Revolvers (August, 1966, Timaeus)
< file under Beatles In Atlantis >
~ an approximation of this album, using latest remasters, can be heard here on Apple Music ~
Nobler Than Neptune! More Popular Than Poseidon! Jauntier Than Jupiter! Zeusier Than Zeus!
These slogans were plastered all over adverts in Atlantis' music media, across magazines, in street postings, heard in radio commercials, and greeted with much amusement.
Atlanteans, who had never been monotheistic and who, in this now predominately young population, weren't even much religious, found the US-based uproar over John Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" comments somewhat quaint and, frankly, rather laughable. Tivowr Dorna seized on this reaction and devised a playful promotional scheme around it. To amplify this humorous hijacking of stateside controversy, Dorna used for imagery in this campaign the also-recent, also-USA-notorious "butcher sleeve" photo. What, after all, he reasoned, was more befitting modern pop deities than some plastic sacrifice?
As far as the content of the Revolver album, Dorna — immediately recognizing a true masterpiece as when he had first heard A Hard Day's Night — left the song selection unaltered, like he had done with that 1964 LP. The only downside of this was it meant the two extraordinary songs from the band's latest UK/US/international single, Paperback Writer and Rain, would remain unissued in Atlantis for some time to come. Dorna simply could not see how adding or subtracting any songs from the actual Revolver album would do anything but harm what he considered a perfect long-player. Indeed, he would never again alter the tracklist for an album completed by the band and George Martin.
He did though maintain his practice — deferring to the nation's preference for stereo while partly aiming at providing an appealingly irresistible alternate purchase for fans importing (mostly in mono editions) the UK albums — of utilizing stereo mixes by default but substituting, where applicable, notably different mixes not available on any UK issue. He also commissioned new cover art to distinguish it on the shelves from import copies. For this, Dorna had to go outside the Timaeus art department since the entire team, honoring the earlier sacrifice of their adored typographer, signed up for a stint of front line defense against surface world aggressors. The resulting cover was a minor disappointment for Dorna, slapping together Klaus Voormann's original sketch with a contemporaneous photo of the fab foursome, and, worse, containing a typo in the title: it read Revolvers, plural, rather than Revolver. Without Dorna's approval, the covers went to print with this error, and so he had the labels printed to match.
Despite what Dorna viewed as the somewhat slapdash art seen in place of the classic finished Klaus Voormann cover the rest of the world received, Revolvers was hailed as a brilliant classic and a new high-water mark for the underwater nation's favorite land-based rock 'n' roll band.
 |
| Dorna didn't love it, but fans and the music press were fine with this cover art. One reviewer, in a convoluted turn of phrase, claimed it represented "the fictionalitious many-ness of the four captured within these fantastical grooves, yet with their widely embraced humanity recognizably peaking through" |
1. Taxman †
2. Eleanor Rigby †3. I'm Only Sleeping [mono] *4. Love You To †5. Here, There and Everywhere †6. Yellow Submarine †7. She Said She Said †
1. Good Day Sunshine †2. And Your Bird Can Sing [mono] *3. For No One †4. Doctor Robert [mono] *5. I Want to Tell You †6. Got to Get You into My Life †7. Tomorrow Never Knows †
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