weird that no one has answered the question that keeps coming up over the last couple of weeks - how does Revolution take 18 compare w/ take 20. The mystery continues..
How many people on this thread actually have the advance of the box set? Is anyone inclined to answer a few questions?
Question for All : I’ve had “Revolution RM20” for a decade now already, and it’s a treasure I never ever expected to hear. On first listen, I finally understood what Lennon meant about how he’d hived off the basis of “Revolution 9” from the long playout jam of “Revolution 1.” Using those later 7 minutes of loose weirdness, he had the organizing structure onto which all those loops were eventually added to create “Revolution 9.” All of which makes sense. So far so good. On the official “Revolution 9,” you could always clearly hear Lennon’s “riiiight” vocals bubbling up regularly, and excerpts from the basic-track : bass, drums, electric guitar snippets - all from the extended performance of that Rev 1 basic track. Those soaring, air-raid siren electric guitars (or a distorted BV loop?), the “mama-dada” backing vocals, and God-knows what else, were apparently all overdubbed onto that first playout groove before they quit the session and made that mix. So, based on that boot, I’ve always believed “Revolution RM20” was Lennon’s take-home mix reel of that first session, in-progress. (I say that based on its superior sound quality - it’s no cassette, and it’s not something miked off monitor speakers like the Purple Chick sessions with Yoko speaking, either. It’s in-line and of releasable quality). I also believe that most of the audible layering mechanics are self-explanatory. But here’s my abiding question : That basic track with live vocal runs rock steady, in both timing and pitch. No tape-speed manipulation is evident. But if Lennon’s vocal, including all those long drawn out “riiiiights” were done on the same take as his sung lyrics - how on earth did they get that wobble on his later vocalizings? Because, to my ears, that wobbling distortion sounds like nothing so much as tape reels being touched, patted, yanked around a little bit as the vocal played back. But since his timing is still so tight with the music bed, and they apparently didn’t “fly-in” his manipulated voice, how did they keep those messed-with vocals locked to the correct timing? Was there a separate reel they compiled of him just screaming “riiiiight,” they strategically dropped in later, which could explain how they’d gotten it to land neatly on the beat, yet so smeared and tape-head distorted. Did they take a feed of his (clean) screaming and run it to a separate machine (ala ADT), then transfer it back into the mix tape, or print it to a separate track of the master for later use, all beautifully messed-up like that? (and those “right” screams are just as manipulated-sounding on the final “Revolution 9,” so it's logical that they'd have printed them somewhere after treating them). What ARE we hearing? I don’t know if this question has come up here in the past, but I’ve never heard anyone try to break down the elements, and I’d really appreciate some help in understanding what I’m pretty sure my ears are telling me about the architecture of this master and this RM20 mix. Especially now, on the eve of getting a closely associated version - and I’m still not sure if I’ve heard it confirmed that “mama/dada” will even be included in this new mix or not - which isn’t really surprising, considering there were God-knows how many things the rough RM20 didn’t reveal which had still been recorded! No “mama/dada,” but “Love Me Do,” eh? Sure, why not. This one’s going to be amazing, no doubt about that! (and is a prime candidate for individual-track streaming in the future...)
Now I’m seeing sone other review packages posted on social media so you can see that the image I posted several days ago was in fact real. Surprised the early receivers haven’t shown images here. They are all over Facebook on the writers actual pages. .
It's this roughness which makes me think the bootleg we've all heard was just that day's take-home mix reel. It's a little dodgy on the levels, indeed - but so illuminating about their process! (FWIW - I hear the jarring 1-note tone as electric guitar and/or some kind of vocal thing).
I wonder if the booted "take 20" of Revolution was really take 20. There are instances of take #s being skipped, and the man's voice we hear announcing the take doesn't sound all that confident that it is indeed take 20.
In the book, there is a lot in the "Track by Track" portion of the book. Mine is all digital so a PDF file with 160+ pages. I find it not exactly user friendly so I have not looked too much at it
Is the text searchable, or is the PDF just flat scanned pages? Using command+f (or Ctrl+f) is invaluable for large documents, as long as the text is "live." EDIT: What I bolded =
I believe it's "Remix Take 20." The designation I saw on it when the boot first appeared was "RM20." Ostensibly of the same "Revolution 1" basic track where you hear it being slated as "...Take 2" (which slate is actually carried over to the final album version)
It would be nice if Apple made this pdf available with the digital deluxe version of WA50. Unfortunately, I don’t see on the iTunes listing for now.
Any insight into why "Alright take two" was included on the final White Album mix? I always thought that was strange given that they ended up calling it "Revolution 1", having "two" at the top of the song feels odd...Is the backing track really all built up off of Take 2...leading up to Take 20...Or is "take two" a reference to retrying the vocal overdub?
Indeed, they could easily have cut between the slate's end and the first guitar notes, but I think they just liked that kind of happenstance, especially on this album. Hearing it repeatedly as they cued it up for mixing, I'd guess they just decided to leave it in.
Oh I'd looove to have the books for Pepper and this one as PDF as even though if they are badly done (for example non-searchable images, no index) I read them more than the actual books. I love the physical books, but prefer reading digital. I am very short sighted, so getting as near to the paper pages as I need to when reading paper is much more physically draining to me than digital. And it's evident. I do read for example Winn's Kobo ebook versions quite often, just love to browse. Since I bought them the paper versions are collecting dust. Even though I had to get used to the sub-par digital indexing.
Mark listened to the tape when he wrote the Sessions book in the late 80’s. Maybe he could have pointed Giles in the right direction. You have to wonder how much importance they held these legendary outtakes, I couldn’t in my wildest dreams thought we would have got 4 discs of demos and outtakes and not got the first band version of While my Guitar or Rev Take 20. Very strange.
I think those who worked on this box set were able to listen to more than Mark Lewisohn ever did and in a much less rushed atmosphere.
Until we consider what they ARE giving us. And since no one knows what actually exists except for this remix crew, we could be in for the surprise of all time. Here’s hoping...
To be honest, I did have my tongue a little bit in my cheek when I made the comment, clearly didn’t land as intended. My rather elusive point was how hard did they really look for the tape as Abbey Road aren’t usually in the habit of loosing tapes.
Some of the outtakes sound really intriguing, and the upgrade to the Esher demos is great to have, I’m in for the box it’s a no brainer, just curious why some of the decisions to omit some key outtakes were taken, especially the lack of vintage mixes like we had on the Pepper50.
It is definitely Take 20 which is a 4T reduction of Take 19 with additional overdubs. We know it is in fact Take 20 because includes the overdubs added to that take.