Erotic Soundscapes: The Beatles song that needed a condom to sound right
By the mid-1960s, nobody was telling The Beatles “no” when they walked into the studio.
Whatever ideas they wanted to put on record usually ended up on tape, and even when George Martin initially thought some of their experiments were impossible, he was more than willing to take on the challenge. The band had long since moved beyond the standard rock and roll setup, regularly incorporating unusual instruments into their music. They were also unafraid to add more provocative elements when a song called for them.
Granted, the band themselves were never prudes regarding their personal lives. The background activities of their touring lives had become X-rated, but all that people seemed to focus on were the lovable lads who were only interested in playing music, as every girl in the theatre lost their mind.
But touring had grown stale far too quickly for them, and the studio was the only real refuge they had to make something interesting. While Rubber Soul was the beginning of them working in a refined space and testing the limits of what could be done, Revolver was the sound of them taking a quantum leap into psychedelia, and they would never return from it. The times had changed, and it was time for them to start leading the genre forward.
Part of what made Revolver such a watershed moment was that The Beatles had effectively become a studio-only band. Having retired from the stage in August 1966, they no longer had to worry about whether a song could be reproduced live in front of screaming audiences. That freedom encouraged a mindset where no idea was too strange to try, whether it involved tape loops, backwards recordings or, as it turned out, unconventional uses for everyday household items.
Across every track on the album, the band started incorporating some new elements into the mix. George Harrison had already come to the forefront as a songwriter, but listening to what Paul McCartney did to ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or what John Lennon contributed to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, it was clear that they were making songs that were meant to be experiments rather than the typical pop hits.
By comparison, a song like ‘Yellow Submarine’ almost seems quaint. There are still some psychedelic flourishes in the mix, but this whimsical tune that eventually spawned a cartoon movie is one of the most lighthearted tracks in their catalogue, featuring Ringo Starr playing the role of the emcee as they voyage into the depths of the ocean.
When working on the background vocals, though, Lennon couldn’t find the right effect for his voice until Mal Evans came to the rescue with a condom, with engineer Geoff Emerick recalling, “With a wink and a sly grin, the burly roadie reached into the bag, fished around, and cheerfully waves a condom aloft. ‘Well done, Malcolm!’ John proclaimed as the others burst into laughter”.
“Fighting back an attack of giggles, I wrapped the mic carefully and lowered it into [a] milk bottle, then placed it on top of one of the keyboards as Lennon pulled up a chair, preparing to sing into it.”
Geoff Emerick
While that kind of stunt is enough to give any studio worker a fit of anxiety, it works surprisingly well in the mix of the song. Hearing Lennon sound like he’s being filtered through a blown-out speaker may have already been strange, but considering he was coming face-to-face with a condom-covered microphone, it’s no wonder that his ad-libs came off as so ridiculous in the background of the final verse.
It’s also a reminder that many of the sounds listeners now associate with psychedelic music weren’t created with expensive technology. Abbey Road was packed with world-class equipment, but The Beatles and their inner circle were often happiest when treating the studio like a playground. Some of the most memorable moments on Revolver came from trial and error, with curiosity proving just as valuable as technical expertise.
But this experiment really speaks to the kind of record that Revolver was always meant to be. This was the opportunity for the band to run wild whenever they had a new song, and while not everything made the most sense at the time, thousands of people are still trying to peel back the layers of what they accomplished.
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