Polygon’s senior editor Alison Rae has acquired World rights including audio for Revolution: The Making of the Beatles’ White Album by Emmy award-winning writer David Quantick. Revolution will be published in the autumn of 2027, a year before the album’s sixtieth anniversary in November 1968.
Alison says: ‘Revolution is the perfect companion to the White Album, one of the most extraordinary and genre-defying albums of all time. Out of print since 2002, the book was praised by everyone from regular Beatles fans to Mark Lewisohn, then promptly sold out and achieved cult status. In this completely revised edition, in his inimitable frank and funny style, David offers intimate details of the creative recording process set within the wider context of the culture, personalities and politics of the era. And as if that isn’t enough, there’s an introduction by I Am the EggPod’s Chris Shaw and a brand-new chapter by Scott Michaels – advisor to Quentin Tarantino on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – about Charles Manson’s appropriation of the album. I’m over the moon to be working with David.’
‘After years of people telling me they loved this book, it’s great to be doing a brand-new, up-to-date edition that brings the book to an even wider audience of Beatles fans.’
–Author David Quantick
The White Album came at a turbulent time in the Beatles’ story. The band were no longer the cheerful Mop Tops of Beatlemania days. Now in their late twenties and growing apart, they were looking to solo careers, marriage, new interests. Adrift without their manager Brian Epstein, the band briefly came under the spell of the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, wrote tons of songs in India, became disillusioned with mysticism and came together to create a fractious, wildly eclectic double album of thirty songs – their last great creative flowering and one of the most epic records of all time, ambitious and brilliant.
A former freelance music journalist, David is an Emmy award-winning writer (Veep, 2015), who has worked with Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Graeme Norton, Rob Brydon and Harry Hill, and has contributed to iconic TV shows such as Spitting Image and The Thick of It. He has written biographies of Eddie Izzard, Beck and The Clash, as well as fiction and short stories.
