Fans The Beatles | Dunia SEO

Name : Ari Hermawan
DoB : Indonesia. 31 Jan 1993.

I just want to share my hobby about music to you all. For that, I beg your support for the advancement of my blog.

Fans The Beatles Blog was established in 2008, begins with the article copy and paste, I realized that it was wrong. Starting in 2009, I tried to not do copy and paste the article have other people to my blog.

Mid-year 2009, my blog is visited approximately 200-300 visitors /day, It makes my blogs rank rose to around 100.000 , that is okey. then, at the time I use google adsense, until then get a revenue about U$ 67.00. But when I get my id card, my google adsense account was deleted by google, google says that there are some wrong clicking the ads. my spirit is down. Huft.

After that incident, i'm tired about blogs, so i leave it. whereas, my alexa rank at that time reached 90.000 , it happened cause i lost my revenue at google adsense, hhe.

At 2010, I returned to the world of blogs, when I check my rank, my blog is in the order of 13 million, huh really tired, but I keep the spirit up to now.

A shoutbox, saybox, tagboard, or chatterbox is a chat-like feature of some websites that allows people to quickly leave messages on the website, generally without any form of user registration.

In their simplest form, shoutboxes are simply lists of short messages, possibly with information about their authors. The page may be automatically refreshed after a certain interval, or polled dynamically in order to keep new messages visible. Older posts are often deleted after a certain number of messages have been written in order to preserve space on the server.

I hope this blog will up in 20.000 rank alexa like Kang Rohman Blog (http://kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com) with this shoutbox, LOL :D

Fans The Beatles must be happy, because The developer, Harmonix, will be released a "RockBand:The Beatles".Rock Band video game is a game where we can play the withdrawal by a group of bands because of the joystick from the game in the form of guitar, drums and microphone. In this game we will play some songs with the beatles sound spectacular.

The latest news said that later on when this game will be released in the complete package with a bundle. The developer, Harmonix, will include a limited edition package for $ 250. The contents of this package include:

1. The Beatles: Rock Band software
2. Höfner Bass controller: the size of the original approach as used by Paul McCartney
3. A Ludwig drum controller and a kick drum head vintage.
4. Microphone
5. Microphone Stand
6. Additional special content 

The developers do not play in managing this game. Also planned later in the game will be created a system where the singer can sing in harmony. Exactly as performed by The Beatles, the sound of one-two between John Lennon and Paul McCartney songs fill the The Beatles. With this system the game will be expected to become more alive.

In recent Paul McCartney concert at Coachella on Friday yesterday (april 17) give the audience a surprise by video snippets from this game. With the duration of the video for approximately 9 minutes this sepenggal we can see the animation of the most awaited game this year. The Harmonix will release this game on 9 September 2009.

I'm waiting for it [smile]

History A Hard Day's Night and Lyrics

A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British comedy film written by Alun Owen starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of their popularity. It was directed by Richard Lester and originally released by United Artists. The film was made in the style of a mock documentary, describing a couple of days in the lives of the group.

It was successful both financially and critically; it was rated by Time magazine as one of the all-time great 100 films. British critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a "comic fantasia with music; an enormous commercial success with the director trying every cinematic gag in the book" and awarded it a full four stars. The film is credited with having influenced 1960s spy films, The Monkees' television show and pop music videos.

About Yellow Submarine and Lyrics

Yellow Submarine is a song created by The Beatles in 1966, recorded by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Although this song has been released on the Revolver album, this song became the title for the 1968 animated film produced by United Artists, which is also called Yellow Submarine. The song is also the title of the album from the film, released as The Beatles song catalog.

This song was good in the UK than in the United States. This song became the number # 1 song on the United Kingdom, and survive on the # 1 ranking for four weeks, and survive on track for 13 weeks. This song won the Ivor Novello.

