(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Thu 18 December 2025 15:00, UK
Artists are often misunderstood during their lifetime, and regardless of whether John Lennon was truly understood during his time within the musical realm, his sudden and tragic passing back in 1980 certainly left a lot of unanswered questions scattered throughout the discography of the former Beatle.
Even if you were to spend the rest of your days poring over the extensive body of interviews, archival footage, and documentary films revolving around the life of John Lennon, the chances are that you’d still be left with a litany of unanswered and often unanswerable questions. Was a Beatles reunion ever really on the cards, and why did he seem to have such a vendetta against the great textile city of Bradford?
Those are just some examples of questions that you might put to Lennon during a chance encounter in the afterlife, but one of the most intriguing questions that attached itself to the songwriter during his lifetime revolved around the number nine. From his experimental masterpiece ‘Revolution 9’ to the often underrated ‘One After 909’, that number kept cropping up within the life and music of Lennon, so what’s the deal?
‘Revolution 9’ is undoubtedly among The Beatles’ oddest recordings, but it is also perhaps the best place to start when it comes to Lennon’s numerical obsession. Originally, of course, the song emerged from an extended version of ‘Revolution’, which quickly devolved into a menagerie of tape loops, overdubs, and a plethora of other pioneering techniques which have since become commonplace within the world of experimental music.
One of the most memorable parts of the track is that voice repeating “number nine” over and over, which might just be the root of Lennon’s fascination with the number. According to the songwriter himself, who spoke about the track with Rolling Stone back in 1970, the voice came from an EMI engineer on a test tape.
John Lennon circa 1971, perhaps puffing on his ninth cigarette of the day. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
“I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, ‘This is EMI test series number nine,’” he recalled. “I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it.”
Like many instances in Lennon’s life, then, the confusion around the use of the number nine could perhaps be chalked up to the songwriter’s famed sense of humour. “It was just so funny,” he affirmed. “The voice saying, ‘number nine’; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was.”
That might explain the significance of ‘Revolution 9’, but what about ‘One After 909’, his solo favourite ‘#9 Dream’ (which, fittingly, peaked at number nine in the US charts), or any other of the number nines that seemed to attach themselves to Lennon over the years – was he merely the victim of one of the greatest television twists pulled off by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, or is there something deeper afoot?
The answer to that depends on precisely how conspiratorial you want to get. At one end of the spectrum, John Lennon was born on October 9th, 1940, so it is a rather route-one choice as a lucky number of sorts. On the more tin-foil hat end of the spectrum, there are nine O’s in the full names of John Winston Ono Lennon and the love of his life, Yoko Ono.
Ultimately, the closest the world has gotten to having this riddle fully explained to them comes from that same interview with Rolling Stone, in which Lennon shares, “Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything.”
So, it appears fairly likely that Lennon encountered that EMI test tape during ‘Revolution 9’, realised its inadvertent connection to his life through his birthdate, and kept it in his mind for future songwriting opportunities.
Then again, The Beatles seem to have attracted more conspiracy theorists than most bands, with the most unhinged concerning themselves with the fabled ‘Paul is Dead’ theory, so perhaps the explanation that Lennon simply found the voice of an EMI employee saying ‘nine’ funny will not suffice their thirst for conspiracy.
Related Topics
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.