Revolution 9

(Lennon/Harrison/Ono)

Quick Facts

Composer	John
Lead Vocal	Spoken montage
Recorded	May–Jun 1968
Length	8:22
Key	atonal
Noted Takes	—
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Geoff Emerick

Originally released on

The Beatles (White Album) (LP)

Apple [Parlophone] — PMC 7067/8

Find on Amazon

Story

"Revolution 9" is a sound collage from the Beatles' 1968 self-titled double album. The composition, credited to Lennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from Yoko Ono and George Harrison. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution using sound. [Wikipedia]

Revolution 9 is a song by The Beatles, written by Lennon–Harrison–Ono and led on vocal by spoken/montage. Tape-loop and spoken-word collage; longest official Beatles track and the most divisive. The most experimental piece on the White Album, Revolution 9 continued Lennon's exploration of avant-garde sound effects and musical montage initiated with Carnival of Light in 1967. This soundscape composition compiled hundreds of audio snippets, sound effects, and vocal fragments layered across multiple tape generations. Lennon's interest in electronic music and dadaist artistic approaches found full expression in this nine-minute collage. (That version, renamed 'Revolution I, was included on the album, and with the single Kozinn 1995, p.180)

The session work falls within the band's The White Album (1968) period, recorded 30 May 1968 at EMI Studios. George Martin (with Chris Thomas covering) produced; Ken Scott (early) and Geoff Emerick engineered. Recorded piecemeal during 1968 sessions, Revolution 9 was constructed from collected sound effects, orchestral fragments, and vocal loops edited and assembled through multiple tape reductions. John Lennon compiled and organized the sound effects during sessions while George and Ringo were absent from Abbey Road in June 1968. The composition required unprecedented patience and creative editing.

What's distinctive

At 8:22 it's among the very longest tracks in the canon. Recorded approximately 4 of 34 into the The White Album (1968) sessions. Carries the unique tag 'tape-collage' — no other song shares it. Take count: none assigned — Revolution 9 is the only released Beatles track for which the session sheet abandons take numbering, the 20 June 1968 master logged simply as a “compilation of master version”; the sound-effects passes logged takes 1–12 (6 June) and takes 1–3 (10 June). The inherited “35” was a legacy chart artefact.¹

Recording

Revolution 9 is the canonical Beatles example of a piece for which the conventional take number abstraction stops working. Lewisohn records the master not as a numbered take but as a “compilation of master version” assembled across Studios One, Two and Three at Abbey Road in a single overnight session on 20 June 1968 (7.00pm–3.30am) — the only Beatles released track whose session sheet abandons take numbering for a multi-studio assemblage notation. Kehew & Ryan put the distinction plainly: “Obviously, ‘Revolution 9’ represented the most elaborate use of loops ever on a Beatles track.”^1,2
The piece is the directly-traceable descendant of the last six minutes of take 18 of ‘Revolution’ (the working title of Revolution 1), recorded 30 May 1968. On that tail: “The last six minutes were pure chaos — the sound of a ‘Revolution’, if you like — with discordant instrumental jamming, plenty of feedback, John Lennon repeatedly screaming ‘alright’ … with lots of on-microphone moaning by John and his new girlfriend Yoko Ono.” And explicitly: “great chunks of ‘Revolution 9’ were born directly out of the early tapings of ‘Revolution 1’ … Before very long the last six minutes would be hived off to form the basis for ‘Revolution 9’.”¹
It is also the canonical Beatles instance of backwards-as-medium rather than backwards-as-effect: a backwards orchestral feed (the 10 February 1967 A Day in the Life overdub, repeated over and over), backwards Mellotron played by John, backwards violins behind a choir, and a symphonic piece chopped up and played backwards all sit in the master tape. K/R bracket the era: “With the exception of ‘Revolution #9’ from The Beatles, use of backward tape on Beatles’ recordings was virtually non-existent after 1967.”^1,2
Source conflict per §1 — identity of the “number nine” voice. Both sources document a Royal Academy of Music examination tape held in the Abbey Road / EMI tape library (Stuart Eltham: “Abbey Road used to do taped examinations for the Royal Academy of Music. The tapes aren’t around now”; K/R: “Culled from an examination tape in the EMI tape library”), but the specific examiner who uttered the phrase is unidentified in the primary-source canon and the source tape was destroyed. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain, the page records the examination-tape provenance without asserting a speaker.^1,2
Source conflict per §1 — absence of a dedicated mono mixing session. Lewisohn records Revolution 9 remixes only in stereo (21 June: stereo remixes 1 and 2; 25 June: editing + tape-copying of stereo remix 2); no dedicated mono remixing session is logged. The 1968 UK mono LP nevertheless carries a mono Revolution 9, most plausibly a fold-down of the 25 June stereo edit master. Per §1, the page records the mono LP’s existence without independently characterising its derivation.¹

