#backwards tape

[get-back-homeward]

Backwards Tape During Revolver Sessions

The big claim to fame of Revolver is the unique tape techniques used in recording. The one that gets a lot of attention is the backmasking technique, where the tape is fed in backwards for the reverse tape sound. It appears on Tomorrow Never Knows and I’m Only Sleeping for guitar solos and Rain for John’s vocals.

Looking up the recording dates on BeatlesBible…

April 6: First day of Revolver sessions; they record takes of Tomorrow Never Knows, which has Paul’s guitar solo backwards

April 16: Working on Rain, where the backwards tape is used on John’s vocals

May 5: Working on I’m Only Sleeping, where it is used a third time on George’s dual guitar parts

Who has the idea to play the tape backwards first?

There’s two conflicting accounts on the backwards Rain vocals.

In his David Sheff interview (1980), John mentions it was a stoned idea he had:

I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana and, as I usually do, I listened to what I’d recorded that day. Somehow I got it on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, ‘I know what to do with it, I know… Listen to this!’ So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. [Singing backwards] Sharethsmnowthsmeaness… [Laughter] That one was the gift of God, of Ja, actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.

In his interview with Lewisohn (1988), George Martin says it was his idea:

I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it onto another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed. Again, it was backwards forever after that.

So is the conflict a case of bad memory or bullshit?

I would assume the scales tip in George Martin’s favor just by virtue of him being sober. Not to say the stoned accident couldn’t have happened, but that John may be misremembering the sequence of events. That said, a happy accident sounds more reminiscent of other unique sounds the band used than an intentional one.

However, it’s not like the idea of putting tape in backwards for a different sound was a new discovery. It’d been known since the introduction of sound playback, the technique was used in experimental music in the 50s/60s, but it just wasn’t used intentionally in pop music. George Martin had already been recording sound effects in comedy albums and may have used it for weird sounds before.

Yet, if this wasn’t really new to George Martin, would he even remember what led to the decision? And why the oddly specific mention of John being out of the room at the time?

Also, both of these accounts are about John’s vocals for Rain. But Tomorrow Never Knows is recorded before Rain and includes Paul’s guitar solo backwards. So was Rain not the first time they use this technique?

Paul’s account in MYFN about backwards guitar solos seems to suggest a happy accident like John’s:

It played backwards, and, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Those effects! Nobody knew how those sounded then. We said, ‘My God, that is fantastic! Can we do that for real?’… So that was what we did and that was where we discovered backwards guitar. It was a beautiful solo actually. It sounds like something you couldn’t play.

But Paul stops short of naming the tape operator.

Geoff Emerick had been tape operator since 62 but was just been promoted to engineer before Revolver sessions begin (at the wise age of…20?!). In his book, he names Phil McDonald the tape operator. He was also relatively new.

But Geoff Emerick’s book backs up John’s story:

So we have John claiming his stoned accident for his vocals supported by Emerick vs George Martin’s claim he intentionally had the idea while John was out of the room vs Paul claiming an accident via an unnamed third party (that may have been newbie Phil).

Have any others weighed in to confirm or deny either account?

To be overly generous, I could see how Paul could be right about this being an accident initially. And then John and George separately have the idea to use it for vocals 10 days later.

But then I wondered about the timeline and how three accounts single out Rain vocals. Maybe Rain *was* the initial backwards tape and then they applied it to the Tomorrow Never Knows guitar solo later, such as when they did it for I’m Only Sleeping?

Turns out, overdubs with the reverse guitar solo on Tomorrow Never Knows were added April 22. So Rain was indeed their first use of backwards tape.

So the timeline actually looks like this:

April 6: First day of Revolver sessions; they record initial takes of Tomorrow Never Knows, which will later include Paul’s guitar solo backwards

April 16: Working on Rain, they use the backwards tape for the first time on John’s vocals

April 22: They use it a second time for the overdub of Paul’s guitar solo on Tomorrow Never Knows

May 5: Working on I’m Only Sleeping, they use it a third time on George’s dual guitar parts

This order makes me suspect John’s account is actually the more credible one.

Who do you believe?

[doritofalls]

i think it's sooo funny that in the og script/deleted scene dan dreams about the reagent before the incident with rufus. the tragedy is yet to happen but its ripples have already reached dan before the first domino would fall.

dan carrying fragments of his dream through the encounter, a sense of deja vu with such significance that just!!! slips out of his grasp like a bar of soap and is immediately disregarded. but it's there!! a half memory of an echo of an unscreamed scream and i just. dunno. i feel a lot about whatever sensitivity dan has that avoids herbert so completely in regard to the tragedy they're about to inflict.

