Beatles

The Beatles: “Revolver – SuperDeluxe Edition” (5 cd Apple Records, 2022)

Once and for all: “Revolver” is the best Beatles album. This claim rests mostly on the integrity and heightened sense of virtuous rivalry between John and Paul, which—as never happened before, and likely never would again in the band's history—lent a golden balance to a work brimming with moments both traditional and experimental.

1966 was a turning-point year for the Fab Four, for several reasons. The Beatles were at the peak of what many describe as their “first era.” On March 3rd, Maureen Cleave, a journalist for the London Evening Standard, asked John Lennon for his thoughts on Christianity. Lennon replied candidly: “We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.” In July, John's comment was reprinted in Datebook, an American teen magazine. It caused an uproar, and the story spread like wildfire: from that moment on, the most hardline conservatives launched a campaign against the Beatles, organizing boycotts across several US cities and public demonstrations where their records were burned in the streets, with some even going so far as to issue death threats. Later, a proud Lennon was practically forced to backtrack and, in his own way, apologize for the explosive remark. But the point of no return had been reached. The Beatles suddenly stopped being four reassuring, harmless faces.

Also in July, during a stop on the Beatles' world tour in Manila, in the Philippines, Imelda—wife of dictator Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos—arranged a reception in their honor at Malacañang, the Presidential Palace. It seems the invitation had been sent well in advance, but a series of mix-ups meant it never reached Brian Epstein's desk. On the very morning the reception was to be held, a government official tried to contact the Beatles' manager to confirm the details of their arrival at the Palace. Epstein, however—also aware that the boys were still resting and that it would be practically impossible to get them out of bed before noon—underestimated the situation and, quite politely, declined the invitation. The news spread quickly, and an enraged crowd gathered outside the band's hotel, hurling insults and hateful words at them for wounding national pride. From that moment, all hell broke loose: the concert promoter refused to pay their fee, the local tax authorities demanded immediate payment of taxes on that (never-received) fee, and the Beatles suddenly found themselves personae non gratae on hostile soil. The hastily arranged press statement in which Epstein offered official apologies did little good: public hostility did not subside, and everyone became convinced it was time to leave. Fast. Their security escort was, of course, withdrawn, and they had to fend for themselves getting to the airport, repeatedly risking being lynched.

These events took a serious toll on the band's nerves: they began to genuinely fear for their safety and found in them a pretext to stop performing live altogether.

In the interval between these two episodes, the Beatles found themselves at EMI's Abbey Road studios recording one of the band's most beloved albums: released in Britain on August 5, 1966, under the title “Revolver.”

Up until “Rubber Soul” (1965), the Beatles' records were produced by George Martin with the help of his trusted engineer Norman Smith. In early 1966, Smith finally got his long-awaited promotion from engineer to producer, but asked Martin if he could keep working as engineer on the Beatles' recordings. That request was denied: EMI's rigid company policies, along with Martin's understandable reluctance to have an equal-ranking colleague at his side as collaborator and engineer, opened the door for Geoff Emerick, who, not yet twenty, became the Beatles' official engineer starting April 6, 1966 (his experience is recounted brilliantly in his memoir “Here, There And Everywhere,” a fascinating read for anyone seeking first-hand accounts of how the Beatles worked in the studio after “Rubber Soul”). His contribution to “Revolver” was masterful, and several brilliant production ideas on the Fab Four's records can be credited to him.

Another development of the period, one that would leave a deep mark—both logistically and creatively—on the Beatles' work, was Paul's move from the Asher family's attic flat, where he'd been a guest, to a home of his own, bought in April 1965 for forty thousand pounds, where Paul McCartney lived from the end of March 1966. The house, at 7 Cavendish Avenue in the elegant London residential neighborhood of St. John's Wood, was less than a ten-minute walk from Abbey Road. Ian MacDonald, the late Beatles historian, wrote that “McCartney [...] would often arrive at the studio before the others and experiment there with musical ideas and production effects, which he'd then present to his bandmates as finished facts.”

