(This essay is one in a series that Greg has allowed us to post. Greg, thank you!)
For you sane enough to not have spent much time on this matter, some backwards-ground information might be helpful. Running tape backward reverses the order of notes, so the notes B-A-G are turned into G-A-B; what goes down must come up, and the reverse.
More impressive is the turnabout of the envelope or sonic shape of each individual sound: the end comes first, then the middle, then the beginning. It's an artificial alteration, a freak accident of analog technology. Interpret the little magnetic molecules in the reverse order and you get a foreign similarity, a different sameness. As a simple, plaintext example, it's the difference between a lowercase b and a lowercase d... the same shape, but backwards. Continuing, if the letter b were a note, you'd hear the line first, then the round part, and gracefully fade out to a single point then silence. Rotate a b in the horizontal plane and you "hear" a d: the fadeup from a single point to the round part, ending abruptly with the line. Similarly, with backwards masking each sound comes up the way it used to fade and fades the way it used to come up.
As you might guess, this process changes the sound of the instrument (or voice) while still evoking the original material as recorded in the usual front-to-back fashion. It is this quality of strange familiarity that makes backwards masking unique. Never mind the opportunity it presents to hide Satanic messages or deep clues about dead bass players on otherwise innocent pop records ... Art Historically, backwards masking is a surrealist device evocative of Marcel Duchamp, a "found" sound.
Transcending the natural connotations of standard instruments and voices, this approach treats sound as an abstract, plastic entity that can be reversed, (also sped up or slowed down) for effect. And because of the differences between hearing and speech, and the use of a technological cloning device (tape recorder) as the medium, there is no verbal equivalent. In writing, you can emulate musical techniques such as stacatto (peter Piper pickezd a peck of pickled etc.) or legato (away alone a last a love along the), but backwards masking just doesn't compute. Tricks like inverting letters (evoba eltit ees) or creating palindromes (Madam I'm Adam) correspond only intellectually and don't have a comparable impact.
Film can come pretty close. There's a great video of Steve Allen "creating" a banana, made by reversing a tape of Mr. Allen devouring said fruit. Graphically, especially for those visually oriented, it's easy to produce even with letters, but is easily perceived in things like negative photos, mirror images, and fractals.
The origin of this idea, who thought of flipping the tape and when and the like, is unclear. George Martin has taken credit in Lewisohn's book (p. 74 of "Recording Sessions"), and that may be so. Then again, there were ample opportunities for anyone in the group to come up with this idea. For example, given the drug use of the time and the fact that they all owned personal tape recorders, any of them could have first heard it by accident, putting in a tape the wrong way while stoned, which would support Lennon's asserted claim.
As with the topic of the earlier harmonic article, there are no index entries to guide one through Beatle-related books on this subject, and precious little written when you can find it. Things often being important in inverse proportion to the conventional attention paid to them, I thought it might be interesting to listen to all the songs with backwards masking and hear what's really there. To do so, and create a chronological order tape portable to my car stereo, I recorded all the tunes known or suspected to contain backwards material on tracks 3 and 4 (the "other side") of a conventional stereo tape, starting with the last suspect first. Flip and play tracks 1 and 2: you get 'em all backwards in date order.
Because the use of backwards masking came in at the same time as speed alterations ("Rain" is the prototype cut for this approach), I had to listen several times, especially with the speed slowed down, to get a clear picture. Even then there was difficulty. Some instruments have a fairly symmetrical envelope )sounding about the same backwards and forwards, as the letters "o" and "l" of the alphabet look the same from either direction). This is true for horns, strings, and the Hammond organ: those that sustain notes, unlike guitars and drums where the envelope is less symmetrical. Things like tape loops add to the confusion, the original sound is so weird it's hard to tell back from front.
Listening to this stuff is a strange sort of fun, like hearing the Czechoslovakian Beatles On Acid, and highly recommended. So here's what there is, in date order of recording:
It's the first assertion of the Seekers After Truth not lovable moptop troubadors persona. It's almost impossible to tell that this song is by the same group that did "She Loves You." Welcome to the spiritual search Eastern flavor, alienation from regular Judaeo-Christian materialist sensationalist society and all the good and bad of the Karma Cola period. Two of John's songs on this album mention dying, as does one of Paul's. Following this theme would certainly be an interesting exercise, but suffice it to say the quest the Next Big Thing and Enlightenment Too begins here and we are well on our way to the disaster with the Maharishi. That worthy is currently selling an end to crime for only pennies a day in newspaper ads...
