It was in Munich that the Beatles came into the home stretch for selecting a title. For the longest time, Abracadabra had been the leading contender, only to be dismissed after one of the Beatles’ entourage claimed that it had already been used by another artist. And then there was Beatles on Safari, which held sway—possibly because of its connotations of the exotic sounds and styles that the new long-player offered. It was also a sly reference to the Beach Boys’ Surfin’ Safari, much like the suggestion of Freewheelin’ Beatles was an homage to Bob Dylan. Other titles made the rounds, including Bubble and Squeak, Pendulum, and perhaps the most bizarre of them all, Fat Man and Bobby. The Beatles were in their mid-twenties after all, a significant remove from Martin, the elder statesman in their tightly knit crew. At one point, Ringo playfully suggested After Geography as a play on the Rolling Stones’ recent LP, Aftermath. Things began to come into focus in Tokyo on July 2 after McCartney offered up Magic Circle, which quickly morphed, courtesy of Lennon, into Four Sides of the Circle, and, shortly thereafter, Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle. And with all the talk of geometric concepts being tossed around, McCartney happened upon Revolver.2
Short and sweet, the title connoted the idea of a revolving record, a pun that held considerable appeal for McCartney’s bandmates. They realized almost immediately that the title might possibly be interpreted as referring to a handgun, but that was the beauty of it, given that the term revolver might suggest a host of different objects, ideas, and philosophies. As Lennon later remarked, “It’s just a name for an LP, and there’s no meaning to it. Why does everyone want a reason every time you move? It means Revolver. It’s all the things that Revolver means because that’s what it means to us, Revolver and all the things we could think of to go with it.” With a winner on their hands, the Beatles sent a telegraph from the Tokyo Hilton over to Martin in the United Kingdom, and the matter was concluded. The album would be called Revolver, which Martin took a liking to almost instantly. The notion of Revolver suggested the idea of revolution, which is exactly what the LP portended: a musical revolution founded upon a myriad of swirling styles and sonic innovations. Revolver represented the revolutionary, even evolutionary nature of the art that George and the Beatles had been pursuing during their four years together at stately Abbey Road. Revolver it would be.3
While George and the bandmates were delighted with their choice, not everyone approved. John and Paul’s art circle friends from the Indica Gallery were decidedly unimpressed, deploring Revolver as a “terrible” title. But as Barry Miles later observed, John Dunbar and his ilk hadn’t really appreciated Rubber Soul as a title either. And the handgun motif would ultimately find its way into the Beatles’ world, in spite of their well-known chagrin for firearms and violence. In their advertisements for the album later that summer, Capitol Records depicted Voormann’s cover art under the word Bang!, which had been rendered in an elaborate pop-art font. In truth, Revolver required very little in the way of publicity. When it was released in the United Kingdom on August 4, the long-player was met with almost universal acclaim, with the glaring exception of the Kinks’ Ray Davies, who panned Revolver in Disc and Music Echo. The Kinks’ cold war with the Beatles dated back to 1964, when the two groups shared the bill in Blackpool. As the band members crossed paths backstage, Lennon drew Davies’s ire when he remarked, “We’ve lost our set-list, lads. Can we borrow yours?” For Davies, the implication was clear: the Kinks were second-rate hacks. His review for Disc and Music Echo served as payback. He described “Eleanor Rigby” as having been composed “to please music teachers in primary schools,” while belittling “Yellow Submarine” as “a load of rubbish.” Davies concluded by demeaning Revolver as a step backward from the artistry of Rubber Soul.4