[artsy-1diot]

wip!! :]

[dalt0nyc0]

Roberto Ávila with the woman Linares hired.

[helpmyinterestsareverywhere]

A fun thing about actually deciding to try and learn/recognise the Ninjargon alphabet is that I get to play fun puzzle games whenever I see it come up on screen

A not so fun thing about paying attention to Ninjargon:

getting to play a puzzle game of "am I just being stupid or is this supposed to be nonsense🧍‍♂️"

[mxfortune-teller]

.

[quarklynx]

costest for my babygirl Mr. Vash Trigun? I now find myself compelled to invest in a proper cosplay

[teawithbee24]

"Why did you-" made me giggle next question

[lvrhughes]

i hate the nhl:’)

[eyecantbelievethis]

Oh... Hello!

[get-back-homeward]

When Beatles history and fandom history collide

The Beatles’ music video for Strawberry Fields Forever inspired the first fan vidder, Kandy Fong, to combine Star Trek images and recorded music/audio to tell a new kind of fan story.

Fong says she got the idea to set images to music this way from the Beatles.

Well, the Beatles did a video called Strawberry Fields Forever, and they’re doing all kinds of very strange things like jumping out of trees, and they had this deconstructed piano that the wires just go up…And they’re just doing all sorts of unusual images. And to my mind I look at this, going, “Okay, we’re disconnecting the actual playing of the instruments and singing the song with the images we’re seeing. So I can take a song and use images from somewhere else to tell my story—oh, Star Trek, oh, of course, Star Trek!” And that’s where I got the idea.

From Francesca Coppa’s Vidding: A History (2022) | Chapter 2: Early Vidding and Its Precursors

[fingertipsmp3]

Everybody: physical therapy hurts! You’re going to feel like you’ve been beaten up after you get out

Me: yep okay

Me when the physical therapy hurts:

[bewires]

.

[onceandfutureclotpoll]

Title: I Owe You a Love Song

Author: lady_ragnell

Rating: Teen and up Audiences

Summary: In which Arthur's courting Gwen by mix CD (and other means) and Merlin is a backwards Cyrano de Bergerac who builds robots.

[notmuchtoconceal]

( o ) goodimpressionofmyself

[October 28th, 2020 7:40am] 

bro, i’m some kinda necrocoprofungal fringe weirdo with a fetish for bein normal

i’m the punchline to a joke from 2005

my life is the vain pursuit of an ideal of sublime banality, this horridly tacky laudanum fugue of gilded wheat fields in subdivided painted picket houses, succumbed to oppressive concrete nothingness in a time that never was

the fury of a broiling beneath. dogs in an open field. vacancies within vacancies brah

primeval growth before the white man raped the land, gnarled and gambrous with all matter of shoots, bulbs, rosettes and spores. the wasteland of hollow points here in the heartland, ancient and centipeodal as the sea animals in the dinosaur books i read as a boy when everything was doe eyed and my head was filled with air. when i was yet to be so tantalizingly leaden

when i. simply. was still here

end of time. end of memory. thoughts comin and goin in strips a nitrate film

endless carousels a shape, bro. so many so lovely

so many the same

i’ll let you in. i’ll rest my hand on your back. i’ll lean in close and i’ll say brah, gonna show you some real sick shit brah

can’t help but smile

not smart to show fear. eye to eye. teeth to teeth. funk to funky. you’ll like it, i promise. the waltz always strangles. the wires in the notes. the house lights go up and down. spirographs of flesh. an orchestra pit of sarlaac. there always comes release after a dream turns to a nightmare brah

bro, i once saw this grindrshame post where this dude was like 6′2″, built and headless in an anonymous grey hoodie, and his bio said he was gonna strangle you and chop you up with an axe or some shit. people in the comments were saying he was funny. this ain’t shameable. shame on you for trying to shame a funny man with a nice blocky torso and big strong hands

i thought brah, fuck yeah brah, you get it. you get it. that’s what i want. walk straight toward the man triggerin just the right amount a threat detection response. we gonna fuck? he gonna choke me? how hard? i don’t fuckin know brah. one way to find out. i want a fire. baby i’m lit. pour gasoline all over my dick. harder bro harder. gonna burn this fuckin house to the ground bro. run screamin into desert night. wake up in a ditch clingin to you in grit and despair. look at you. know you. see past you. to the man you were before. who you forgot you were. who i know without knowin you know for i don’t know if what i see is what you know. then i realize. none a that matters. this moment is love and love is this moment. i remember only the smell of campfires and cold. you were the best mistake a my life brah. it was deffo more than worth the arson charges 

bro?