Here is This yellow Submarine lyrics :

Yellow Submarine

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines

So we sailed up to the sun
Till we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

And our friends are all on board
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play

We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

As we live a life of ease
Everyone of us has all we need
Sky of blue and sea of green
In our yellow submarine.

We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in our yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

Songs Inspired by Revolver Album

That is to say, songs obviously inspired by Revolver Album – there are many others which would not have featured a sitar but for “Love You To”, and which were surely written in the moment of excitement following hearing the album, but which do not sound like Revolver. It should also be noted that this list is entirely subjective: many people will listen to the songs below and shrug, unable to hear the slightest resemblance to anything on Revolver.


Ballroom, “Baby Please Don't Go” (1966) – featuring a droning, one-chord backing, and descending into a see of shuddering, howling tape loops and backwards vocals, Los Angeles production wunderkind Curt Boettcher turns this blues song into a harmony vocal version of “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

Bee Gees, “In My Own Time” (1967) – from their debut album, a straight imitation of “Taxman”/“Rain”, in a style that would now be called “power pop”.

Chemical Brothers & Noel Gallagher, “Setting Sons” - Dig Your Own Hole (1996) – an electronic invocation of Starr's drumming on “Tomorrow Never Knows”, and Noel Gallagher singing through something like a Leslie speaker. For a detailed analysis of the similarities between the two tracks see the essay “Tomorrow Never Knows: the contribution of George Martin and his production team to the Beatles' new sound” by Kari McDonald and Sarah Hudson Kaufman
in Every Sound There Is, ed. Russell Reising (Ashgate, 2002)

Chemical Brothers, “Let Forever Be” (1999) – another “Tomorrow Never nows” imitation, but with something of the rhythm of “Taxman”.

Cotton Mather, “40 Watt Solution”, “Last of the Mohicans” –
The Big Picture (2002) – the former is yet another imitation of
“Rain” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” by an American band often
criticised for wasting their talents on straight-up pastiche of their
musical heroes.

Jam, “Start!”, Sound Affects (1980) – why didn’t the Beatles sue when Paul Weller borrowed the bass-line from “Taxman”? In a period when Weller was recording cover versions of “Rain” and “And Your Bird Can Sing” for fun, and using the rear cover of Revolver as some kind of sartorial manual, it’s no surprise that he felt the need to express his love for the album publicly in some way.

Kinks, “Dead End Street” (1966) – I wouldn't want to try to make Ray Davies admit it, but this track is inspired by “Eleanor Rigby” in mood, and in the mournful trumpet passages, though of course with a unique Kinks twist in the music hall bridge and chorus. Lee Mallory, “That's the Way it's Gonna Be” (1966) – more Revolverisms from Los Angeles producer Curt Boettcher. This time,
there are lyrics about rain, like “Rain”, and then a whole range of studio
tricks: varispeed, backwards tapes, and exotic instruments. This time,
however, it's a koto.

Monkees, “Salesman”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, “Daily Nightly” - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. (1967) – it's surely no mistake that the former track, which happens to open this album, should be reminiscent of “Taxman” with its stinging rhythm guitar part. “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, which was also issued as a single, is an obvious attempt to imitate “Paperback Writer” in tempo, mood and, most noticeably, the twanging guitar riff. Finally, “Daily Nightly” is after “Tomorrow Never Knows”, with echoing, detached vocals,
“outerspace sounds” and backward tape all over it.

Pink Floyd, “Lucy Leave” (1966) – the group’s first demo tape in
late 1966 featured a re-recording of this 1965 Syd Barrett R&B tune
with a new guitar solo, this time very clearly Indian sounding, in an
obvious response to Revolver.

Rolling Stones, “My Obsession”, “Connection” - Between the Buttons (1967) – the drums on the former track, recorded in August 1966, are virtually identical to “Taxman”, and the vocal harmony climaxes throughout the song are reminiscent of “Rain”. On the latter track, the guitar which answers Jagger's vocal is surely an imitation of “And Your Bird Can Sing”.