Davies’s review proved to be a minority opinion, with the lion’s share of reviewers lauding Revolver as a quantum leap ahead of Rubber Soul’s creative heights. Melody Maker’s review opined that “Rubber Soul showed that the Beatles were bursting the bounds of the three-guitar-drums instrumentation, a formula which was, for the purposes of accompaniment and projection of their songs, almost spent. Revolver is confirmation of this. They’ll never be able to copy this. Neither will the Beatles be able to reproduce a tenth of this material on a live performance. But who cares? Let John, Paul, George and Ringo worry about that when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is a brilliant album which underlines once and for all that the Beatles have definitely broken the bounds of what we used to call pop.” In one of the most thoughtful analyses of the album, Gramophone’s jazz critic Peter Clayton observed that Revolver “really is an astonishing collection, and listening to it you realize that the distance the four odd young men have travelled since ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962 is musically even greater than it is materially. It isn’t easy to describe what’s here, since much of it involves things that are either new to pop music or which are being properly applied for the first time, and which can’t be helpfully compared with anything. In fact, the impression you get is not of any one sound or flavor, but simply of smoking hot newness with plenty of flaws and imperfections but fresh.”5
Meanwhile, NME’s Allen Evans lauded Revolver’s innovative “electronic effects” and took special note of the ways in which the bandmates’ “individual personalities are now showing through loud and clear.” In Record Mirror, Richard Green and Peter Jones praised the album as being “full of musical ingenuity” but recognized that the Beatles’ penchant for experimentation would leave some listeners bristling. “There are parts that will split the pop fraternity neatly down the middle,” they wrote, echoing McCartney’s earlier concern about the risks inherent in loosing the Beatles’ new sound upon a world that had grown used to the innocent pop morsels that had been fed to them by the Four Mop-Tops. The American press was equally complimentary, although the version of Revolver that they reviewed in the pages of their newspapers and magazines was conspicuously lacking the three tracks—“Doctor Robert,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” and “And Your Bird Can Sing”—that had been consigned stateside to the Yesterday . . . and Today LP. On the West Coast, KRLA Beat commended Revolver as “a musical creation of exceptional excellence,” while Richard Goldstein, writing for the Village Voice in New York City, described the new long-player as “a revolutionary record” that was every bit “as important to the expansion of pop as was Rubber Soul.” Goldstein concluded that “it seems now that we will view this album in retrospect as a key work in the development of rock ’n’ roll into an artistic pursuit.” Leave it to Tony Thorpe, a top London session musician who came of age as Revolver first cast its long shadow over the history of pop music, to get to the heart of the matter, the original song that set the long-player into motion: “Nothing like the lyrics of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ had been written before. The whole approach to that track was straight out of John Lennon’s head and George Martin was able to pick up on it and do what he did. It’s a piece of art, it’s a Picasso.”6
As with Rubber Soul, Revolver was a sizable commercial success, holding dominion over the UK album charts for seven weeks and, in the United States, topping Billboard’s album charts for six weeks. But as it happened, Revolver’s exemplary critical notices and gargantuan sales receipts would easily be the best aspects about that long, hot summer for the Beatles. As it turned out, George would have precious little time to bask in the joy of his recent nuptials with Judy. The record business—Beatles and non-Beatles alike—intervened almost immediately. First up was Martin’s new long-term contract with United Artists, which was reported in the July 9, 1966, issue of Cash Box. Announced by United Artists president Mike Stewart, the long-term worldwide agreement accounted for all future albums and singles by Martin as recording artist and bandleader. In his press release, Stewart lauded Martin for having registered some two hundred million record sales internationally by his artists—namely, the Beatles—at this point in his career. “In keeping with United Artists’ long-term policy of associating with the greatest creative talent in
the entertainment world,” said Stewart, “we are delighted to welcome George Martin to our fold. In view of the tremendous successes he has achieved in the past in conjunction with UA and with other organizations, and the great artistry he has consistently displayed, we feel that we have indeed signed one of the giant talents of the music business.” Of course, United Artists had actually welcomed George to the fold nearly two years earlier, in September 1964. By then, Martin had already scored a minor US hit for United Artists with “Ringo’s Theme (This Boy),” an instrumental from the soundtrack for A Hard Day’s Night.7
