Don’t get me wrong I love the Beatles and I think they deserve every last bit of the legendary status they have. And the groundbreaking recordings in their later albums are undeniable, but this has always perplexed me.
Listen to the snare drum on this recording of “Revolution” (preferably your own on a good system or headphones to really hear it -this youtube clip is the actual album cut; they are just ‘lip syncing’ in this video but the sound quality is lacking) especially the triplet snare fill Ringo does at the lead in to the section right before – “You know it’s gonna be…alright”.
Hear that? I swear they miked just the snare bottom and not the top. It sounds like a hair comb wacking a piece of wax paper. Now after hearing this song for a million times I admit it sounds ‘normal’. But upon closer inspection it does not take much to think, “Wait a minute, that sounds…like major dog doo.”
It’s like…what were they thinking here? You go back a few years and the snare on “Ticket to Ride” is cranking. And if it was apparent they were going for some weird tweaky snare sound for a specific musical/textural/psychedelic reason it would make sense, but this song is supposed to be a rocker.
Overall, it’s not bad enough to ruin the song for me but I always wondered what the intensity level of the song would be if they simply miked the snare top, got some room sound, and consequently got some sonic power coming from the kit.
But it just goes to show you– if the song is strong enough and most of the elements are there, a few recording glitches or mistakes just aren’t going to matter.