Rolling Stones, “Child of the Moon” (b-side of “Jumpin' Jack Flash”) (1968) - a late effort from the Stones, a “Rain” pastiche recorded two years after the “Paperback Writer”/“Rain” single was released – evidence, if evidence be needed, that “Rain” was ahead of its time.

Rutles, “Joe Public” - Archaelogy (1996) – the first Rutles album, All You Need is Cash, jumped straight from perfect pastiches of Help! era Beatles to perfect pastiches of Sgt. Pepper era Beatles. This track fills in that gap.

Utopia (Todd Rundgren), “Life Goes On”, “Take it Home” – Deface the Music (1980) – a pastiche of “Eleanor Rigby”, with synthesised strings, and an attempt to imitate a Revolver or Rubber Soul era rock tune.

Who, “Disguises” (1966) – another “pocket Revolver”, with a “Taxman” / “Rain” inspired bass-line, swirling, pounding “Tomorrow Never Knows” backing, Eastern-tinged sneering vocal, and heavily compressed sound.

Zombies, “A Rose for Emily” - Odessey and Oracle (1967) – musically similar to “For No One”, with touches, both lyrical and musical, of “Eleanor Rigby”.

From Liverpool With Love

The Beatles drummer is touring North America this summer to promote a new album that's close to his heart.


Unlike most musicians, Ringo Starr looks forward to that feeling he sometimes gets of being on a treadmill. In fact, that's where he often feels most creative.

"My studio in England is next to the gym," Starr said from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where his latest tour just got underway. "When it's time to record, I find that getting on the treadmill brings on the endorphins, and the songs just start coming. I wrote a lot of songs on the treadmill. It's certainly a better way than sitting up late at night smoking."

Such treadmill tunes populate his latest solo album, "Liverpool 8," which has generated some of the strongest reviews of his studio work since the early '70s. The new album's title song is a sweetly melancholy reflection on his early life in Liverpool, alluding to his pre-Fab Four role as drummer for Rory Storm & the Hurricanes and the years that followed in the musical cyclone that was the Beatles.

It's the only song from the new album he's doing on his 30-city summer tour, which hits the Greek Theatre on Aug. 2, with the group of musician friends he dubs the All-Starr Band. This year it includes Billy Squier, Edgar Winter, Men at Work's Colin Hay, Rockpile guitarist Billy Bremner and Average White Band guitarist and singer Hamish Stuart, all of whom have toured with him previously. New to his circle of amplified friends are keyboardist Gary Wright and jazz and rock drummer Greg Bissonette.

"Usually it's a completely new band," he said. "This is the first time I've done it this way."

Although as a group the Beatles were renowned for their firsts, Starr hasn't always received his due as a trailblazer. But he was the first Beatle to announce his intention to quit the band (his decision was kept quiet for PR reasons), and the first rock star to pay serious attention to music that predated rock, with his 1970 solo album of pop standards, "Sentimental Journey."

Along with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Starr took part in the first worldwide satellite television broadcast in 1967, playing "All You Need Is Love," a message that still resonates powerfully with him.

Not coincidentally, one of the most moving songs on "Liverpool 8" is the ballad "Love Is," which he wrote, like most of the album's material, with collaborators Mark Hudson, Gary Burr and Steve Dudas.

It's deeply personal, decidedly spiritual and unapologetically political without being strident -- in stark contrast to his long-standing public persona as The Beatles' comic relief:

Time will always heal What the broken-hearted feelThe poets say it's soBut I'm not sure it's realI only know the answer is inside meAnd everyone. . . . Love is here.

"The inspiration is love," he says, pronouncing it "luv" as only a Liverpudlian can. "If you look at the titles of my songs, 80% have 'love' in them. . . . It's where I'm at, promoting peace and love. . . . I hope the message is getting across. I always say it feels like my shows are a peace-and-love fest."