By the time he signed his latest contract with United Artists, George had released several albums as bandleader of the George Martin Orchestra—also represented variously as George Martin and His Orchestra. In addition to Off the Beatle Track and the soundtrack music for A Hard Day’s Night in 1964, he had released George Martin Scores Instrumental Versions of the Hits and a collection of Help!-themed instrumentals in 1965. With his new United Artists contract in hand, George began preparations that summer for his next collection of instrumental hits, which he recorded with the George Martin Orchestra over the next several months. George’s orchestra was composed of a host of leading studio musicians, including mainstays Neville Marriner and Raymond Keenlyside on violin, John Underwood on viola, and Joy Hall on cello. Titled George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls, the collection made for a strange assortment. While it included cutting-edge instrumental versions of recent tracks from Rubber Soul and Revolver, the album inexplicably included “Yellow Submarine,” which hardly fit the long-player’s theme. Stranger yet, George’s cover version of “Eleanor Rigby” featured a vocal arrangement, belying the album’s instrumental claims. The liner notes laud George for never failing “to bring forth a new dimension to a song. Sometimes, this is done by a deft and unusual blending of instruments. Occasionally, it is handled by bestowing a beguine beat or a classical treatment to a tune that had only been previously heard as a strictly pop entry.” The cover art for George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls depicted the producer, holding a martini (naturally) and wearing a sheepish look, surrounded by comely, miniskirted models clutching Beatles albums.
July 1966 also saw Martin register a new composition, titled “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme,” with Noel Gay Music, the London firm led by his longtime colleague, record producer Terry Kennedy. In September, Martin would release his first United Artists single under his new contract, which featured “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme” backed with “Serenade to a Double Scotch” as recorded by George Martin and His Orchestra. Martin had composed “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme” expressly for his old friend, popular British TV personality and journalist David Frost. Martin’s association with Frost had begun rather furtively in March 1962, when the producer blew the whistle on his rival Norrie Paramor’s shady business practices to the young journalist, who was a fledgling reporter for This Week, London AR-TV’s current affairs program. Martin’s revelations about Paramor would finally hit the airwaves in November 1962, when Frost ridiculed him before a national television audience for the BBC’s satirical program That Was the Week That Was. In 1963, Martin produced an album devoted to That Was the Week That Was, including Millicent Martin’s famous theme song, “That Was the Week That Was, It’s Over, Let It Go.” In 1966, as Frost prepared to premiere his new variety program, The David Frost Show, he commissioned Martin to compose the theme. And so “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme” was born. George was especially fond of his latest composition, particularly the song’s punning reference to its author in the title. As for the music, he “opted for something very brash and showbizzy, a kind of Nelson Riddle–type, swinging, hip kind of tune.”8
While things were slow going at first with AIR, George had begun enjoying some success of late with the Master Singers, a highly unusual vocal act made up of four schoolmasters. Well aware of their quirky nature, George saw the Master Singers as a throwback to his early years at EMI. “In spite of having to devote a great part of my time to the established artists like Cilla and the Beatles,” he later wrote, “I still managed to find room for some of my old ‘nutty’ ideas.” Led by John Horrex, a teacher at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, the Master Singers, who performed a cappella “in a very good cathedral-plainsong approach to singing,” were rounded out by Horrex’s colleagues George Pratt, Geoff Keating, and Barry Montague. The Master Singers specialized in novelty recordings, much like the quirky artists who pocked Martin’s Parlophone roster during the 1950s. The group came to his attention after they were discovered by Winston Churchill, the grandson of the British prime minister, who subsequently played one of their novelty songs on his BBC radio program. Their big break with the BBC led to a contract with Parlophone. During his A&R head days, George had first deployed them for the purposes of choral accompaniment in conjunction with Peter Sellers. In one of his last collaborations with the legendary British funnyman, Martin had recorded Sellers’s sidesplitting parody of “A Hard Day’s Night,” which the comedian performed on the December 1965 broadcast of The Music of Lennon and McCartney TV special. Released to coincide with Granada Television’s broadcast, Sellers’s “A Hard Day’s Night” backed with “Help!” single featured the Master Singers providing backup on the B-side, which lampooned the Beatles hit with Sellers exercising his archly satiric wit as the schoolmasters provided solemn harmonies in their “best ecclesiastical manner.”9
