Revolution Take…. Your Knickers Off! (His Master’s Choice HMC06)
Disc 1: Revolution #1 (11:32), Revolution, Across The Universe, Dear Prudence, Julia (instrumental), Julia, Julia, Step Inside Love
Disc 2: Come And Get It (takes 1-26), No Escaping Your Love (takes 1-11)
Revolution Take…. Your Knickers Off! on His Master’s Choice was released recently and is the most interesting and significant Beatle release in a long time. The center of interest is the newly discovered pristine sounding “Revolution” which kicks off this collection of Beatles rarities. This is the original ten minute long take from which “Revolution #1” is taken from and which appears on The Beatles monitor mix collections such as At Abbey Road Show Vol. 2 (Master Of Beatles Essentials MBE-12-07001/2/3) and “Off White”: The Complete Recordings, Sessionography, And Mixography (OWNO.9 001-009)among many others. The problem with the track as it appears in these older collections is the inane stream-of-consciousness babbling of Yoko Ono and the fact that it is essentially an amateur recording of the playback in the studio.
News outlets such as CNET and NME have expressed doubt on its authenticity with CNET going so far as to pronounce it a hoax seemingly without realizing that the take has been circulating for years. What is new on HMC 06 is that now we have the entire track in crisp mono without Yoko ruining it. So what we have for the first four and a half minutes are the basic track “Revolution #1” without the horns, piano and fuzzy guitars. And whereas the finished track fades out when Lennon begins to warp his “alights,” the song here continues for another seven minutes with same basic rhythm but various freak outs that would be utilized in “Revolution #9” including George and Paul adding their “mama/dada” vocal line. The tracks ends with Lennon giggling “let’s hear it,” Yoko saying “too much” and George saying “it sounds great.”
The rest of the collection contains more sessions and alternate mixes that have been out before but in significantly improved sound quality. “Revolution” (single version, no piano) is from the initial session that the recording heard on this disc complete with cut-in and no fade out. “Across The Universe” is an alternate mix of take eight which contains various overdubs, some backwards, that were not used in the released version together with pre-song banter and a full ending. “Dear Prudence” is an alternate mono mix complete with a post-song comment from Lennon and other extraneous noises from the original master tape.
“Julia” instrumental takes one and two are a collection of Lennon home recordings in much better sound quality than has ever appeared before. The ending of the first disc is the session where McCartney worked with Cilia Black on “Step Inside Love.” Again, this tape has been issued before but this is in superior sound quality. The second disc contains sessions for “Come And Get It” and “No Escaping Your Love.” It becomes slightly repetitive but again, like with everything in this collection are in much improved sound quality. HMC 06 is packaged in a hard cover booklet with many pages of detailed liner notes and rare photographs of the Beatles from the mid to late sixties. With the gorgeous production and incredible sound quality this is easily the most significant Beatles release in years and is essential.
4 Comments
It is important to note that the version heard on the Yoko tape is not the remix that’s heard here– it’s the basic track. The Revolution Take 20 remix has effects and overdubs that are part of Revolution #9. They are heard in-context with Revolution Take 20 for the first time here. Yes, some people initially thought it was an out-fake, but experts like Sulpy have called it the real thing.
I finally received this after mailing delays and have listened to it perhaps three times…bloody boring sorry to say.
The much bally-hooed Revolution almost sounds like it was computer edited/generated, extremely repetitive and very loopy sounding.
Some people say it’s slow others say it’s not…remember the Beatles used varispeed a lot in the studio.
This review doesn’t mention that the Revolution #1 Remix that’s so important is VERY slow; at what’s considred “proper” speed that track is more than a minute shorter than it is here…