yeah brah?

i didn’t think you’d be the kinda guy to go on night walks

haha brah? what’s that supposed to mean brah. i love all this dennis hopper shit. over there, look at that lamp post. that incandescent diner. reflections in empty windows. darker glasses hiding darker curtains. way the light ripples through the leaves. shit’s fuckin gorgeous, brah

city feels like a dream bro

brah? brah? haha, brah you ever dissociate like real hard

haha, like real hard

haha

brah

brah

for a second i thought we were like girls in a dreampop video brah

bro, don’t. don’t say shit like that bro. holy fuckin shit. for a sec i swear i felt my dick shrivel up bro

haha, kitty got claws, but i the aesthete and the visionary have the petrifying gaze of the gorgon embedded in the imago of the mother

brah, what the hell’s an ass teat brah?

it’s a dude who’s like a faggot, but he still likes pussy

don’t sound a thing like you brah

some tastes are more refined than others

the most refined taste is that of the fraternal platonic bond between men of value, whose warring passions ignite an agonsy and ectasies which blurs the lines between romance and reason

all right socrates, bend over

haha

hahahaha

brah

brah

i die a little inside when i see you smile brah 

brah

i never thought i’d be so happy

…

BRO

holyfu–

haha, watch where you’re goin brah. dumbass almost got creamed by a bus

bro, sorry bro, i’m just like… 

yeah, brah?

where am i… where are…

you’re there. i’m here.

…

bro, are you?

‘i’m here, you’re there’ sir, do you mistake me for a child?

my apologies, sir. your motor coordination spoke for itself

haha, real funny brah. real cute thing to hear from a tight toosh in tighty whities

haha, brah. someone’s feelin sassy brah

it’s just… i din’t think it was real funny brah

nah, nah. keep goin brah. you’re cute when you’re cunty

bro i am not cunty, that is gaslightin. i’ve been recordin this whole conversation, it’s admissible in court without your consent by illinois law, and i can establish a pattern and motive. i’m gonna sue your ass for emotional damages brah

first off double check that law book. it don’t say what you think it says. pause for effect. okay. when you check the book it’ll say exactly what you remember it saying, but you still second guessed yourself. boom. alpha dominance. you’ve been gaslit. gonna get locked in the footbox tonight, fagboy. gonna stain that fuckin faggot lung a yours with three days a heavy liftin and ballin… also ‘toosh’, bro are you a grade school church hag? are you gonna give me a time out? knock it off with that pansy shit, brah. we both agree my masculinity is sacred, stop tryin to subvert it with your estranged gayness

i’m in love with you bro. i hate it i hate how much i’m in love with you… if i admit to it, then i admit that i’m stupid. stupider than you in fact, because yes, i am in fact smart enough to know better. this is 100% my fault. my head says this’s idiocy, but my heart yearns for you with a yearning beyond yearning. it’s a heart valve of picture postcards all the way down my irony innards a chef boyardee spelling out EA Poet sole in bouquets a cankers and open sores… maybe i could only ever hope for self-destruction, to fall with you ever downward, to be the arc of a fire poppy riding the ember to completion. maybe that’s all love is bro. the theater of heroism. a stupid idiot danger. maybe my parents did have a successful marriage, but i’m not gonna say that… i’m not gonna say any of that. i’m gonna keep that all to myself

smart man, brah. that’s why i like you like you. down for a night walk symposia with a flourish of baudelaire for texture. reminds me a those ceilings in my house, brah. ones with the paintstrokes that look like canyons

[cachunk]

bro, did you just slap your head bro

bro, i dunno? did i brah?

bro, you did. you deffo did

haha, i did?

your headphones cachunked, didn’t you hear?

nah, brah, i don’t think… no wait, yeah i did, haha

haha

fuckin dumbass

dumbass meathead

dumbass meathead musclebull muscle toy andro droll androgeneticist muscle drone rubber drone rubber room retard ubermensch apeman grotesque gooner hunchback henchman dumbfuck douchebag dudebro

first of his name

king in the north

haha

hahaha

bro, stop i’m still in mourning

bro, it sucked since season five, bro

bro, how the fuck do you have your best character, the only character left who’s played by a competent actress – i’m sorry bro, that bitch with the caterpillar eyebrows cannot act. she has like white bread girl next door bimbo giggly and all the fury and drama of grade school gymnasium theater

bro, you are that, but the gay version

first off, fuck you fagboy. that’s two days in the footbox now. i’m gaggin you with the dirty crusty pair a briefs i use as a jizz rag faggot. gonna be tastin it all night fagboy, tastin my dirty alpha fuckin cock steeped in my tight white fuckin briefs. yeah, you love it. love watchin daddy’s uncut alpha bulge standin up tall and straight in his tight white fuckin briefs. watchin daddy’s hard uncut alpha cock writhin in the transparent cotton, growin fatter and nastier with every gush a blood – the mass and veiny contouring suggestive of a lunatic in a straightjacket confined to a prison a ballsweat, asylum walls of the fly some brutalist garter prison of mid-century ad copy suffocatin me in my futile role as protector and provider. yeah, you love daddy’s uncut alpha dick, don’t you fagboy?