To that end, he's mounting his answer to Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" efforts by inviting fans to flash the two-fingered peace sign and say the words "peace and love" at noon today -- his 68th birthday.

"Wherever you are in the world -- if you're in the office, on the bus, shopping -- put your peace and love hands up," he said. "I'll be doing it."

Revolver wasn't so much released as it leaked out over the course of some weeks. Firstly, there was the advance guard – a hot-off-the presses Revolver sessions single, “Paperback Writer” backed with “Rain”, released in the USA in May and shortly afterwards, on June 10th, in the UK. Here was Revolver in microcosm – a kind of trailer for the LP – with compressed bass, backwards vocals, Indian influences, Beach Boys inspired vocals, LSD- inspired imagery, and heavily treated vocals.

Their last single, released almost six months earlier, had been a double A-side with the folky, earthy “We Can Work It Out” and straight-up plastic soul tune “Day Tripper”. Whilst it can be hard to see the dividing line between Rubber Soul and Revolver, it seems fairly clear cut when you listen to those singles in succession.

Then in June 1966 Capitol Records, who licensed Beatles material for distribution in the USA, asked for any available tracks to fill out a manufactured “odds and sods” LP. It was their habit, up until Sgt. Pepper, to release shorter Beatles LPs than in the UK and then use the held-over tracks, with some b-sides, singles and maybe out-takes, to make up whole new albums. Yesterday and Today was released in the US on June 20th, giving the world a second taste of the Revolver sessions. By the time the album proper was released in the UK, five of the sixteen songs recorded at the sessions were already in the public domain, and a shrewd Beatle-fan could have guessed at something of the feel of the new album.

In late June 1966, when all of the tracks for the album had been finished, Klaus Voorman got a call from John Lennon asking if he'd be interested in working on the cover design. Voorman, of course said yes – as much as anything, it was a paying job, and he wasn't making much from ass-playing – andwas duly invited to the studio to hear the tapes for inspiration. They played him everything they had, and he was particularly struck by “Tomorrow Never Knows”. “I was overwhelmed,” he says96, and knew then that “it was my turn to come up with something really outstanding to fit the fantastic music.” He had taken the liberty of preparing a rough pencil sketch from memory97, with “all the hair and little figures”, which the band liked. So, as the scheduled release date approached, he retired for three weeks to his studio in the front room at 29 Parliament Hill in Hampstead, with nothing more complicated than some sheets of A2 paper, a pen and some ink. “I chose black and white 'cause every other cover was in colour,” he recalls; brightly coloured “psychedelic” covers wouldn't become a cliché for sometime yet, but by anticipating this trend and avoiding it, he assured Revolver a place in the pantheon of all-time great LP covers.

As the release date approached, and as Voorman beavered away at the cover design, the Beatles and their team settled down in the control rooms of Studios 1 and 3 for mono and stereo mixing. Put simply, mixing is the process whereby multi-track tapes of songs recorded on different days, perhaps in different studios, are copied across to one “master tape” from which the vinyl LP can then be cut. In fact, the process is more complicated than that, and extremely delicate. Firstly, there is the issue of deciding a running order – this task seems usually to have fallen to George Martin, at least as late as the recording of Sgt. Pepper:

My old precept in the recording business was always 'Make side one strong,' for obvious commercial reasons... Another principle of mine when assembling an album was always to go out on a side strongly, placing the weaker material towards the end but then going out with a bang.

Abbey Road And A Typical Session

The Studio Complex was not especially large, having been converted from a sixteen room Victorian town-house by EMI in 1929. The conversion took two years and HMV studios opened in 1931. The exterior was left largely intact – white painted, but greyed by London rain and pollution. Edward Elgar was the first musician to make use of the studios, conducting a recording of Land of Hope and Glory in Studio 1. Others - Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli and, perhaps most importantly, George Formby - recorded there in the years that followed.