Returning to the material, one has to acknowledge a definite artistic success, a very interesting and well-realized piece where the words and music explore new territory in a complementary and effective fashion.
This one hits the public first, as a double A side single with "Paperback Writer." The theme of alienation or outsiderness in Lennon's work, introduced in "There's A Place," continued in "Help!" and "Nowhere Man," reaches a new plateau here. The world is divided into "us" and "them" for the first time. It is "they" who run and hide their heads, "I" who can show "you" that it's just a state of mind, "you" who can hear "me" explain that everything's the same when it rains. No lover or potential mate: "TNK" a direct address to an audience of peers.
The overall single is the first overt musical social comment from the Boys, the first single not to address mating behavior at all. Note in passing that "Paperback Writer" is ironically a sharp good portrait of keeny author Dirk McQuickly himself hustling his pop songs, and one of McCartney's best to date. Paul's Beatle music is usually successful when it's uptempo and/or personally revealing regardless of intent, another topic that merits more attention.
The central statement extends the thread noted earlier in "Rain" and prefigures "Strawberry Fields:" the introverted loner in opposition to frenetic everyday society, the alienated artist alone in the world of the imagination which is the only true refuge and so on. Again romance is not the issue. again Lennon.
This headliner, another double A-sider backed with one of McCartney's more personal songs, is the first to use reversed percussion, the second use of backmask on a major single, and probably the most prominent of all in the entire canon. Notice how there has been an almost systematic exploration of the possibilities: in just a few cuts we have random-style guitars, Indian stringed instruments, voice, well-planned guitars, doodle loops, and percussion as variations on the backwards theme.
As with the previous cuts, there's a close relationship between the sound and the lyrical content, and no love affair. The theme of alienation, of a distinct and unique personal reality separate from the generally agreed upon assumption-framework, attains its fullest total expression in the one song that most epitomizes the surreal expressionist period. All of this from nowhere in about eight months, with a final! tour in there too. And all four John songs.
Ironically, or perhaps exactly what people like me deserve, this nearly non-musical cut, hated by so many, has the most backwards material of all, in this order: piano doodle, rock and roll loop with strings, piano doodle, string chamber music, orchestra, guitar doodle loop, orchestra, a Gregorian chant twice, loop of car horns and orchestra, crowd noise, lounge piano doodle loop, crowd noise, clapping, heavy rock beat with drums or piano, Gregorian chant, orchestra music, Gregorian chant. Looking at the bright side, of all the songs this one sounds the most the same whether you listen to it backwards or frontwards. like "You Know My Name, Look Up The Number," a great Beatle song to put on at a party.
Viewed from above, we again see the bell curve of backwards masking mirrors that of the harmonica: quick start, build to a peak high-frequency, then a rapid dropoff. In terms of instruments, the content as you'd expect concentrates mostly on the those that change the most when you invert the envelope: vocal, guitar, and drums; there's a decent amount of mellotron and Hammond organ too.
On the whodunit side, Paul is not surprisingly mostly a non-factor, there's a heavy tilt toward John and a strong representation from George. This isn't shocking given the marked sympathy between G and J on Eastern "mystical" and general anti-social issues, in contrast with the other two who were always more normal or integrated or something. But that's the Beatles, isn't it, something for everyone.
The Beatles' use of backwards masking peaks in and coincides with their most creative period and parallels their branching out into social comment and an increased distance from mainstream adult society. It is the work of this period that deviates the most from their original roots and influences. One senses an unexplored world- an abyss retreated from, or perhaps fallen from, or a promised land that like Moses' is visible but impregnable. Or a normal peak like any other, impossible to control or sustain.
Lewisohn accurately stresses that like Phil Spector in his heyday, the Boys simply started to run out of band-width, too much quantity of sound reducing the quality. Most of the lead vocals on these cuts have little clarity, harmony singing is much less emphasized; there just isn't room for it with so much going on. The need for the simplicity of most "White Album" and all "Get Back" efforts and a return to more familiar territory, is summarized in the anecdote Mark reports about them having to overdub Ringo pounding a packing case because the snare beat was lost in the wash. Be all that as it may, the strange familiarity of backwards masking will always be a hallmark of this phase, and a major creative contribution of John Lennon, the Beatles and George Martin to popular music.
Turn me on, dead man.
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