The guitar sound on the album was more robust than before, through the use of new Fender amplifiers; the choice of guitars, which included Harrison using a Gibson SG as his preferred instrument; and the introduction of Fairchild 660 limiters for recording. In North America, Revolver was reduced to 11 songs by Capitol Records, with the omitted three appearing on the June 1966 LP Yesterday and Today.

He adds: "The album's aural invention was so masterful that it seemed to Western youth that The Beatles knew – that they had the key to current events and were somehow orchestrating them through their records. In the case of "I'm Only Sleeping", the version issued on Yesterday and Today was a different mix from that included on EMI's Revolver.In May 1971, Capitol updated their label design, going from a lime green to a new red background but keeping the same purple-black Capitol "Target" logo. His appraisal of Revolver was, in author Bernard Gendron's description, "the first substantial rock review devoted to one album to appear in any nonrock magazine with accreditory power".

Music critic Richie Unterberger describes it as a song that conveys "one of the first fine days of spring, just after you've fallen in love or started a vacation". As with Rubber Soul, Walter Everett views the album's "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" as the inspiration for many of the bands that formed the progressive rock genre in the early 1970s. Revolver has been recognised as having inspired new subgenres of music, anticipating electronica, punk rock, baroque rock and world music, among other styles.Ray Davies of the Kinks, who held a grudge against the Beatles from 1964, also disparaged the album when invited to give a rundown of the songs in Disc and Music Echo. The initial version of the song, as issued on Anthology 2, featured acoustic backing and organ, and a harmonised refrain of "I need your love", [117] which was replaced by Harrison's guitar break on the more uptempo remake.

During the same photo shoot, Whitaker took pictures of the Beatles examining orange transparencies of his "butcher cover" design for Yesterday and Today. In Britain, EMI gradually distributed the album's songs to radio stations throughout July [313] – a strategy that MacDonald describes as "building anticipation for what would clearly be a radical new phase in the group's recording career". The Beatles were presented with gold discs from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), recognising the album as a "million seller", [350] during their 24 August press conference at the Capitol Tower in Hollywood.Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Steve Turner likens the Beatles' creative approach in 1966 to that of modern jazz musicians, and recognises their channelling of Indian and Western classical, Southern soul, and electronic musical styles into their work as unprecedented in popular music. Aside from the band, and Martin and Emerick, the participants included Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Pattie Boyd (Harrison's wife), Marianne Faithfull and Beatles aides Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall.