TL;DR:
- John Lennon said The Beatles’ “Revolution 9” was inspired by Yoko Ono.
- John discussed how the famous “Number 9” sample came together for the track.
- The song appeared on The White Album, which was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Beatles‘ “Revolution 9” is unique among the Fab Four’s songs. Notably, John Lennon said Yoko Ono inspired the song. Subsequently, The Simpsons parodied the track.
John Lennon wanted to write The Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9’ after hearing Yoko Ono’s music
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes an interview from 1980. In it, John discussed how “Revolution 9” came together in the studio. “Yoko was there for the whole thing and she made decisions about which loops to use,” he said. “It was somewhat under her influence, I suppose.”
In addition, John said Yoko’s music was an influence on “Revolution 9.” Notably, Yoko spent decades making avant-garde art in multiple mediums. “Once I heard her stuff — not just the screeching and the howling but her sort of word pieces and talking and breathing and all this strange stuff, I thought, ‘My God,’ I got intrigued, so I wanted to do one,” he said. “I spent more time on “Revolution 9″ than I did on half the other songs I ever wrote. It was a montage.”
How The Beatles came up with the ‘Number nine, number nine’ sample in the song
“Revolution 9” is primarily remembered for its ominous sample of someone saying “Number nine” repeatedly. This was even parodied on an episode of The Simpsons, where Barney creates a song that loops someone saying “Number eight” repeatedly. In the interview, John explained where this sound originated. “We were cutting up classical music and making different-sized loops, and then I got an engineer tape on which some test engineer was saying, ‘Number nine, number nine, number nine,” he said.
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John further explained the song. “All those different bits of sound and noises are all compiled,” he said. “There were about 10 machines with people holding pencils on the loops — some only inches long and some a yard long.” John said The Beatles got the loops from the archives of EMI, a major record label.
How ‘Revolution 9’ performed in the United States and the United Kingdom
“Revolution 9” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on The White Album. That album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for an appropriate nine weeks. The White Album stayed on the chart for a total of 215 weeks.
According to The Official Charts Company, “Revolution 9” never charted in the United Kingdom either. On the other hand, The White Album reached No. 1 on the U.K. chart for eight weeks. It lasted on the chart for 37 weeks, making it a much more modest hit than it was in the U.S.
“Revolution 9” is an avant-garde classic and it wouldn’t be the same without Yoko’s influence.
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