TheBeatlesOnline

Rain

John Lennon: Vocals, electric guitar
Paul McCartney: Bass guitar, vocals
George Harrison: Electric guitars, vocals
Ringo Starr: Drums, tambourine

Recorded April 14, 16 1966.

Available on:
Past Masters Volume Two

Rain was released as the reverse side of the Paperback Writer single. It was recorded during the Revolver sessions, but it didn't make it to the album.

John and George had allegedly been introduced to the drug LSD at a dentist's dinner party in the summer of 1965 (it had been dropped in their coffee), and they said in later interviews that they started taking the drug regularly after that.

It didn't take long before the Beatles' experiments with drugs started to influence their music.

Rain is one example of this, so is Tomorrow Never Knows, which was recorded the week before. In fact, many of the recording techniques that were developed during the recording of Tomorrow never knows were also used on the recording of Rain.

One technique the Beatles developed an appetite for was to record instruments and vocals at various speeds in order to express a new and psychedelic sound.

"One of the things we discovered when playing around with loops on 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was that the texture and depth of certain instruments sounded really good when slowed down," recalls Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick in Mark Lewisohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.

"With 'Rain' the Beatles played the rhythm track really fast so that when the tape was played back at normal speed everything would be so much slower, changing the texture. If we'd recorded it at normal speed and then had to slow the tape down whenever we wanted to hear a playback it would have been much more work."

The result was truly unique. Rain was Beatles' first psychedelic release, but the group would use the same recording technique frequently on several recordings in the future.

Rain also features vocals played backwards, and both Lennon and producer George Martin have claimed that they invented this idea. Lennon said he thought of it after accidentally having played an unfinished tape of the song the wrong way on his home recorder.

However, George Martin told another version:

"I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John's voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four track, put it onto another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed. Again, it was backwards forever after that."

Rain