then calling him a "cheeky bitch". "Revolution 9" was released as the penultimate track on side four of the double LP. With no gaps in the sequence from "Cry Baby Cry" to "Revolution 9", the point of track division has varied among different reissues of the album. Some versions place the conversation at the end of "Cry Baby Cry", resulting in a length of 8:13 for "Revolution 9", while others start "Revolution 9" with the conversation, for a track length of 8:22. Later CD and digital releases have the conversation at the beginning of "Revolution 9". Reception The unusual nature of "Revolution 9" engendered a wide range of opinions. Lewisohn summarised the public reaction upon its release as "most listeners loathing it outright, the dedicated fans trying to understand it". Music critics Robert Christgau and John Piccarella called it "an anti-masterpiece" and commented that, in effect, "for eight minutes of an album officially titled The Beatles, there were no Beatles." In their respective reviews of the White Album, Alan Walsh of Melody Maker called the track "noisy, boring and meaningless", while the NMEs Alan Smith derided it as "a pretentious piece of old codswallop ... a piece of idiot immaturity and a blotch on their own unquestioned talent as well as the album". Jann Wenner was more complimentary, writing in Rolling Stone that "Revolution 9" was "beautifully organized" and had more political impact than "Revolution 1". Ian MacDonald remarked that "Revolution 9" evoked the era's revolutionary disruptions and their repercussions, and thus was culturally "one of the most significant acts the Beatles ever perpetrated", as well as "the world's most widely distributed avant-garde artifact". Among more recent reviews, Rob Sheffield wrote in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide that it was "justly maligned", but "more fun than 'Honey Pie' or 'Yer Blues'". Mark Richardson of Pitchfork commented that "the biggest pop band in the world exposed millions of fans to a really great and certainly frightening piece of avant-garde art." David Quantick, writing in 2002, similarly described it as being "after nearly a quarter of a century, [still] the most radical and innovative track ever to bring a rock record to its climax". He added that, given the Beatles' popularity ensured that an avant-garde recording was found in millions of homes around the world: "No one in the history of recorded music has ever been so successful in introducing such