After the single enjoyed a top-twenty showing on the British charts, Martin continued working with the Master Singers in the new year. In 1966, he produced three singles by the vocal group. For George, working with the novelty ensemble was a welcome return to his days as A&R head at Parlophone. It hearkened back to a riskier time in his career, a period characterized by George stewarding one idiosyncratic artist after another through the record trade as he tried to improve the standing of EMI’s third label. In April 1966, as the Beatles began the Revolver sessions, George released the Master Singers’ single “Highway Code” backed with “Rumbletum.” Arranged by Horrex and Keating, “Highway Code” featured the schoolmasters delivering a literal, chant-like performance of the British highway code in all of its banality. Later that spring, “Highway Code” notched a number-twenty-five showing on the charts, an impressive result for a novelty act in the mid-1960s, when one breakthrough rock act after another seemed to be holding sway over the charts. As Martin later observed, “To a certain degree of surprise in the business, it became a hit, and I naturally wanted to follow it up. I asked them what else they could dream up, and they had the idea of recording the telephone directory. I thought that was marvelous.” Produced by Martin, the group’s follow-up single, naturally titled “Telephone Directory,” briefly landed the producer and the schoolmasters in hot water after the General Post Office claimed that prevailing copyright laws had been violated when the Master Singers recited the names and telephone numbers of actual customers. “Sadly, the heavy hand of bureaucracy intervened,” Martin lamented. “The Post Office declared: ‘We won’t allow you to do it. Joe Bloggs of Lanchester Drive might not want his address in a song.’ My view was that Mr. Bloggs would have loved it; but the Post Office would have none of it, and the idea came to nothing.” Forced to scrap “Telephone Directory,” George and the group recorded “Weather Forecast” backed with “Roadilore.” Another Anglican chant sung with deadpan solemnity, “Weather Forecast” saw the Master Singers performing a mundane weather report, with occasional sound effects, courtesy of the EMI library, deployed to establish the sound of wind and torrential rain. By this point, the band’s one-joke repertoire may have been wearing thin with British listeners. “Weather Forecast” scored a paltry number-forty-five showing on the charts. The Master Singers would go their separate ways soon thereafter, although their demise had nothing to do with flagging record sales but rather with the simple fact that the bandmates’ shifting careers took them to different parts of the country.10
By this time, another one of George’s perennial acts, the Fourmost, were also on the wane. Between 1963 and 1965, George had managed to navigate the middling band toward a string of top-forty hits. One of the charter members of Brian Epstein’s stable of Merseyside acts, the Fourmost were understandably reeling from the March 1966 death of Mike Millward, the band’s guitarist and vocalist, who lost his battle with leukemia at just twenty-three years old. Having tapped George Peckham, a fellow Scouser and well-known personality on the Mersey beat scene, as Millward’s replacement, the Fourmost were primed and ready to make another pass at the British charts. When it came time to “routine” new material, George helpfully suggested a cover version of the Beatles’ “Here, There, and Everywhere,” which the Fab Four had no plans to release as a single. The Fourmost were no strangers to covering Lennon-McCartney compositions, having charted hits with several of the songwriters’ throwaways, including “Hello Little Girl” and “I’m in Love.” But when it came time to produce “Here, There, and Everywhere,” Martin was unavailable. Instead, he passed the Fourmost along to his AIR colleague Ron Richards, who supervised the recording session. With orchestration by composer and Manfred Mann multi-instrumentalist Mike Vickers, the Fourmost seemed poised, as with David and Jonathan’s well-timed cover version of “Michelle,” to transform a Beatles album cut into a hit.
Sound Pictures Page 16
