Please Please Me | With the Beatles | A Hard Day's Night | Beatles for Sale | Help! | Rubber Soul | Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | Magical Mystery Tour | The White Album | Yellow Submarine | Abbey Road | Let It Be
Past Masters | The Beatles Anthology | The Beatles: Get Back
- Bad Export for You: As usual with American versions of the Fab Four's albums before Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The US release deleted three songs ("I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Dr. Robert") which Capitol Records had already released on their Yesterday and Today album. Since all three were John Lennon songs, this made the American album lopsided in favor of Paul McCartney's contributions. America didn't get a complete version of Revolver until 1987, when all the US-only Beatles albums (save for the LP version of Magical Mystery Tour) were replaced by their British equivalents.
- Black Sheep Hit: "Eleanor Rigby" was one of the double-A side singles off the album (the other being "Yellow Submarine"), but was assured to be felt quite different from the rest of the band's rock/pop oeuvre by virtue of being performed by a double string quartet.
- Creator's Favorite Episode: John's favourite track on the album was "Here, There and Everywhere".
- Hostility on the Set: Paul possibly doesn't play on "She Said She Said", reportedly having stormed out of the studio after an argument with the others during the session (George allegedly played the song's bass part, but it's also been claimed that Paul had already finished his bass track before the argument).
- Inspiration for the Work: While his bandmates were experimenting with LSD, Paul drew his inspiration from the intellectual stimulation he experienced among London's arts scene, particularly its thriving avant-garde community. This is reflected in the more conventional subject matter of his lyrics.
- Referenced by...:
- "Got to Get You Into My Life" is notable for having a Cover Version become a Top 10 hit in both the UK and the US. Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers released their version, produced by McCartney, later in 1966 and it reached #6 in the UK. Earth, Wind & Fire's version, from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film, got to #9 in the US in 1978. The original was also released as a single in 1976, as a promotion for the Capitol Records Rock 'n' Roll Music album, and hit the US Top 10 as well.
- A Cover Version of "Tomorrow Never Knows" closes out Phil Collins' Face Value, segueing into another cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz as an impromptu tribute to John Lennon (as Collins heard about his murder while recording the song).
- Revolver becomes a plot point in the Mad Men episode "Lady Lazarus" when Megan buys Don the LP after he complains about not knowing what is going on in youth and popular culture. She tells him to start with the last track, "Tomorrow Never Knows". After he turns it off, this becomes the closing credits music. The rights to use the song cost the show's producers $250,000, around five times as much as the typical cost of licensing a song for TV — and contrasts with the closing credits music for an earlier episode in which an instrumental version of "Do You Want to Know a Secret" was used.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Pac-Man" is a parody of "Taxman".
- Throw It In!: The backwards guitar part on "I'm Only Sleeping" came about after an EMI engineer accidentally put a tape on backwards in the studio. The band liked how it sounded, with John Lennon comparing the sound to Indian music. Averted in that, having decided that the song needed a backwards guitar solo, Harrison then had to decide how he wanted it to go, and then learn to play it backwards, so that, when it was reversed, it would come out sounding right.
- What Could Have Been:
- According to a 1966 letter from George Harrison to an Atlanta DJ
, the Beatles nearly recorded the album at Stax Records in Memphis (home of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, etc.), but the deal fell through over money issues (Stax also had ambitions of becoming a Southern version of Motown around that time, and were in the process of phasing out non-Stax artists using the studio). - "Father MacKenzie" in "Eleanor Rigby" almost was written as "Father McCartney" as John and Paul liked the sound of the name, before Paul decided he didn't want to offend his father.
- The early work tapes of "Yellow Submarine" sung by John Lennon featured on the Super Deluxe rerelease of "Revolver" reveal the song was originally starkly different early on, with the song originally being a dark and melancholic ballad evocative of Lennon's later solo work, a far cry from the cheerful and upbeat children's song it eventually became.
- According to a 1966 letter from George Harrison to an Atlanta DJ
- Working Title: Abracadabra, Pendulum, Fat Man And Bobby, After Geography (Ringo Starr's pun on The Rolling Stones' Aftermath), Beatles on Safari, Magic Circle and Four Sides of the Circle.
