Do you know how people in the Soviet Union joked about Revolver? One user on the beatles.ru forum mentioned:

“In ’67 people bragged that they had not only Revolver but also an avtomat (an automatic gun)—by which we meant the Rolling Stones’ Aftermath!”

Read the full story about Soviet Beatles homophones (research article).

Cover art comparison

The AnTrop version of the Revolver sleeve was almost entirely rebuilt. They redrew the faces, replaced or repositioned the photos, and made the cross-hatching a bit lighter than on the original. John Lennon’s famous center photo — with the fake beard — was replaced with a still from the film How I Won the War.

At the top, alongside images from the original back cover, you can even spot Stuart Sutcliffe. Even with these changes, the overall design is actually pretty similar to Klaus Voormann’s original idea.

In the lower right corner, designer Nikolai Kibalchich left his own mark:

“I added my face to the back of this double edition of Revolver. I didn’t add anyone else, I just rearranged the images that were already part of the collage. I used some pretty basic photos, a lot of which were from Kolya Vasin’s collection, and cut them out for the design.”

The Russian title is at the bottom in hand-drawn Cyrillic letters, and each one is a bit different from the others, which makes the cover feel like a one-of-a-kind handcrafted piece.

Back sleeve (gatefold part)

Tropillo combined Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band into a single double album with two different covers but one Sgt. Pepper’s based gatefold.

Labels & Variants

There were two main pressings: a double set paired with Sgt. Pepper in 1992 (red or russian flags labels), and a standalone Revolver in 1994 (violet labels). The 1994 editions, which were all laminated, were made in Latvia at the old Riga plant of the Melodiya label.

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© 2024 Artur Netsvetaev, interviews with Nikolai Kibalchich, Yuri Trifonov.