On This Day in 1966, The Beatles Recorded a Song That Featured a Groundbreaking Guitar Technique Inspired by a Studio Accident

On this day (April 27) in 1966, The Beatles stepped into what would later become Abbey Road Studios and conducted one of the three sessions that yielded “I’m Only Sleeping.” The song was recorded during the sessions for Revolver and appeared on the UK pressing of the album. However, the song instead appeared on Yesterday and Today in the United States, which was released roughly two months before Revolver. It is notable for being the first popular recording to employ reversed instrumentation. George Harrison played the backward lead guitar part, inspired by a studio accident.

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Like many of The Beatles’ songs from this period, many listeners assume there are drug-related references in the lyrics. However, it is more likely that this track is a celebration of sleep rather than expanded consciousness. “He can sleep almost indefinitely, is probably the laziest person in England,” Maureen Cleave once wrote about John Lennon, who wrote the bulk of the lyrics for “I’m Only Sleeping.”

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When not on the road, Lennon spent as much time in bed as possible. That’s where he went to read, watch television, write, and do anything else that didn’t require him to stand. Paul McCartney, on the other hand, was something of a workaholic. So, he would show up to Lennon’s house for their scheduled songwriting sessions and have to wait, sometimes hours, for his bandmate to finally get out of bed. These long waits resulted in him having the time to pen “Here, There, and Everywhere” while sitting near Lennon’s pool.

The Beatles Broke Musical Ground with “I’m Only Sleeping”

Like many songs in The Beatles’ discography, the lyrics of “I’m Only Sleeping” could be interpreted in several ways. However, the most noteworthy part of the recording is the eight-bar reversed guitar solo George Harrison plays near the track’s halfway mark.

According to The Beatles Bible, the reversed guitar part was inspired by a studio mistake. A tape operator (or maybe John Lennon) threaded a multitrack tape into the machine backward. “It played backwards, and, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Those effects! Nobody knew how those sounded then. We said, ‘My god, that is fantastic! Can we do that for real?’ So that was what we did,” Paul McCartney said in an interview for his biography, Many Years from Now.

Harrison wrote the solo for “I’m Only Sleeping,” then transcribed it in reverse. He then played it twice, once with a fuzz effect and once with a clean channel. Five hours later, he had recorded and tracked a groundbreaking 12-second guitar solo.

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