yes, sir. please gag me with your briefs sir. i worship and adore you sir

you’re my everything bro. i wouldn’t know what i’d do without you without you in my strong arms keepin you safe and warm

bro

awgh

bro stop it bro

brah i’m a sensitive man, you know that brah. i’m really closer to a lesbian in temperament

fuckin gina gershon leather dyke 

haha, you’re like a helpless lil pray animal, bro. i wanna rape you

sorry, brah. not feasible. definition-ally, one cannot rape the willing

objection. your honor, we have established the defendant’s mind is weak and malleable. upon the conclusion of our night walk i could throw him upon my svelte king size mattress, tie him wrist and ankle to the bedposts, and fuck him senseless – your honor, i could fuck him until he was drooling catatonic with eyes tuned out like television static, absolutely fry the circuitry of his brain with pleasure… and with but a mere suggestion make him think it was the most brutal of horrors, an utterly charmless display of freakshow primate dominance which would leave the skirts fallen from the hangers. i could have him bent over lobotomized 1950′s hysterical with a hole in the head from uncle sam, crying in his sad lil victorian woman way oh you foul man you foul man you absolute brute

i give up. i’m helpless to you

i am your toy. don’t break me

i’m weak

i need you

bro i need you

bro

bro

i was missin you real bad bro

brah i know bro

god i can’t fuckin st–

WOAH

the fu–

haha, b r o

eeeeee

bro you are clueless, bro

what wa–

bro, that weren’t no bus. that was a bus stop bro

which one of us am…?

which one of us am…? bro are you for real bro?

bro, where, where am 

bro… bro

bro?

bro, pay attention. you listenin? i’m me, you’re you

bro, i’m…

bro? BRO?

…

bro?

‘i’m me, you’re you’. very instructional. very confucian. i have been enlightened. thank you. thank you very much. every moment we spend together is a treasure

bro, i know it. you know i got your back bro

it hurts bro. my head hurts. my feet hurt. my spine hurts. the bud of passion lies dormant in the embers exhausted. hold me close bro?

bro, you know it bro

mmphh

feels good don’t it bro

gooood you smell good brah

like that brah? like curlin up in daddy’s smelly meathead pits

mmmph. can smell you through the leather brah. mmmmmm fuck. wanna curl up in a bearskin rug made a more you brah

get in closer. i’ll crush you

please bro. crush me like a fuckin bug

mmmphhhhh 

ahhhhhh

like that fagboy

i am an insect. i am unworthy. i cry tears of joy every moment i can smell you, see you, touch you, kiss you, you in all your earthly imperfections are what i deem a suitable enough surface onto which to project my unattainable ideal of exquisite manhood

it’s an horor, brah. use me. i’m a dumb mule fit only to serve and amuse you

flex, bro. i wanna kiss it

pffftt

hmmppph. god you’re a man. those fuckin pecs. flatten me like a migrant worker under a speedin freight train brah

haha bro what the fuck

a bray of laughter, wheezing forth like a geyser from dry reedy lungs – eyes dry reedy wells from which there are no tears to draw

i am the sun

i am the air

you’re a fire sign

a lemon lime

a soda pop

i’d rather not

please picture a barbershop quartet on fire

you were always the care

taker her sir

what a lovely image. how much did it cost?

twenty five cents, my good man

a pleasure, sir. i shall return tomorrow to view it again

why sir, you can view it anywhere

anywhere

anytime anywhere

anytime anywhere? good sir, what sorcery is this? is this one of those portable videographs i’ve heard so much about

why no sir, ’tis but the power of imagination

imagination, why what is that?

it’s when you get like pictures and notions in your head, sir

oh, that doesn’t sound typical. are you sure of that?

why yes sir. why i bet if we sat still and quieted down for a moment, we could picture all sorts of things

well… i suppose it is considered adventurous to try things once

okay… you ready…

okay…?

yeah? on the count of 3?

I

I I

I V

I I I

…

…

…

are we…

shhh… i was imaginin somethin

aw shi-

shhh

….

