The 1966 Beatles song Rain is a tragically
overlooked but extremely pivotal moment in both their recording career and the history
of pop music. In this episode, I’m going to point out
the elements that make this song revolutionary, and as a fair warning, once I point them out,
you can’t unhear this. Early 1966 was a period of explosive creativity
for the Beatles, as they evolved from the youthful ambassadors of Beatlemania into a
cultural force that embraced new musical influences, new freedoms of studio production time and
resources, and new mind-altering drugs. The song Rain was born in the midst of this
transition, conceived by John Lennon and composed with input from Paul. On April 14, 1966, following the recording
session at EMI Studios that produced Paperback Writer, the band turned to this new song,
Rain. They went through 5 takes of the rhythm track
with their usual lineup - John on guitar, George also on guitar, Paul on bass and Ringo
of course on drums. Although all of the performances are fantastic
here, the highlight of the session was undoubtedly Ringo’s contribution, which he has claimed
to be the most inspired performance on any Beatles record - and that’s saying quite
a lot. [play drum snippets]. After the band was satisfied with the basic
rhythm track, John recorded his lead vocal and then called it a night. The song was far from finished, however. The band returned to the studio 2 days later
on the 16th of April, where they spent 11 hours transforming the song into what we hear
today. During this marathon session, numerous bits
were added, such as John, Paul and George on those transcendent harmonies
and Ringo adding a tambourine part. Here’s where things get interesting: Paul
wanted to add a new bass track to replace his initial attempt from April 14th. Both Paul and John had complained to the EMI
engineers that the bass sound on Beatles records paled in comparison to the punchy bass they
had heard on R&B and soul records coming from American labels like Stax and Motown. By this point in their career, when the Beatles
asked for something at EMI, they got it. And so their young and spirited engineer Geoff
Emerick devised a makeshift solution, by rewiring a loudspeaker to act as a microphone, the
idea being that the wider diaphragm of a loudspeaker would capture the bass frequencies more prominently. The technique had been tested earlier in the
day during the Paperback Writer sessions, and Paul asked to use it again for Rain. The next radical innovation is so subtle that
you likely wouldn’t notice it unless pointed out, and following Rain, it would become a
staple in their bag of studio tricks. A week earlier, the band began work on their
most experimental track to date: Tomorrow Never Knows, an avant garde psychedelic piece
filled with tape loops, weird vocal effects and tons of other unconventional elements. But that’s for another episode. During those sessions, the band had become
fixated upon a studio technique that was fairly uncommon outside of novelty records: adjusting
the recording speed of the tape to alter the pitch and speed. It had been used briefly the year earlier
on Rubber Soul, when George Martin recorded a keyboard solo at half-speed, making it sound
almost like a harpsichord when played back at full speed: But on Rain, they took this trick to a whole
other level: Here’s how the rhythm track likely sounded
when it was performed live: And compare it to the final version: That drop in pitch and speed is the result
of the tape being slowed down, lending a heavier and almost surreal quality that wouldn’t
have been the same if the band simply played it slower. That was exciting all on its own, but being
the Beatles, they weren’t satisfied with just one speed adjustment. John’s lead vocal was also manipulated,
but in the opposite direction. John sang his part while the tape deck was
slowed down slightly, so that when it was played back at ‘normal speed’, his voice
would sound a bit faster and higher in pitch. Based on the studio notes, John’s original
vocal would have sounded something like this: And the final version: The differences are subtle, and it’s hard
to describe why this effect sounds so cool, but it suits the song perfectly. They would incorporate this technique - usually
called varispeed - extensively throughout the Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Magical Mystery Tour sessions,
most notably on Strawberry Fields Forever The next radical step forward introduced on
Rain is, ironically, backward. There’s a bit of a dispute in Beatles lore
over who actually came up with the idea, but as is the case with many Beatles innovations,
it was likely the result of a happy little accident. John claimed he had stumbled upon the idea
at his home the night before the second Rain session, after randomly playing a tape backward
and realizing that the effect could be used intentionally. In another account, the legendary Beatles
producer George Martin claimed to have pieced it together on his own after the session and
then presented his work to John, who was summarily impressed. The truth, as is often the case, is probably
somewhere in the middle. More importantly, let’s examine how they
did it: Here’s the isolated backward vocals as we
hear them in outro of the song: And here’s how that part sounds played when
reversed suddenly it sounds familiar, right? John’s snippet from the main vocal track
was simply overdubbed on top of the outro, but in reverse. A simple trick, but it lends a special, otherworldly
quality to the song. On a funny side note - when Rain was later
released in Japan, the album included a lyric sheet in Japanese and English - and someone
attempted to guess what John was saying in this part, seemingly oblivious to the reverse
effect. There’s also some evidence that the band experimented with reversed guitar parts on this day, but they didn’t make it into the final mix of Rain for some reason. That technique would show up later on songs from Revolver, such as I’m Only Sleeping and Tomorrow Never Knows. I can’t understate how wild this innovation
is: Rain - along with Tomorrow Never Knows and I’m Only Sleeping - were the first pop
records ever to use backward sounds in this way; it would soon become a staple of psychedelic
rock, employed in some capacity by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Backward lyrics would also become a perennial
target for conspiracy theorists, alleging everything from embedded satanic messages
to hints of the premature demise of Paul McCartney. And we have Rain to thank for giving us all
of that. Despite not being among their greatest hits,
Rain holds a very special place not only in my personal favorites but also in the Beatles
canon overall. As we’ve discovered, the song is a showcase
of their studio ingenuity during the analog era. All of this was achieved using rudimentary
4-track recorders, decades before digital technology would make these effects so effortless
that we now take them for granted. Like a skunkworks team, the engineers at EMI
were constantly inventing creative solutions with limited resources. And many of the creative achievements pioneered
that week in April at EMI would be used extensively throughout the latter part of their career
and leave a lasting imprint on pop music. As a song, Rain is thrillingly unconventional
for its time, a reflection of the band’s flourishing interest in styles outside of
their comfort zone such as classical Indian music and the avant garde. Thematically, it is one of the first of their
songs to move beyond love and relationships and instead focus on the treasure of the mundane
- a theme that would emerge in full bloom on the Revolver album with songs about taxes,
sleep, lonely people and yellow submarines. I wasn’t around in June 1966, but Rain must
have sounded pretty wild at the time - especially from the same band who up until that point
had been singing simple, 2:20 pop hits about love. It was also a preview of what was to come,
both on the Revolver album in August of that year and then Sgt. Pepper in June 1967, which would solidify
the Beatles as ambassadors of pop innovation. Even beyond the song itself, Rain was special
for being one of the earliest attempts at a creative promotional music video for a single
- paving the way for an approach that would become commonplace on MTV fifteen years later. But, sadly, Rain never really got the attention
it deserved, likely because the song was relegated to the B-side of the 1966 Paperback Writer
single. It wasn’t released on any album until four
years later, when it was included on the 1970 singles compilation album Hey Jude. In a way, it has shared the fate of other
overlooked, transcendent gems from this era such as Hey Bulldog and It’s All Too Much. Thankfully, these songs have been re-released
in a handful of other places over the years and have earned some belated recognition. Some fans would say, and I would tend to agree,
that Rain may be the ultimate Beatles song - in 3 perfect minutes, recorded at nearly
the exact midpoint of their 8 year recording career, it captures nearly every element of
what made the Beatles special in composition, style and execution. If I were transported to a distant time or
place and could only bring one song to describe the Beatles, I think Rain might be it. So what do you think about Rain? Let me know in the comments. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and please
remember to subscribe and share this episode. Thanks for watching.
