The Beatles lyric John Lennon wished he could take back: “I should never have put that in”
For John Lennon, the lyrics mattered just as much as the melody during The Beatles’ tenure. While Paul McCartney could make the catchiest tune possible with some of the most mindless lyrics ever put to tape, Lennon was the one constantly tinkering with words until he found just the right bit of poetry to fit into whatever song he happened to be working on at the moment. Since The Beatles were just starting to break free of their moptop era, though, Lennon thought he may have gone a bit overboard with the lyrics to ‘Revolution’.
But considering the amount of music that the Fab Four had put out before 1968, they were actually a bit behind the times by comparison. They had been instructed constantly by manager Brian Epstein not to comment on the war in the public eye, but once they had started looking within, Lennon felt it was finally time for them to raise their voices a little bit.
After all, the entire hippie revolution started with Sgt Peppers as their unofficial bible, so it was about time that Lennon put some political doctrine behind platitudes like ‘All You Need is Love’. But even by the standards of usual rock and roll, ‘Revolution’ was one of the heaviest songs of its time, complete with Lennon overloading the distortion on his guitar so much that it distorted everything from the first lead guitar line.
And for a song that’s over half a century old, a lot of the sentiments that Lennon discusses are still relevant to this day. There are a lot of people who still aren’t sure whether or not they should trust the government and think that politicians would be much better freeing their minds rather than telling other people how to live their lives.
Then again, including a reference to Chairman Mao is bound to fly over many people’s heads if they aren’t careful. There had already been references to ‘Mr Wilson’ and ‘Mr Heath’ in ‘Taxman’, but hearing him call out one of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party never sat well with Lennon after listening to it over the years.
When talking about the song after the fact, he felt that he should have changed the line to something more universal if he had the chance, saying, “I should never have put that in about Chairman Mao. I was just finishing off in the studio when I did that.” Still, that makes it more of a time capsule from this era of Fab.
Many other artists were more overtly political with their tunes, but Lennon wasn’t into calling out specific politicians. He wanted his approach to be centred around someone’s lifestyle and if people were truly looking to lead you on the right track rather than telling people how they should live their lives.
It’s also somewhat hypocritical for Lennon to say that he didn’t want to make the record dated, considering that he would release Some Time in New York City calling out revolutionaries by names like John Sinclair and Angela Davis. No one turns on a song just because of one line, though, and outside of the Chairman Mao reference, ‘Revolution’ is still one of the finest examples of The Beatles kicking out the jams.
