What is a “Rev­o­lu­tion”? The ques­tion might pre­cede a lengthy dis­qui­si­tion on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy; it might presage a man­i­festo redefin­ing an old, worn-out term; it might open up a vinyl-era flight of the­o­ret­i­cal fan­cy over the qual­i­ta­tive dimen­sion of Rev­o­lu­tions Per Minute. As an open­ing gam­bit to a dis­cus­sion of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (and “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”), per­haps the ques­tion ven­tures on the truth of ver­sions, alter­nates, “takes,” as much a part of his­to­ry as top­pling regimes and mass move­ments.

How does all of this heav­i­ness get into pop music? Ask John Lennon. Well, no, ask his music. Ask the his­to­ry of his music, the alter­nates, the hid­den inten­tions, false starts, dis­card­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments. Ask, “Rev­o­lu­tion Take 20,” the alter­nate take of “Rev­o­lu­tion” that you hear above. “Rev­o­lu­tion 20” has a lot to say. It tells us about how a noisy, upbeat shoo­by-doo-wop blues pro­claim­ing the pow­er of love over vio­lence did not orig­i­nal­ly do so with such star­ry-eyed opti­mism and com­fort­ing pop brevi­ty (the kind of thing that sells Nikes, for instance). “Rev­o­lu­tion” had oth­er inten­tions, which we only glimpse in the song’s sev­ered ves­ti­gial tail “Rev­o­lu­tion 9,” and which we may have had quite enough of, thank you, in the arty weird­ness of Yoko Ono’s most exper­i­men­tal work.

You see, “Rev­o­lu­tion” and non-Nike-wor­thy “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” once belonged to the same ani­mal, a crea­ture that evolved from Lennon’s (and Ono’s) fas­ci­na­tion with musique con­crète, and with decon­struct­ing rock music into some­thing unrec­og­niz­able. The kind of rev­o­lu­tion “Rev­o­lu­tion 20” stages isn’t the dichoto­mous option between peace & love the­atrics or reac­tionary violence—it’s a rev­o­lu­tion of form, which is what Lennon seems to be after here, a new way of being that dis­solves con­tra­dic­tions in the sil­ly Freudi­an shtick of Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son singing “Mama… Dada…” over and over as the clas­si­cal tropes of rock and roll warp and wob­ble around them in dis­in­te­grat­ing pitch shifts, radio noise, and spo­ken word non-sequiturs.

At over ten min­utes in length, “Rev­o­lu­tion Take 20”—which appeared as a mono mix on a 2009 boot­leg CD called Rev­o­lu­tion: Take… Your Knick­ers Off (after a piece of Lennon humor at the intro)—is more than an alter­nate take. It’s an alter­nate his­to­ry, one in which Lennon doesn’t just lay in bed for peace; he lays down on the stu­dio floor to record his vocals, and all the while his mind active­ly dis­as­sem­bles rock and roll. As the record­ing engi­neer Bri­an Gib­son remem­bers the ses­sion: “John decid­ed he would feel more com­fort­able on the floor so I had to rig up a micro­phone which would be sus­pend­ed on a boom above his mouth. It struck me as some­what odd, a lit­tle eccen­tric, but they were always look­ing for a dif­fer­ent sound; some­thing new.”

That Lennon ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to divide this mon­ster into Rev­o­lu­tions 1 & 9 does not mean that he’d giv­en up on mak­ing “some­thing new.” Per­haps it was a mar­ket­ing deci­sion; maybe he real­ized that he had a hit on his hands. Less, cyn­i­cal­ly, per­haps he felt that pop music could not con­tain the weight of his desire to move beyond, or to dis­solve, the seem­ing false choic­es on offer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Decon­struct­ing The Mas­ter Track of The Bea­t­les’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The 1992 song “Creep,” Radio­head’s anthem of self loathing and unre­quit­ed love, was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in one take.

The song had been writ­ten sev­er­al years ear­li­er by singer Thom Yorke, when he was still a stu­dent at Exeter Uni­ver­si­ty. “When I wrote it,” Yorke said in an ear­ly inter­view, “I was in the mid­dle of a real­ly, real­ly seri­ous obses­sion. It last­ed about eight months. And it was unsuc­cess­ful, which made it even worse. She knows who she is.”

The emo­tions were appar­ent­ly still run­ning deep when Yorke and his band­mates went into Chip­ping Nor­ton Stu­dios in their home­town of Oxford to record their debut album, Pablo Hon­ey. The raw, cathar­tic qual­i­ty of “Creep” caused an imme­di­ate stir, said pro­duc­er Paul Kolderie. “Every­one in the stu­dio applaud­ed when it was done.”

The orig­i­nal take was large­ly retained, except for a few touch-ups. Yorke went back into the stu­dio and record­ed a rewrit­ten first verse. He also agreed to change the sar­cas­tic phrase “You’re so fuck­ing spe­cial” to “You’re so very spe­cial” to make the song suit­able for Amer­i­can radio. You can hear Yorke’s vocals from the san­i­tized ver­sion in the iso­lat­ed track above. For the full arrange­ment, see the offi­cial video below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Radio­head-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Rose­land for 2011′s The King of Limbs Tour

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991