beatles Revolver 2.0 review | Cannon!

Take a cake out of the oven. By the magic of “demixing”, extract all its ingredients one by one: flour, eggs, water, yeast, sugar, vanilla. Then make another cake, changing the proportions a little, so that the result is even tastier.

Jean-Christophe Laurence
The Press

This is what engineer Giles Martin has achieved with this new remixed version of the album Revolver of the Beatles, absolute classic of the year 1966.

One might have feared that this umpteenth reissue was just another trick to squeeze the lemon out of the Fab Four. But there is real added value here: the son of George Martin (historical producer of the Beatles) has indeed had access to the computer technology used by director Peter Jackson for the documentary. Get Backreleased last year.

This revolutionary process makes it possible to return to the original “mixes” and to isolate all the instruments. These were for the most part “taken in bread” because of the technical limits of the time, which forced everything to be merged (bouncing) to save space on four-track consoles.

Anyway, suddenly, every riff guitar, each bassline, each drum punch has its own individual track, opening up a whole new spectrum of (re)production possibilities.

Giles Martin has remained faithful to the 1966 record. Necessarily. But it injects new life into this masterpiece of psychedelic rock, which contains gems like Taxman, Eleanor Rigby and the essential Tomorow Never Knows.

We spare you the comparisons with the original mono and audio versions, as well as the details on such sound effect or such guitar upside down. A heap of geek the Beatles are already doing it on YouTube and it’s really fun.

Let’s just say that a new sonic space has just opened up, and that all the songs “breathe” better, not to say that they are “canon”, even if the purists will undoubtedly prefer the Revolver original, which is perfectly conceivable.

From jar with acid

As has been the case with all Beatles reissues since Sgt. Pepper’s in 2017, this Revolver 2.0 comes in several configurations.

For the total experience, however, we would suggest the box set of five CDs (or four vinyls), which also includes the remix 45 rpm Paperback Writer/Raina large book with photos and text by Questlove (from the rap group The Roots) as well as a slew of studio scraps, which put us back in the mood and help to better understand the creative process of the album.

We think of George and his demo of Love You To on acoustic guitar (without Indian instruments). To John and Paul, who are laughing their heads off over And Your Bird Can Sing. To this version of Rain played at 200 km/h (and then slowed down). Or to Paul and George Martin, causing vibrato for the string quartet ofEleanor Rigby.

One also thinks – and above all – of the embryonic version of Yellow Submarine sung by Lennon, who confirms once and for all his fundamental contribution to this song. Note that this rather melancholic first draft (In the town where I was born/No one cared/No one cared), has nothing to do with the nursery rhyme that we know… and that we are no longer able to bear.

For some people, Revolver would be the best Beatles album. It is discussed. But it is a fundamental disc in the course of the group.

First, it is here that the personalities of each emerge distinctly. Lennon the acid, Paul the harmonious, George the existential, Ringo the funny. A trend that will increase in the years to come, until the final implosion.

It is also on Revolver that the Beatles become a real studio group, eager to innovate and experiment. It is the bridge between Rubber Soul (1965) and Sgt. Pepper’s (1967), between childhood and adulthood, between jar and LSD. There are still love songs (Here, There and Everywhere), but also political pieces (Taxman), social (Eleanor Rigby), dreamlike (I’m Only Sleeping) and even metaphysical (electrifying Tomorrow Never Knows).

Incredible, when you think about it. Three years earlier, these boys were recording Please Please Me, dressed in little gray suits. Here they are completely frozen, with flower shirts, reproducing the sounds of Tibetan monks on the top of a mountain.

We know few that evolve so well in such a short time.

Revolver (remix 2022)

The Beatles

Intercom/Universal

9/10