In fact, all of EMI's artists recorded there, using EMI engineers, producers and disc cutters. It was possible for an artist, once signed to EMI, to have a successful career without ever stepping outside the EMI system. The Beatles entered that system in 1962, and rarely recorded anywhere but at Abbey Road. Between 1962 and 1966 they settled into a routine - Abbey Road became like a home to them: “In the end, we had the run of the whole building... I think we knew the place better than the Chairman of the company, because we lived there” (McCartney, Anthology, p.93).

Sessions never began before midday, and 7pm was the band's favourite time to start recording. During recording, the Beatles would usually arrive together at the studio, having been picked up by Lennon's chauffeur, perhaps having stopped at McCartney's house to rehearse. The car - Lennon's Rolls Royce or Austin Princess - would pull through the gates and into the small rear car park where their van would already be parked. Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall would have arrived sometime earlier and unloaded their guitars and amplifiers, setting them up in whichever studio they were booked into on that day.

The band would enter through the "tradesman's entrance", rather than the front door88. Inside, security guards - retired policemen or former soldiers, like university porters - in official looking black uniforms and peaked caps were reminiscent of the foyer of a minor government office in Whitehall. Institutional corridors led off toward an institutional canteen, institutional toilets, with institutional waxed toilet paper, and institutional offices. Each office was occupied by one of EMI's army of strictly graded, by- the-book managers, including Mr EH Fowler, the top man – Studio Manager89. “The whole building,” recalls Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, “was painted throughout in a shade of green that I can only imagine was inspired by the KGB headquarters in the Lubyanka.

Anyone you get who's been EMI trained really knows what he's doing. they actually used to have to come to work in ties and suits and white coats which is lovely, like another age! (McCartney, in Lewisohn, p.11)

Then, there were the three recording studios themselves. Studio 1: vast, cold, and echoing - like a school assembly hall, with its waxed parquet floored and white painted wooden wall panels. The smell was of disinfectant, floor wax and dust. A staircase led up to the ceiling where the control room, like the bridge of a ship, looked out over the "shop floor". The mixing desks were expensive and solid – painted metal, with heavy industrial knobs and switches, which might have come from the dashboard of a tank, and shining rivets. The faders resembled the
throttle controls from fighter planes. This was the high prestige, classical recording venue which made the studio famous.

You'd see classical sessions going on in number one - we were always being asked to turn down because a classical piano was being recorded in number one and they could hear us (McCartney, Sessions, p.8)

Studio 2: smaller, but still large, and still echoing, and with more parquet flooring and white paint – Geoff Emerick describes “filthy white walls” (p.180). It was, as George Harrison observed, a “big white room that was very dirty and hadn't been painted in years.” With his noted eye for detail, he recalled “these old sound baffles hanging down that were all dirty and broken... this huge big hanging light... no window, no daylight.”91 The control room here was also up a flight of stairs. The cupboard under that staircase was a "toy cupboard", filled with items which were largely useless, except insofar as when banged together, rattled or hit, they made interesting sounds. There was a wind-up wind machine, tambourines, strange percussion instruments from Africa and Asia. In the studio itself were a Hammond organ, a piano, and a harmonium.

Studio 3: the smallest studio, almost cramped, and used to record artists on a budget, or as a last resort when Studio 2 isn't available. The control room here wasn't up a flight of steps - it looked out straight into the room. Most of Revolver was recorded in Studio 3 and Studio 2. The band would have entered whichever room they were working in to find Aspinall and Evans finishing the setting up of their instruments. George Martin would be in the control room with engineer Geoff Emerick and his assistant, Phil McDonald. Martin, Emerick and MacDonald, wearing sober shirts and ties, adhering to the strict EMI dress-code, would pop down the staircase or – in the case of Studio 3, along the corridor – to say hello.

Sessions usually started with cups of tea and cigarettes – and perhaps some toast or sandwiches. It was Evans' job to fetch these from the canteen, or prepare them in an improvised kitchen in the Studio, which the Beatles had earned the right to run with their superstar status.

