‘Nine Revolutions’ by The Beatles (1968)

After Revolution 9 was written, or rather recorded, the Beatles came up with the idea of writing a suite of pieces: Nine Revolutions. Nobody is sure who first made the suggestion. It may have been George Harrison: the first track attempted was apparently Revolution 7, based on the mystical number seven, based on the sitar. He ran it through at home but the tape machine failed and he never came back to it.

John Lennon, who always liked to record quickly, pushed for them to rehearse for a day and then record it all in a day.

For the rehearsal they allegedly sneaked into a studio other than Abbey Road, with a trainee engineer/ teaboy from Abbey Road who soon after left to join the Hare Krishna movement.

The new tracks were recorded in the order of numbering.

Revolution 2 was a frantically fast version of the original Revolution 1 (B-side of Hey Jude). It lasted 93 seconds and has been described as proto-punk by an anonymous source. (There are only anonymous sources; the surviving Beatles claim not to remember the session.)

In the spirit of experimentation that they were embracing, Revolution 3 featured acoustic guitars with all the strings tuned to one note (roughly an E). Thus they played by barring or, in Lennon’s case, using a slide. This was an instrumental based on the chords of Revolution 1.

Revolution 4 consisted of the word “revolution” spoken by all the Beatles in different ways and voices. One can imagine Goon imitations. The rough tape of this was used as the basis for Revolution 5, a drum solo in which Ringo was meant to respond to the tape of voices. He generally disliked drum solos; he played a few desultory rolls then finished with a steady 4/4 beat until he got bored.

By this time it was becoming obvious that this was a failed project. Nevertheless, after a tea break Lennon and Mc Cartney improvised a slow acoustic song (Revolution 6) based on the theme of revolution, which was apparently quite pleasant and capable of working up into something good. The sitar piece, Revolution 7, was not tried because George did not have a sitar with him. A long discussion failed to come up with any ideas for Revolution 8. Nobody could be bothered to turn up the next day for the recording session allegedly booked provisionally in Abbey Road. (It does not feature in the exhaustive studio records.)

The project is even more shrouded in myth and mystery than any other Beatles work. Mark Lewisohn, the “acknowledged world authority” on the Beatles, does not mention it in any of his books. Some refuse to accept that it existed at all. The tapes have never appeared and have almost certainly been destroyed.

Inspired by a Facebook group discussion.

Photo: Sheila Thomson, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Put it all in a box

shine BRIGHT LIKE A

Staffroom Scenes 2

As always, just for fun. No resemblance is intended to anybody, living, dead or retired. Another one which will end up in ‘Fragments of a School Novel’.

Mrs Greaves had been teaching at Clafferingham Junior School since the dawn of time, somewhere around 1972, and knew everybody in the village. She would frequently entertain the staff and lunchtime with her tales. A favourite was the Jones family tree, which seemed to some of her colleagues to be nearly fictitious, or at least to be heavily embroidered.

“Well, the grandmother of course is Mrs Jones. I was at school with her at Rough Lane, in the days when it was a nice little village school and Lord Clafferington used to give out the prizes. He was a lovely man, though of course with his foibles- or some would say perversions. But that’s a story for another time, after a couple of stiff G&Ts. Any way, Jane Jones had a daughter called Julie Jones, and subsequently a granddaughter called Brassica Jones; yes, really; luckily she never came here, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face. Brassica’s father was carrying on with Joolie, who used to be a dinner lady here; he did later marry Julie, that’s Brassica’s mother, and they adopted Jenna, who is Joolie’s daughter. Are you keeping up, dear? Anyway, astonishingly Joolie’s other boyfriend, Dave, moved in with Jane Jones, the grandmother and very late in life she produced Chardonnay; so she is half sister of Dave’s son, Dave, who’s in Year 4 now.”

There was silence for ten seconds.

“Would you remind repeating that?” Will Slate asked, dazed.

Staffroom scenes 1

Just for fun. No resemblance is intended to anybody, living, dead or zombie. Eventually intended for ‘Fragments of a School Novel’.

With a suspicion that he should have taken his grandmother’s advice and gone for a nice job in retail, Mr Slate closed the head’s door and made his way to the staffroom for a restorative coffee so that he could face the day. He found Mrs Cable and Miss Dunn were even more noisy than normal. It appeared that Diane Dunn, who had just split from her live-in boyfriend, had wasted no time looking for another.

“So what put you off him?” Mrs Cable was asking. “Morning, Will.”

“Morning, Will. Well, I asked him what his hobbies were, and he said photography. Anything in particular? I said, and he said table-tennis. As at last I’d got him to talk, I asked what sort of table-tennis, and he said he liked to photograph young ladies- that was his term- playing ping-pong. With no clothes on.”

“Nooh!” Will found himself reddening at the thought of the ebullient Diane, only a few years older than him, but apparently very worldly-wise, playing table-tennis naked.

