The Universe of Disco

Look at what they tried to take from us

When I was a kid, the Beatles’ seminal 1966 album Revolver was 20% shorter. The original release was not a long album: 14 tracks, totaling 34:45. But the version I grew up with had 11 tracks, totaling only 27:31.

Three tracks, all by Lennon, were omitted by Capitol from the North American release because they had previously been released on Yesterday and Today:

1. “Taxman”
2. “Eleanor Rigby”
3. “I'm Only Sleeping”
4. “Love You To”
5. “Here, There and Everywhere”
6. “Yellow Submarine”
7. “She Said She Said”

8. “Good Day Sunshine”
9. “And Your Bird Can Sing”
10. “For No One”
11. “Doctor Robert”
12. “I Want to Tell You”
13. ”Got to Get You into My Life”
14. “Tomorrow Never Knows”

In 1987, the album was rereleased, with the missing tracks restored. But until I was in college, I had not only never heard the three omitted tracks, I didn't even know they existed.

When I found out, I was apprehensive. I loved Revolver. What if I didn't like the ⸢new⸣ tracks? What if the new tracks changed the Revolver I loved into something else?

Nothing like this happened. The new tracks fit in seamlessly. Of course they did! The new Revolver was more Revolver than the old Revolver had been.

It took a little while before I was no longer startled when “For No One” wasn't followed by “I Want to Tell You”, but not too long. (It took me longer to get used to the absence of the horrible skip that was in our vinyl copy of “Strawberry Fields Forever”.) New Revolver was the same Revolver I had always loved, only 25% longer and considerably better.

Douglas Hofstadter once asked us to imagine that a previously unknown but certainly authentic Bach cantata has been discovered, hiding in a drawer or something, but that the eager concertgoers hearing it for the first time are horrified to discover that its main theme is identical with the first seven notes of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. This was like that, without the horrid twist ending.

Revolver was released yesterday, August 5, in 1966.

[Other articles in category /music] permanent link