Once they had settled in George Martin would stand with the band and they would decide amongst themselves which track to record, with the song's main author running through them on acoustic guitar or piano93. Emerick would often listen from the control room and try to anticipate any technical issues which might arise.

Once they'd decided, they'd tell George Martin how they wanted the record to sound, often in quite abstract terms, and he would relay the requirements to the engineer, whose job it was to conceive of a way to achieve the requested sound. He, in turn, would then ask the white-coated studios technicians to carry out any electrical adjustments necessary, and/or ask the brown-coated maintenance staff to move amplifiers or instruments into the right positions. The engineer would then see to microphone positioning and set-up.

There was a standard set-up prescribed by the EMI technical guidelines, which indicated which microphones should be used for which instruments, and how far away each should be placed; each engineer also had his own preferred set-up, with minor adjustments based on experience and the kind of sound the artist was after; in the case of the Beatles, Geoff Emerick started out using a variation on Norman Smith's set-up, but was willing to make severe adjustments, often in contravention of studio rules and regulations, in order to achieve not only the right sound, but also completely new sounds.

Once everything was ready, there would be wires trailing all over the floor, empty tea cups balanced on amplifiers or other flat surfaces, and everybody would be in their places with “cans” (headphones) on. In Studio 2, Martin and Emerick would be out of sight of the band up the staircase, and able to communicate only by coming downstairs or talking to them through the studio desk. In Studio 3, they would be face-to-face with the band through heavy glass.

The session would then go on, often for hours, until the band called it to a halt. Martin didn't always stay to the end of a session – despite regulations, sessions rarely finished on time - but would leave his engineers in charge.

In the meantime, members of the band would periodically retire to the echo chamber or toilets to smoke pot; dinner would be ordered and brought in by Mal Evans; visitors might pop in, though they were rarely welcome.

Eventually, Starr would grow tired – drumming is the most physically strenuous job in most bands – or a natural pause in proceedings would occur, such as getting a good take of a particular track, and band members would make their way out to waiting cars. Sometime, an individual member might stay to tinker with his parts on a track, or all four members might hang around in the control room listening to playback of their evening's work. Sometimes, they made copies to take home.

This article is continued from the previous Paul McCartney Goes Too Far Part 1

The impact on McCartney of this kind of music-making, which lacks any obvious sign of the melody or structural perfection which are trademark qualities of his, can nonetheless be seen clearly in a song as apparently childish and simplistic as “Yellow Submarine”. This seemingly humble strum-along tune, much ridiculed by critics48 is richly embroidered with musique concrete49. Compare the description of a session for Yellow Submarine with the AMM event described above:

We needed all kinds of sound effects, and sandbags were bumped about while John blew bubbles and George made swirling sounds with the water... There was also a brass band... right there in the studio, not to mention a massed chorus made up of anybody and everybody who happened to be around at the time. (George Martin,“Off the Record", p207)

The communal, participatory nature of this event echoes an AMM performance, and the Beatles continued to hold similar “parties” with guests in the studio up until the recording of the “The Beatles” (the “White Album”) in 1968. Their happenings, however, were ultimately more disciplined, having as their end the production of a releasable pop “product”. As well as the minimalist musique concrète of Cardew's AMM, McCartney (and Miles) also pursued their interests in an emerging high art alternative to classical music, namely electronic music. They attended a lecture given by Luciano Berio, the renowned Italian electronic composer, in February 1966. One
journalist described the event:

Everything that Luciano Berio does is interesting even when it isn't entirely convincing. Last night at the Italian institute he talked for almost an hour about his new work, Homage to Dante - mostly about what it was not, and what is the only possible way of creating a work of art, and suchlike topics. (The Times, 24/02/66, p.16)

At the lecture, Berio played a tape of his new piece Laborintus 2 (Un Omaggio a Dante), which develops certain themes in Dante's texts, combining them with biblical texts as well as the work of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Edoardo Sanguineti. During the intermission, Paul was able to have a few words with Berio but the Italian embassy staff cluste around so closely that serious conversation was difficult. (Miles, Many Years From Now, p.234-5)

In Britain, Berio was notable for being the first electronic composer to have his work performed at the Proms, when his Perspectives - a series of oscillations and radio noises - was played, from tape, in August 1960.