“Yes! So before he could go any further, I told him I had to make an early start. He even had the nerve to offer me a lift, but I told him I was on my menstrual cycle.”

They both started cackling loudly, and Will left without putting milk in his coffee.

Mr Pepper was doing some last-minute marking at the worktable. “You’re so cruel to the poor boy,” he said, without looking up.

“Oh, it’s all in fun.”

“Yes… but what you said the other day. About what he wore in bed. If a guy said that to a girl, he’d probably be sacked for harassment.”

“Well, I wish he would say something like that to me. At least he would show a bit of go. And nothing like that ever bothers you.”

“That’s because I’m older, worldly-wise, and very happily married. Not a shy young man.”

“You mean Mrs P. would have your….”

But the conversation stopped as the deputy head entered.

Summerhouse

“Down the back roads, into hiding/ In a house beside a lake”

I spent most of the summer by a lake in Sweden, in a summer house lent to me by friends who had gone travelling. It was literally miles from anywhere, which suited me well. The bus dropped me off at a sharp bend in the road. The stop was named, but there was nothing else distinguishing it from the other countryside. I followed instructions through heath land, along the edge of a wood and over more scrubby grass. It was two miles to the house.

I was so exhausted that I dumped my bag and went straight to sleep.

The nearest settlement was five miles walk, unless you went to the road and took one of the infrequent buses. There were two general and food stores, one with a wide range of vegetables and one with all sorts of hardware. There was a baker, only open in the morning, and, surprisingly, a bookshop/ café, with, even more surprisingly, a good small section of English books.

I slept until the following lunchtime, then explored the house. It didn’t take long. There was a small kitchen, with a well stocked cupboard, a living area which opened onto a verandah and a bedroom with one double bed. A rainwater tank with a filtration system provided for cooking and drinking. At the back of the house was an outdoor shower; the filtration system could be bypassed for this, but I understood the lake was a quick and efficient alternative. A small earth closet stood in a grove of trees some 50 metres away; a shovel was another option.

 

Leo Fender, Yorkshire Luthier

Leo Fender was fourth cousin to justly renowned Surrey and England cricketer Percy Fender, who in 1921 scored what at the time was the fastest ever first-class century. Leo was, however, a proud native of Yorkshire.

Leo did not (as far as this writer knows) cherish an ambition to emulate his distant but famous relative. Instead, he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his namesake, the famous Leo (Clarence Leonidas) Fender. This American guitar maker was responsible for such iconic designs as the Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster and Precision Bass, as well as amplifiers. For this rare occasion “iconic” may be a justified adjective.

The English Leo Fender who is the subject of this brief account did not, unfortunately, share the American designer’s flair for the innovative. Despite this, he was a reasonably competent amateur craftsman. He produced a rather ordinary electric guitar. It had a solid body with a single pickup and no tone controls. Leo believed that this would result in an unprecedented purity of sound.

Sadly, this was not to be the case. The sound was very ordinary, largely due to Leo’s inability to afford anything better than standard components from electronics catalogues. The body shape was notable for its similarity to the Fender Telecaster. It did, however, have a straight neck (not universal among guitars made by amateurs) and kept its tune reliably. It was only available in a plain wood finish.

Leo made ten of these guitars. He sold four of in them guitar shops in his home county of Yorkshire. He attempted to give a fifth to Hank Marvin, which sadly got lost in the post. He kept one to play himself (he was allegedly, unlike the other Leo Fender, technically quite able, with a good sense of rhythm) and, allegedly, smashed the others when he could not sell them, although this cannot be verified and seems unlike him.

The only known surviving copy of this guitar was donated anonymously to the Victoria and Albert Museum, possibly by Percy’s daughter. It is believed to be kept in a climate controlled environment with their other surplus rare instruments, as they can’t think what else to do with it. (All true music lovers would tell you that it should be played, as should all instruments, no matter what their value.)

Percy’s unfortunate lack of imagination led to him naming it after his home town. Thus I can say: here ends the story of the Fender Tadcaster.

Royal Footnotes 1

It was a little-known fact that King Charles III was very knowledgeable about bluebeat, ska and rocksteady. His great affection for these essentially West Indian styles of music had started when a fellow pupil at Timbertops (an Australian ‘outdoor’ school which he attended for two terms) had played him “Madness” by Prince Buster. Over the years he accumulated a vast, secret collection of vinyl and later CDs; later he would be sent MP3s and FLACs of rare treasures by a small group of fellow aficionados. Among these was singer Suggs, from Madness, who would be invited to Buckingham Palace to listen to new acquisitions.

King Charles greatly regretted that he was unable to see any of the original artists live, for reasons of security and historical circumstance (they were mostly dead). He hugely enjoyed seeing Madness at Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee celebrations, and invited them to play at the Coronation Concert. (They included the little-known “Country Girl” by The Upsetters in their set as a private nod to his passion.)

Sadly, when King William V came to the throne, the entire collection was lost in an energetic clear-out by palace staff.