Why Revolver was revolutionary

60 years ago today, the Beatles released an album that would not only signal a whole new direction for the band, but ultimately a whole new direction for music in general. So today, we're going to go track by track, diving into how the Beatles wrote and recorded Revolver, an album that is widely considered to be

one of the most important albums of all time. >> [music] >> In April 1966, the Beatles learned that although they were earning lots and lots of money, the vast majority of it was going to the tax man. Due to the UK's super tax on high earners at the time, the Beatles were getting taxed at the

rate of 95%. Which is why we get the lyric, >> there's one for you, 19. [music] And this lyric as well.

5% appear too small. Thankful I don't take it. >> Tax Man is the first George Harrison track to open a Beatles album. George was particularly upset about how much money the tax man was taking from them in particular as that money was then going to be spent on war machines by the government. He name checks both Prime

Minister Harold Wilson and the leader of the opposition Edward Heath. In the song, [music] >> Taxban uses a very blues inspired harmonic language, which is a fancy way of saying it uses loads of dominant chords. The A section is basically just a vamp on D dominant 7 with the sharp nine occasionally thrown in. 5%

[singing] appear too small. >> Now, the Beatles were no strangers to blues driven harmony, but it may be that Tax Man received its blues-based harmony from another man, Batman. Of course, there's a clear likeness between Tax Man and Batman in this moment here where the Beatles declared Tax Man's name. [music]

But Batman is a 12 bar blues composition. So, if Tax-Man did begin as basically just a play on the Batman theme, then it would make sense that Tax-Man had that similar blues film. The Batman TV series had come out earlier that year in the US. And although it hadn't reached the UK yet, [music] we

know that George Harrison owned a copy of the Marquette cover version of the Batman theme thanks to a subscription the Beatles had where they would receive all of the new entries into the American charts. Now, although Tax Man is a George Harrison penned tune, the Beatle who really shines on this record is Paul

McCartney. Not only does he provide the fat, energetic baseline, but he also provides the shredding guitar solo as well.

The tax band is a fairly straightforward arrangement. But it seems that earlier on there was some extra little details that the Beatles chose to remove from the final version. If we listen to one of the earlier takes, take 11, we can hear that there's a few extra details that didn't make it to the final

version, including these additional high guitar notes. this fast-paced backing vocal. [music] >> And the song also had a more sort of traditional ending. [music]

>> Now, the conventional wisdom is that an album should have a cohesive sound from beginning to end. But that is very much not true on this record or many Beatles records for that matter because we move from the brash high energy bluesy tax man to the melancholy string octet of Elanena Riby. [music] [singing]