I listened to Sgt. Pepper's when it first came out, but I was sadly late to Revolver - I think I heard it in the early 80s for the first time.

I too listened to all the Beatles at some point. I was struck by how, well, regular those early songs were. They're great songs, I know each note, but there's nothing particularly notable about them. (Sure, there are some innovations like early use of feedback, but the signs are only clear in hindsight.) The Beatles look like they're going to be just another skiffle band...

...and then Revolver, the dawning of a new world.

I blame pot for most of the album, and I blame acid for Tomorrow Never Knows. Better living through chemistry!

By the way, a few decades ago I got to hear a bootleg of an early mix of Tomorrow Never Knows. At first I thought I had gotten ripped off (this was when you bought bootlegs from street dealers like you would drugs!), but then careful listening revealed that I was wrong.

All the parts were there in the bootleg, all the trippy sound effects, but it sounded like "sound effects dropped onto a dull studio recording". Somehow between this recording, with everything there, and everything seeming balanced, and the final product, George Martin managed to produce magic.

I've only heard a few comparable boots. The other that springs to mind was an early mix of the Butthole Surfers’ glorious cover of American Woman. A friend of mine had caught the last thirty seconds of this song while taping the radio in Amsterdam in the 80s and spent a couple of years trying to figure out what it was (ah, the days before the Internet).

The premix, which I still have somewhere on cassette, was more fascinating for what they had removed than what they had added!

The original mix was a conventional song with bass and rhythm guitar, but in the final version they dumped both of these instruments to be replaced by… nothing at all!, just the howling guitar and the overwhelmingly huge drums. (The drummer is an amazing musician, but he chose in this instance to just use a single processed loop of his playing, because it’s the correct musical choice.)

Here’s the track. It should be listened to as loud as possible but bear in mind that the first 10 seconds are very quiet. In particular, the guitar solo, which sounds like the guitar is about to actually physically explode, still manages to send shivers down my spine decades later.

Again, I blame acid. If humans had listened to the lessons from LSD, I believe the human race might not be in the dire, probably fatal straits it finds itself today.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have an excellent weekend.