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The Beatles “Rain”

“Looked at from the opposite perspective, you might say that while a song like “Rain” makes you “know” we’re not in Kansas any longer, it still does seem like the Boys sure wanted to take along a lot of their same old clothing for the big trip…”  —Notes on Rain by Alan W. Pollack

Credited to Lennon/McCartney, Rain was first released in June 1966 as the B-side of the “Paperback Writer” single.  Both songs were recorded during the sessions for Revolver but neither appears on that album.  Written primarily by John Lennon, “Rain” has been called The Beatles’ finest B-side, especially notable for its heavy sonic presence and backwards vocals, both of which were a hint of things to come on Revolver, released two months later.  —Wikipedia

“Having achieved worldwide fame by 1965, The Beatles found it physically impossible to appear on every music television show throughout the world to promote their singles. They also no longer wished to, finding live TV appearances, in fact live performances in general, to be repetitive and mundane, interfering with the creativity and freedom they found with studio recordings.

Therefore, on 23 November, 1965, they make a series of promotional films specifically designed to be broadcast by television companies throughout the world. Videos of ‘We Can Work It Out’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘Help!’, ‘Ticket To Ride’ and ‘I Feel Fine’ were filmed. Less sophisticated than the segments that appeared in the film Help, they nevertheless managed to capture the energy and sense of humour that the Beatles were famous for.

On 19 - 20 May, 1966, the group filmed further promotional films for ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’. These sessions are famed for Paul McCartney appearing with a chipped tooth as a result of a moped accident, adding fuel to the ‘death clues’ hysteria at the time. Each video was assembled in both colour and black-and-white edits, as while America had been enjoying colour TV since the late 1950s, most European channels were still in the very early stages of colour broadcasts (Britain’s first colour broadcast came with BBC2’s transmission of the 1967 Wimbledon tournament).

The director for this first batch of films was Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was invited back to help the boys with their films to promote both ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Revolution’; these promos were filmed on 4 September, 1968. Lindsay-Hogg later kickstarted the project that evolved into the Let It Be feature film. Several different takes of both ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’ were filmed in order to give different versions to rival broadcasters, who could then boast of having Beatles ‘exclusives’.” —The Beatles and the Birth of the Music Video

More on the ‘death clues’ hysteria, ‘Paul is dead.’

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Something weird happens to the drums and bass track – one bar ends up with 6 beats, the fills seem to go on for a little too long, and the bass loses the pattern. This sounds like it might be a join between takes, or a “loss of position” by Ringo. Somehow, John stretches his vocal over these beats and hides it. The down beat should be where the word “sun” lands, (the bass and guitar get there, but the drums don’t, and you are kept waiting a little!) —What Goes on: The Beatles Anomalies List

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