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road — Studios One, Two and Three (20 June 1968 multi-studio master compilation); Studio Two and Studio Three (30 May seed + 6–11 June sound-effects passes); Studio Two control room (25 June edit)¹
Tape machine	Studer J37 four-track — “a close study of the four-track tape reveals the loops and effects”; the master is a four-track assemblage with STEED tape-delay loop spinning, not an eight-track recording¹
Console	EMI REDD.51 valve console (Studios Two/Three, 1968 era desk; the specific desk is not page-named in the primary sources)
Microphones	U47/U48, AKG C12, U67, plus the floor vocal mics used by John and George for the spoken fragments
Outboard / effects	STEED tape-delay echo (Send Tape Echo / Echo Delay), EMI RS124, EMT 140, Fairchild 660, ADT, tape loops run on multiple machines
Keyboards / instruments	Mellotron (played backwards by John), library orchestral and choral tapes, sound-effects loops

Recording Timeline

30 May 1968 — take-18 tail-section seed, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.30pm–2.40am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald. Recording: Revolution (working title of Revolution 1) (takes 1–18). Take 18 “kept on and on and on, eventually running out at 10′17″ with John’s shout ‘OK, I’ve had enough!’.” The last six minutes would be hived off to form the basis of Revolution 9 — the primary-source-attested moment of its genesis, even though the title would not appear on a session sheet until 6 June.¹
6 June 1968 — sound effects takes 1–12, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.30pm–2.45am (shared with the Don’t Pass Me By overdub session). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald. “Twelve effects were compiled on this day, five marked ‘Various’ and the others titled ‘Vicars Poems’, ‘Queen’s Mess’, ‘Come Dancing Combo’, ‘Organ Last Will Test’ [sic], ‘Neville Club’, ‘Theatre Outing’ and ‘Applause/TV Jingle’.” Not all twelve were ultimately used; some were repurposed for Lennon’s stage adaptation of In His Own Write at the Old Vic.¹
10 June 1968 — sound effects takes 1–3, Studio Three — Studio Three, 2.30–5.45pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald. “On this day, 10 June, John compiled more sound effects for ‘Revolution 9’ in a three-hour session.” George and Ringo had flown to the USA on 7 June (“Never before had one or more of the Beatles left the country while group recording sessions were in progress”), so this is a John Lennon solo session inside the group bookings.¹
11 June 1968 — unnumbered sound-effects takes, Studio Three — Studio Three, 7.00–10.15pm (concurrent with Paul’s solo Blackbird session in Studio Two). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald. The production team split between “John Lennon in studio three and Paul McCartney in studio two, both busy on separate ideas”; “Chris Thomas remembers going with John to find sound effects tapes and helping him make up loops” — the operational template for the 20 June multi-studio compilation.¹
20 June 1968 — master compilation across Studios One, Two and Three, Abbey Road — Studios One, Two and Three, 7.00pm–3.30am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. Recording: Revolution 9 (sound effects takes 1 and 2, compilation of master version, with SI). “John Lennon commandeering the use of all three studios at Abbey Road for the spinning in and recording of the myriad tape loops. Just like the 7 April 1966 ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ session, there were people all over EMI Studios spooling loops onto tape machines with pencils. But instead of Geoff Emerick … fading them in and out in a live mix, it was John Lennon, with Yoko closely by his side.”^1,2
21 June 1968 — SI onto master + stereo remixes 1 and 2, Studio Two — Studio Two, 10.00pm–3.30am (shared with the Revolution 1 completion session earlier that day). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. “John Lennon had a marvellous time remixing ‘Revolution 9’ for stereo, pushing different images through on both channels and panning the words ‘number nine’ across the stereo in fractions of a second.” Paul was in the USA and missed the session; “it was just John, with Yoko, and George holding the fort.”¹
25 June 1968 — editing the stereo master 9′05″ → 8′12″, Studio Two control room — Studio Two (control room only), 2.00–8.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. “All that needed to be done to ‘Revolution 9’ was editing of the stereo master from 9′05″ to 8′12″, and tape copies were made of the stereo masters for John Lennon and Apple Corps Ltd.” Brian Gibson: “For weeks afterwards everybody was going around the building muttering ‘number nine, number nine, number nine’!”¹

In ‘Revolution 9’ we had the STEED system of tape echo fed via a tape delay system. The track ran for so long that there is one point where the delay runs out and you can hear the tape being re-wound, live. Even that impromptu thing, an accident, contributed to the finished result.— Alan Brown¹