….

holy fuckin shit brah

bro. bro i know rite

are we allowed to do this? this can’t be legal

not just legal, bro. free

why isn’t everybody doin this? we have to tell the world!

can’t bro.

bro?

won’t listen

aw shit. what do we do now?

i dunno. we could light more shit on fire

the gumption i mire, i just wish you’d channel it more productively

hard, brah. nobody taught me how to be a man. i had to assemble it piecemeal from the shards of a collective stained glass mural detonated by the infobomb a mass media and bulldozed by the flatiron a neoliberal accelerationism

can’t tell if sperging or anime stoic

fuck off normie

my undiagnosed bipolar disorder grants me currency in your fucked up inverted mental illness values hierarchy, but joke’s on you, that’s the cost of the psychic heritage i carry, my drive towards shamanism. hear him, hear him, hear the voice of venus in cancer beyond the grave. can i getta   69   69   95 boy

brah brah

for i am a seer… for am i a liar…

BRAH

i am a seer  i am a liar

haha, naw man. he’s fine. theater guy, they’re characters, you know

my father   ran the prison

shhhh. slow down brah. you’re shakin. come ere. come to daddy. come get up in daddy’s leather  where you belong

it’s not me, it’s the wind. the autumn wind. creeping listless upon my dream of an indian summer

yeah. that’s it. get right up in daddy’s pit

mmmph. like i’m bastin in your smell bro

yeah, that’s it. my heat and my musk. cocooning you. seeping into you. staining you. makin you more and more my good obedient beta boy. like that don’t you. like bein my bitch, don’t you beta?

yes sir

say it

i like bein your beta bitch boy sir

feels good to let daddy take control. just be a dumb beta for awhile and follow along. be a good lil boy for your alpha and obey mindlessly

yes sir

fuckin your head with my words. commands feel so fuckin good snakin through your brain, suffocatin any nerve bundles tryin ta resist

i’m weak sir. i’m weak. i need you. complete me. destroy me.

bro. bro. resist me. sustain me. complete me. i am an absence without you. this thing i am. this slightness. this frailty. it’s something no mass can overcome. the weight. a will no body could ever embody. do you see how i weep? i who was a beast who was a man dreaming he was a god

i love you bro

love you bro

love you bro love you bro

love you bro love you bro glove you bro globe you bro

we want you big brother

big brother

bro bro

bro

bro

bro, i wasn’t done. 

bro, wha-

third, i am not autistic. fourth, even if i was, autism is not a mental illness, it’s a perfectly natural autoimmune response to unnatural vaccinations. my teats are the most robust and the milkiest. my pearl necklace houses the most cum. my boots are the most patent and the leatheriest. second, bro. they had their best fuckin character standin around on a balcony all season doin fuckin nothin. after season fuckin six bro, they took her absolutely fuckin nowhere, i don’t give a shit how much trashy pirate dick she didn’t get, it was all a waste

make a wish

we never kiss’d

tears’n the rain

it’s always the same

i know, bro. hurts to fall out of love. hurts not to care. run outta stories outta service

not gonna worry about that anymore brah. don’t plan on it happenin again anytime soon. it’s all very conventional. not anything new. nice to see it reheated like a warm stain. i would rather remember the bouquet of theses tastes of yesterday, not the bilge and bile they became

bro

Bro

delete me

d e l e t e  m e

b  r  o

b     r     o

[screaming beyond the infinite]

what was i saying

that you loved me stupid

you loved yourself stupid, goonerboy

hey, look

what

porchlight’s still on

haha, fuckin dumbass

who you callin dumbass, dumbass

to sass and the spastic, forevermore shall your minds be plastic

whoooom

airplane exploding noises

tens of thousands of women and children dead

goddamn, i do love you stupid

maybe we should burn down some buildings

nother time brah. there’ll be other nights. other night walks

other nights other night walkers

bro

bro

don’t think this is gonna be no greetin card endin brah. you got no fuckin idea what’s waitin for you on the other side a that door. i could clamp a leatherclad paw over your mouth and crush your jaw into a bony fuck funnel for my uncut alpha cock. i could throatfuck you so hard i work my way right through nuttin your fuckin faggot brains out. i could rip your fuckin throat wideopen with my bare hands and garrot you with your own tongue i don’t see that fucker black with filth from the bottoma a my boots you dumb faggot. tomorrow i wanna see daddy’s alpha boots fuckin spotless, comprende motherfucker? 

the door slams shut behind you

you’re not gettin the fuck back out for a good long while

better think

long and fuckin hard about what you let inside a you brah, fuck knows if you’ll ever get the stains out

haha

haha

night walks bro

fuckin night walks

[to the boys across the street on the golf course]

cocksucker