It was also during this time that McCartney developed an interest in the music of John Cage, of whom Cornelius Cardew was, at that time, a disciple50. He was particularly impressed by 4'33", which was four minutes of complete silence. Another composer who impressed McCartney was, in turn, Cage's teacher, the German Karlheinz Stockhausen, who was later to appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. McCartney was not only intrigued by his experiments
with tape manipulation, but also particularly seems to have enjoyed dropping his name as evidence of his erudition. There was a lot of experimental stuff that went on. George's Indian stuff and all of that. It was really just pushing frontiers, that's all we were doing. Everyone else was pushing frontiers too but perhaps we didn't necessarily like what, say, Berio was doing. There was only one Stockhausen song I liked actually! We used to get it in all the interviews “Love Stockhausen!”. (McCartney, in Lewisohn, p. 15)

He missed seeing Stockhausen in person introducing a concert of his works at the Commonwealth Institute in London in December 1965 - The Beatles were playing a concert in Liverpool - but might have read the article published in the wake of that event in The Times on December 6th, or seen the television programme Music on Two on BBC2 on December 21st, when a
Stockhausen special was broadcast. Stockhausen was everywhere in 1965 and early 1966, at least if you were the kind of person who read the broadsheets and watched the high-brow second
channel.

Quite apart from the avant-garde European and American electronic music which McCartney came across, there was also the then cutting-edge BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The Workshop is staffed by four creative assistants, three technicians, one engineer, and part-time maintenance personnel, who work in three specially equipped studios... it was set up in 1958 with a staff of only two... At the moment, it provides incidental accompaniments in the main and aims to underline atmosphere and extend dramatic impact. Many programmes are educations, children tend to listen with open ears and without preconceived notions.51

The Workshop was well-known amongst musicians as the best equipped electronic studio in the UK, rivalling that at the Westdeutcher Rundfunk studio in Cologne, Germany, and the Colombia Princeton Electronic Music Center in the USA. Whereas those institutions were used by a range of composers for the creation of “pure art”, the BBC Workshop had something of a “closed door policy”52 to outside musicians, and a more practical purpose – namely, the low-cost production of music and sound effects for BBC television and radio programmes. It was music for the popular science fiction programme Dr Who which made it something of a household name, and which, almost inadvertently, exposed the public at large to the sounds of tape loops, musique concrète and manipulated electronic sounds generated by oscillators. McCartney would have heard Radiophonic Workshop music frequently, and also claims to have spoken to someone at the Workshop, probably Delia Derbyshire, about the possibility of an electronic backing for “Yesterday” in 1965.

George Martin also gets some credit for fostering McCartney's interest in unusual electronic sounds:
In 1962 Parlophone issued a single called: “Time Beat/Waltz in Orbit", a compilation of electronic sounds, composed by a certain Ray Cathode - me! (Summer of Love, p.83)

George Martin played them [McCartney and Miles] the famous 1962 Bell Telephone Labs recording of an IBM 7090 computer54 and digital-to-sound transducer singing “Bicycle Built for Two” in a thick German-American accent, which they loved. (This was also favourite late-night listening at Miles's flat.) (Many Years From Now, p.207)