Studio Notes

The “number nine” loop — a Royal Academy examination tape — Richard Lush: “the ‘number nine’ voice came off an examination tape. John thought that was a real hoot! He made a loop of just that bit and had it playing constantly on one machine, fading it in or out when he wanted it, along with the backwards orchestral stuff and everything else.” K/R: “The most infamous loop ever used on a Beatles recording … an unidentified man endlessly repeating the words, ‘Number Nine.’ Culled from an examination tape in the EMI tape library.”^1,2
STEED tape-delay routing + the rewind-on-air accident — Alan Brown: the STEED (Send Tape Echo / Echo Delay) system fed the loops via a tape delay; “the track ran for so long that there is one point where the delay runs out and you can hear the tape being re-wound, live.” The same Abbey Road tape-delay infrastructure documented for the 1967 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Leslie’d-vocal chain; here the STEED tail was outrun by the piece, and the audible rewind became a deliberately retained piece of the released master.¹
Backwards-audio catalogue inside the master tape — “A close study of the four-track tape reveals the loops and effects to include: George Martin saying ‘Geoff … put the red light on,’ heavily echoed and played repeatedly. A choir, supplemented by backwards violins. A symphonic piece, chopped up and played backwards. A brief extract of the 10 February 1967 ‘A Day in the Life’ orchestral overdub, repeated over and over. Backwards Mellotron (played by John), miscellaneous symphonies and operas.” The A Day in the Life overdub is re-entered here as raw material for a later Beatles track — one recording’s material recursively re-used in another’s released master.^1,2
John + George floor-mic spoken overdubs — Richard Lush: “John was really the producer of ‘Revolution 9’. But George Harrison joined him … and they both had vocal mikes and were saying strange things like ‘the Watusi’, ‘the Twist’.” The catalogue of random fragments includes “personality complex”, “onion soup”, “economically viable”, “industrial output”, “financial imbalance”, “take this brother, may it serve you well”, George’s “Eldorado”, and (whispered six times) “There ain’t no rule for the company freaks!”.¹
Loop inventory — K/R’s independent catalogue: “The track featured loops of orchestral passages (also pinched from EMI’s library), football chants, a radio broadcast, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, the sound of children on a playground, several manic Lennon vocal loops, a heavenly choir, and many, many more — all played backward and forwards.” Where Tomorrow Never Knows established the technique on five loops in 1966, Revolution 9 scales it into a hundred-plus-loop assemblage.²
No assigned take number — assemblage as the primary-source object — Lewisohn records the 20 June master only as “compilation of master version” with no take number — unique in the catalogue, where every other released Beatles track carries a numbered basic-track take. The inherited info-box “Estimated takes = 35” was a legacy chart-data artefact: the 6 June sound-effects pass logged takes 1–12, 10 June logged takes 1–3, and 20 June logged sound-effects takes 1 and 2 — an inventory of effects-takes counts, not a basic-track take.¹

Releases

1968 UK stereo LP The Beatles (“White Album”) (22 November 1968, Apple [Parlophone] PCS 7067-8, side D track 1) — Released master = the 25 June 1968 edit of stereo remix 2 from the 20–21 June master version (“editing of the stereo master from 9′05″ to 8′12″”). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. It carries the 30 May take-18 tail seed; the 6–11 June sound-effects loop preparation; the 20 June multi-studio compilation with STEED tape delay; the 21 June SI + stereo remixes 1 and 2; and the 25 June edit. Final length 8′12″.¹
1968 UK mono LP The Beatles (22 November 1968, Apple [Parlophone] PMC 7067-8, side D track 1) — Per the §1 source-conflict flag: no dedicated mono mixing session for Revolution 9 appears in Lewisohn’s session sheets; the mono LP track is most plausibly a fold-down of the 25 June stereo edit master. (Compare Revolution 1, which Lewisohn records as receiving both dedicated stereo remixing and mono mixing.)¹
1968 US stereo LP The Beatles (25 November 1968, Apple SWBO 101, side D track 1) — The same stereo master forwarded to Capitol for US pressing.
Mono Masters (9 September 2009, Apple) — The 1968 mono Revolution 9 remastered in the 2009 mono-box collection (Allan Rouse / Guy Massey). Post-Lewisohn; the technical mono-derivation question is not independently resolved in the 2009 documentation; flagged here for completeness.
The Beatles 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe (9 November 2018, Apple) — Giles Martin / Sam Okell stereo remix from the multitracks. Post-Lewisohn; documented in the 2018 box’s liner notes rather than in the primary-source canon; flagged here for completeness.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 135, 137–39.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 304–05, 490.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Revolution 9?

“Revolution 9” is credited on the LP to Lennon–McCartney, but was conceived and assembled by John Lennon with Yoko Ono and George Harrison.¹

Who sings lead on Revolution 9?

There is no sung lead — “Revolution 9” is a spoken-word and tape-loop montage, including John and George’s floor-mic fragments and the repeating “number nine” loop.

When was Revolution 9 recorded?

It grew from the 30 May 1968 tail of ‘Revolution’ (takes 1–18) and was assembled across June 1968 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road — the master compiled on 20 June and edited on 25 June 1968.¹

How many takes did Revolution 9 require?

It has no conventional master take number — Lewisohn records the 20 June 1968 master only as a “compilation of master version”; the sound-effects passes logged takes 1–12 (6 June) and takes 1–3 (10 June).¹