Released on 5 August 1966 "Revolver" was the 7th., studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, the album was accompanied by the double A-side single "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yellow Submarine". The album was the Beatles' final recording project before their retirement as live performers and marked the group's most overt use of studio technology to date, building on the advances of their late 1965 release Rubber Soul. It has since become regarded as one of the greatest and most innovative albums in the history of popular music, with recognition centred on its range of musical styles, diverse sounds and lyrical content. The release there coincided with the Beatles' final concert tour and the controversy surrounding John Lennon's remark that the band had become "more popular than Jesus". Critical reaction was highly favourable in the UK but less so in the US amid the press's unease at the band's outspokenness on contemporary issues.
Revolver marked a decisive turning point for The Beatles. Issued just eight months after Rubber Soul in the UK and most international markets, the album showcased a band rapidly abandoning the conventions of beat music in favour of experimentation, sophisticated songwriting and innovative recording techniques. It also became the group’s final studio project before retiring from touring, allowing them to focus entirely on what could be achieved inside Abbey Road’s recording studios.
The Beatles recorded Revolver after taking a three-month break at the start of 1966, and during a period when London was feted as the era's cultural capital. Regarded by some commentators as the start of the group's psychedelic period, the songs reflect their interest in the drug LSD, Eastern philosophy and the avant-garde while addressing themes such as death and transcendence of material concerns. With no plans to reproduce their new material in concert, the band made liberal use of automatic double tracking, varispeed, reversed tapes, close audio miking, and instruments outside of their standard live set-up. Among its tracks are "Tomorrow Never Knows", incorporating heavy Indian drone and a collage of tape loops; "Eleanor Rigby", a song about loneliness featuring a string octet as its only musical backing; and "Love You To", a foray into Hindustani classical music. The sessions also produced a non-album single, "Paperback Writer", backed with "Rain".
The albumb expanded the boundaries of pop music, revolutionised standard practices in studio recording, advanced principles espoused by the 1960s counterculture, and inspired the development of psychedelic rock, electronica, progressive rock and world music. The album cover, designed by Klaus Voormann, combined Aubrey Beardsley-inspired line drawing with photo collage and won the 1967 Grammy Award for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts.
The British edition contained 14 songs, opening with George Harrison's tax protest song "Taxman" and concluding with John Lennon's groundbreaking "Tomorrow Never Knows". Capitol's American edition reduced the album to 11 tracks after removing Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Doctor Robert". Those songs had already appeared on Yesterday and Today, leaving the US version noticeably weighted towards Paul McCartney’s compositions and reducing Lennon’s presence across the album. The altered sequencing also changed the dramatic arc carefully constructed by producer George Martin and the band. In the UK version, Lennon’s increasingly experimental writing gradually develops throughout the album before reaching its climax with the tape loops, processed vocals and hypnotic rhythms of "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Lyrically, Revolver also represented a significant departure. Earlier Beatles albums had largely centred on romance, but Revolver explored loneliness, taxation, spirituality, altered consciousness, communication and mortality. Songs such as "Eleanor Rigby" and "For No One" presented emotionally complex narratives rarely heard in mainstream pop music at the time, while "Tomorrow Never Knows" drew inspiration from Eastern philosophy and psychedelic ideas. The album also reflected the individual growth of each songwriter. Lennon continued to push the boundaries of studio experimentation, McCartney expanded his melodic and orchestral ambitions, and Harrison emerged as a major creative force with three compositions that broadened the band’s musical vocabulary. Ringo Starr contributed one of the album’s best-known performances with the children's singalong "Yellow Submarine", which was released alongside "Eleanor Rigby" as a double A-side single on the same day as the album.
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