This interest in electronics manifested itself practically in an ongoing series of experiments with tape recorders from 1965. Both Lennon and McCartney acquired Brenell Mark 5 tape recorders through their music publisher, Dick James, who was presumably keen to get their songs demoed on tape and then in print as soon as possible. Being a small company, Brenell were able to meet individual demands far better than Ferrograph, who were heavy into Government orders and supplying the BBC. The Brenell was a very basic, but very well built three motor, three speed design... the Mark 5 introduced to the amateur/semi-pro an extremely versatile and very well made deck at a reasonable price. (Interview with Barry M Jones, author of Brenell - True to Life Performance)

The simplicity and versatility of the machine enabled both of the “senior Beatles” to experiment, but Lennon tended to use his machine more as a kind of notebook for sketching ideas and recording somewhat tuneless, rambling demos, whilst McCartney leapt straight into manipulating the sound – into using the tape recorder as an instrument in its own right.

I would do them [tape loops] over a few days. I had a little bottle of EMI glue that I would stick them with and wait till they dried. It was a pretty decent join. I'd be trying to avoid the click as it went through, but I never actually avoided it. If you made them very well you could just about do it but I made 'em a bit ham fisted and I ended up using the clicks as part of the rhythm. (McCartney, Many Years From Now, p.219)

McCartney was quick to share what he was learning, just as Harrison and Lennon had been quick to share their experiences with Indian music and LSD with him. Paul constructed all these 'loops' of tape with these funny, distorted, dense little noises on them. He told the others, and they too, took the wipe heads off their recorders and started constructing loops of taped gibberish. (George Martin, Summer of Love, p.80)

Though McCartney talked of releasing an entire album of avant-garde tape experiments under the name Paul McCartney Goes Too Far55, he ultimately baulked at the idea. In fact, he went so far as to head in quite the opposite direction, concealing his own experimentation by giving away his work to Lennon for use on his otherwise simple song “Tomorrow Never Knows”. This compounded the public perception of Lennon as the “Clever Beatle", and of McCartney as a brilliant but conventional songwriter.

In reality, “Tomorrow Never Knows", like so many of the songs on the album, is a genuine group effort. Lennon's contribution, musically, was the simple vocal melody and the one chord around which the music moves. It is McCartney who deserves the credit for the distinctive other-worldly sound of the backing track, and Ringo Starr whose drumming has been so much imitated in recent years.

As well as the high-brow artistic interests that his central location and avant-garde contacts facilitated, McCartney's celebrity also gave him opportunity to monitor the work of other movers and shakers in the pop world. His mixing socially with British pop stars and producers at various nightclubs paid off in 1966 when, through Andrew Loog Oldham, then managing and producing the Rolling Stones, he was given the opportunity to hear an early tape of the Beach Boys “Pet Sounds”.

Paul McCartney and I had enjoyed tea and smoke at my Hurlingham Road abode and awaited Lou's [Lou Adler] arrival... He was bringing his good self and an acetate of “Pet Sounds”, which neither Paul or I could keep, since this was a time when personal tape recordings were not on or done... we settled into more tea, lots of smiles, more smoke... and a long, long listen and lot of wonder from Paul and I. (2Stoned, p. 443)

In the wake of hearing “Pet Sounds”, McCartney would arrange a distinctly Beach Boys influenced introduction for his “Here, There and Everywhere”, although, as Ian McDonald rightly notes, the song itself is not much after the manner of Brian Wilson56. These small additions to Revolver give it yet another level of complexity and richness.

In March 1966, shortly before the Revolver sessions commenced, McCartney moved into a new house even nearer Abbey Road studios, at 7 Cavendish Avenue. This property McCartney at once set about making into a more expansive version of his room at Wimpole Street, even using the same architects who had refurbished the upper floor to handle the renovation work. His instruments were stacked around the place, along with his tape recorder and various pieces of art – by Magritte and others – which he had picked up during his virtual student days with the Ashers. This marked the end of an era, and also the beginning of the end of his relationship with Jane Asher herself, now that he had somewhere to bring women as and when the opportunity arose. He graduated, as it were, from his student lifestyle with the Ashers a mature, sophisticated man.