Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

10. Annabel's Club

Carnival of Light

10.

I listened to Revolver for the first time the same afternoon the test-pressing arrived in the post. It was the final mastered version of the record, one of the first pressings the factory made to check the quality of the audio. Paul must have written up the track list on the sleeve and instructed someone at EMI to send it to me before he left for Germany.

Mrs Fitz brought me a cup of tea as I put the record on the turntable and dropped the needle. Paul's little note to me – How have you been? P x – started to revolve as white noise fuzzed through the speakers, and then "Taxman" started to play – George's voice counting them in. I smiled and lit a cigarette, and sat down on the couch to listen.

I won't forget the first time I heard "Eleanor Rigby." I felt like I'd been suckerpuncheed. It was so beautiful and haunting and new, I'd never heard anything like it before. There was nothing like it. I didn't know a thing about sound engineering but I could hear the "tinkering" baked into the track.

The rest of Revolver was stunning too. From the backwards guitars on "I'm Only Sleeping" to the lucious Indian instrumentation on "Love You To", the found sounds and imagery of "Yellow Submarine" and the beautifully melancholic French horn of "For No One", the gut-punching brass on "Got To Get You Into My Life", and finally, the wholly unique and terrifying "Tomorrow Never Knows" – which could never be replicated because of how it had been recorded with tape loops that day.

And Paul's clear, rich, unmistakable voice, threaded through all of it.

I listened to Revolver again, then rang up Matthew, who came over to listen the next day at lunchtime.

"Blimey," Matthew said, his eyes widening as "Eleanor Rigby" started to play.

I called Tara to come round and listen that evening so we could talk about it – he loved the Beatles, and I suddenly felt a great need to talk about how brilliant the Beatles were.

Tara held the test pressing sleeve in his hands like it was something precious and looked up at me with wide eyes.

"I thought you'd heard this?" I frowned.

"I've heard tapes of what they recorded," Tara said, looking stunned. "Paul sent you the actual bloody album. No one has heard this!"

I took Revolver over to Poppy's where we gathered with Sir Mark, Suki, Tara and Matthew, listening to it together.

"Do you hear that on the first Eleanor?" Sir Mark said. "It jumps from the left to right speaker before he's finished the word."

We moved the needle back and listened again.

Tinkering, I thought.

I went round Miles and Sue's the next day.

"Have you heard this?" I handed Miles the test-pressing.

He squinted at the tracklist Paul had written, then looked up at me.

"Paul sent you a test pressing?" He seemed taken aback. "They really decided to call it Revolver?"

I shrugged helplessly and we put the record on the turntable. I sat on the blue velvet Ginsberg couch beside Sue as George's voice counted the record in, and then "Taxmen" bled into "Eleanor Rigby", and I sighed with my eyes closed. It just did something to me.

Anita Pallenberg rang me the next day – Tara gave her my number – wanting to know if I'd bring Revolver over to her and Brian's Chelsea flat on Elm Park Lane. Robert Fraser, his chauffeur-slash-lover Muhammad, the rest of the Rolling Stones and their sound engineer Glyn Johns were also there waiting for me.