"Yellow Submarine" Like You've Never Heard it Before: Hear John Lennon's Somber, Newly Unearthed Demo of the Classic Track

On October 28, a new, expanded reissue of The Beatles' Revolver – a hugely significant album that altered both the band's musical trajectory and that of pop music as a whole – will be released. 

Featuring a full remix by Giles Martin (son of George Martin, the original album's producer), the Revolver reissue also features a number of newly-unearthed demos and alternate takes of now-legendary songs.

Among these is a fascinating, newly-released demo of the song that would become "Yellow Submarine."

Recorded by John Lennon, and featuring him on acoustic guitar and vocals, this early version of "Yellow Submarine" is a much more somber affair than the Ringo Starr-fronted recording that would go on to appear on Revolver.

Despite the demo's morose lyrics ("In the place, where I was born/No-one cared, no-one cared"), parts of the song's endearing verse melody and the sea-shanty influence that would help make it one of the band's great sing-along classics are already present. 

Guitar Player recently spoke to Giles Martin about the process of both re-mixing (and de-mixing) Revolver for the reissue, and what he discovered about the album in the process.

"You can hear them like kids in the back of a car saying, 'We’re bored! We want to do something different,'" Martin said. "That’s what’s going on with Revolver. It’s like a prog record – kind of like, 'Look how many ideas we have!'

"And what I find fascinating is that they went from being this four-headed monster with Beatles suits on to being these four individuals going in different directions – but helping each other.

"Like, no one’s saying, 'Come on, John, change chords on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ Or, you know, 'Why are we doing Indian songs? We’re from Liverpool!' It’s like that pure confidence of jumping out of the plane without a parachute and knowing you’re going to land safely.

"It is kind of a fearless record."