5 Things On The New Beatles Revolver Box Set I Cannot Wait For

After weeks of anticipation, speculation, and a leaked track list, the news is official: the next installment of The Beatles Archive Release series will be their stunning 1966 masterpiece, Revolver. A remixed album, the original mono mix, and a slew of never-before-heard outtakes are a part of the deluxe edition of the set, out 10/28 on Apple/Universal. Like the previous Archive Collection releases, the Revolver set will be available in several forms, including vinyl and streaming. Although there is a Dolby Atmos mix that will be available digitally, Apple opted out of a Blu-ray disc to accompany the other CDs in the Deluxe set.

After The White Album, this is my favorite Beatles release and I mean no hyperbole by saying it absolutely changed my life. Every song had something different to offer, and the sounds they made on the recordings had never been done before. We'd later find out that they'd speed things up, slow them down, turn them backwards, doing just about anything to make a song different. That's what appealed to me most of all about Revolver. They brought in a young, fresh-eared engineer, all of 20 years old, named Geoff Emerick to help the band achieve what they heard in their heads onto tape. In many cases, Emerick used unconventional means to make that happen, several times incurring the wrath of Abbey Road top engineering brass for "abuse of equipment." But he got them the sounds, and the result is a sonic explosion. It also didn't hurt that McCartney, Lennon and Harrison are all writing incredibly inventive, mind-blowing songs, George getting a never-before three songs included on the album.

Needless to say I can't wait to hear the whole set!! New Beatles - does it get any better than that??? Anyway, here are 5 things on the new Beatles Revolver Box Set I cannot wait to hear.

The first Indian-influenced song that George Harrison wrote, Love You To let listeners know right away that this was not your 1964-1965 Beatles. The finished version, take 7, had sitar and tabla taking the center stage, rather than traditional rock music instruments, but I've always been curious about take 1 which, described by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, featured just George singing lead vocal while playing acoustic guitar, and Paul accompanying him on backup vocals. Now we will get to hear it, as well as a few other outtakes of the song. I can promise you I will leave my body when I first listen.

The original track of the Lennon song about a notorious NY physician was 2:56 long, but always edited down to 2:13 on remixing.  I have my fingers crossed this is the raw, pre-edited take 7 that will finally allow us to hear the missing portion of the song.

With all of the tape effects, echo, reverb and equalization going on during this Lennon gem, it's no wonder a lot of mixing was done to perfect the song.  In Beatles/Abbey Road Studio lingo, the term "RM" means "remix mono," so "RM11" would have been the eleventh mono remix of the song that was attempted.  RM11 DID get released, for exactly one day, until George Martin made a late decision to replace it with RM8.  It was too late for a few copies of the British mono Revolver with RM11 to sneak into record stores before the others were destroyed.  Copies of that vinyl are fetching a lot of dough these days but, with this new reissue, we'll get our first digital copy of the mix.  You'll hear that the sound effects are quite a bit different throughout, and the song has a slightly longer fade with a piano trill at the very end.

This will be just lovely to hear.  It's a conversation between producer George Martin, the members of the orchestra, and Paul McCartney, discussing parts of the song.  I'm so glad they've seen fit to include a fair amount of pre-song chatter on these outtakes.

It's an absolute breakthrough with the discovery of a work tape of John Lennon's, showing HIM working out the song in its infancy. Word is it's slow and sad in its lyrics, nothing like what the end result would end up being. For decades, Paul was thought to be the lone songwriter of this classic, but the inclusion of these work tapes on the set will change everything we thought about the creation of Yellow Submarine.

Come on, October 28th!!!