With “Revolver,” the Fab Four completed their definitive transformation—already underway with “Help!” and then “Rubber Soul”—from an (excellent) dance-hall combo into an avant-garde rock band. From this point on, more introspective lyrics and sophisticated arrangements became the leitmotif of the Beatles' output. On “Revolver,” the band lucidly distilled the ideas of the era, experimenting with fuzz distortion on “Taxman” (the guitar solo, played by McCartney, is a clear tribute to Jeff Beck's “Shape Of Things”), strings on “Eleanor Rigby,” traditional Indian music on “Love You To,” Motown's Black sound on “Got To Get You Into My Life,” and tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

Giles Martin, who along with Sam Okell handled the mixes for this latest, much-talked-about edition of “Revolver,” rightly points out that the differing influences each band member brought to the table took shape here organically and coherently, and explains how the pandemic and lockdown era provided enough time—and thus the opportunity—to work on the available material to an unprecedented level of quality.

Over the past five years, in fact, Peter Jackson's team worked tirelessly on the extraordinary documentary “Get Back,” drawn from previously unseen and unused footage that American director Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot between late '69 and the first weeks of '70 to capture on film the Beatles' creative process in the studio and their final live performance. The use of cutting-edge technology to artificially bring out otherwise inaudible dialogue, along with the use of artificial intelligence to cleanly isolate specific elements from the instrumental context in which they were recorded, made it possible to achieve excellence in both video and audio.

Originally recorded in mono on a four-track mixer, thanks to all this “Revolver” has been painstakingly taken apart by Martin in order to achieve a result that lets listeners enjoy every single element on tape without compromising the overall sound. As if the band had played live in the studio, yet with every instrument recorded on a separate channel from the rest. Without taking anything away from the remarkable 2009 mixes, this latest edition of “Revolver” stands on a qualitatively different level from any previous reissue and offers listeners a richness of sounds and nuances that make this release the ultimate listening experience.

On Friday, October 28, 2022, “Revolver” was reissued once again in six physical formats: the Super Deluxe edition with 4 LPs or 5 CDs, the Deluxe edition with 2 CDs (featuring session highlights and the stereo mixes of “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”), and the standard edition on single LP, LP picture disc, or CD.

Let's take a closer look at the 5-CD Super Deluxe edition, which includes one CD with the brand-new stereo mix of the album, two CDs of outtakes, rehearsals and demos, a fourth CD with mono mixes derived from the original masters, and finally a last CD containing the stereo and mono mixes of “Paperback Writer” and “Rain,” originally left off the album.

Unlike what has happened so far with the SuperDeluxe editions of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” (2017), “The Beatles” (aka “White Album“) (2018), “Abbey Road” (2019) and “Let It Be” (2021), the box set does not include the Blu-ray with the Atmos Mix (which, for the record, was created but never released on physical media).

The box includes a 100-page book with a foreword by Paul McCartney, an introduction by Giles Martin, a fascinating testimony from Questlove, drummer for the Roots and the man behind the multi-award-winning documentary “Summer Of Soul”, on the impact the Beatles had on his musical imagination, plus an in-depth track-by-track examination penned by Kevin Howlett covering the album's origins, Klaus Voormann's famous cover art, and the reception it received at the time. On top of that, there's a rich gallery of images, some rarely seen before, and a detailed account of the set's contents.

The new stereo mixes bring out the best in the arrangements, presenting the album in all its glory. The two discs of outtakes, rehearsals and demos are, as ever, aimed squarely at the die-hard completist, though the short version of “Yellow Submarine” performed by Lennon alone on voice and acoustic guitar, the delightful fuzz-guitar take of “Got To Get You Into My Life”, stripped down and horn-free, and the instrumental “Rain” played back at its true recording speed will warm plenty of hearts. The mono mix is a genuine marvel, letting listeners hear the album exactly as the Beatles intended it. The only real head-scratcher is the need for a fifth disc containing nothing but the four - admittedly sparkling - stereo and mono versions of “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”

The SuperDeluxe CD edition, on sale on Amazon for just over €140.00, remains a feast for both eyes and ears, and rightfully earns a spot on the podium of this year's best reissues.

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11/05/2026