Saturday, December 12, 2009

John Lennon on "Revolution 9"

"'Revolution 9' was to me like a sound picture, more an abstract sound picture, a montage of feelings in sound. It was really an unconscious vision of what happens, or what I think happens, when it happens. It was just like sketching a revolution in sound. I had about 30 or 40 tape loops going like we did with 'Tomorrow Never Knows,' and we fed them on to one track of the tape machine. That ominous voice repeating 'Number 9, Number 9' was one of these loops. It was some kind of an EMI test tape that I found in the library. I would cut up classical music tapes, all sorts of things from upstairs. We would make copies of the masters and chop them up into these loops and things. The others started losing interest in doing it, so that's why I'm credited with it. There are many symbolic messages going on in it, but it just happened. You know, cosmic meandering."

1 comment:

Timeshare Jake said...

What do you think of Joseph Niezgoda interpretation of John's vision of what he thinks is going to happen? Now that you have exposed this quote, it makes the interpretation a little more convincing. I don't remember if Niezgoda used that quote in his book.