Rock Moment: Magical Mystery Beatles

You could be anywhere: in a store, at the ballpark, in the car, and a Beatles song comes on.  You sing along – of course you know all the words – and you realize this song is more than 40 years old.  Say what you want about the people who populated the 1960s, and the people who still get nostalgic for that time, but there is something powerful about the music from that era.  The Beatles were merely the best practitioners of that music.  To this day, that stuff still sounds like magic.

So let’s share some Beatles rarities today.  Most of these came from a promotional CD that came out around the time of the Anthology series, in 1996.  And here’s Take 20 of “Revolution 1,” recorded in May 1968.  This is the overdubbed take that eventually was edited into the “Revolution 1” that appeared on the Beatles’ white album.  The track goes on for more than 10 minutes and deteriorates into a sort of sonic chaos, but if you listen closely you can hear some of the antics that John Lennon later spliced into his avant-garde sound experiment, “Revolution No. 9.”

MP3: “Help” (live)

MP3: “Yesterday” (alternate take)

MP3: “Taxman” (alternate take)

MP3: “Eleanor Rigby” (strings only)

MP3: “I’m Only Sleeping” (rehearsal/Take 1)

MP3: “Revolution 1” (Take 20)

MP3: “Across The Universe” (alternate take)