Mission Statement: to do very little, for very few, for not very long. Disappointing the easily pleased since 1819. Not as good as it used to be from Day One. History is Bunk - PT Barnum. Artificially Intelligent before it was fashionable. Fat camp for the mind! Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost. The Shock of the Old! Often bettered, never imitated. "Wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein" - Pauly Shore.
If you're like me, and thank Christ you're not for both our sakes, you'll do your best music lissnin' in the car, specially when you're on your own and you can crank it right up (and have the music loud, too). I was rocking the Toyota Xanax upriver to Nakhon Phanom today and this came up on shuffle and I had NO IDEA what it was, because it was one of the many downloads I hadn't gotten around to hearing. And I was BLOWN AWAY I tell ya! There's a bunch of great promo radio nonsense (for "greasy teens") and there's some remixes from '69 (what th' actual?!?) that sound radically different even to me. There may even be some extra doity woids. It's a swell alternative listen, is what it is.
Anyway, I did some research and it turns out it's Side Three of a double vinyl 50th Anniversary set. It's a standalone suite, so I knocked up a cover [above - Ed.] and here it is. I never tire of this guy.
This post funded in part by the Stephen Hawking Lapdancing Academy
The recent Beatles post is still getting hits, in spite of it having no content. There's nothing about the Beatles, the pictures are deliberately dull and stupid, and there's not one juicy download of fab tunes. And yet it's the most popular piece to appear here for weeks (since the Solo Softs piece, since you ask, still the unlikely candidate for most popular post of all time).
McC: Yoko, really. She was like
the glue in the ... sandwich. Her and Linda. They were like sisters,
very close. Lot of hugging and kissing in the studio, going to the loo
together ... anyway. They could see we were falling apart, you know?
Bickering and stuff. Poking each other in the chest, snide comments.
They really calmed us down. Especially Yoko. I really fancied her, at
the time. Anyway, she’d come into the studio and it was like this, this
wave of peacefulness, and love, washed over us. We did some great work
after Pepper, but it never came out in the form it should, there was an
album there ... FMF: This was the Aloha album? McC: [nods] Aloha means Hello Goodbye,
which was like our single. Great album. Great album. It was going to be
assembled from stuff we didn’t record for an album, as such, you know?
There was never any, like, sessions for the album, but there were all
these great Beatle songs sitting there, and we were going to do that
album to tie up loose ends. Go out with a bang. FMF: So you were still thinking of splitting up?” McC: Oh yeah. But on a high, as friends. Yoko showed us the way. Oriental wisdom. And I don’t think we could have topped the Aloha album. Well, we didn't. FMF: So what happened? McC: [grimaces] I had a bit of a
fling with Yoko. You could sense the chemistry in the studio. It got to
the point where it was obvious, like this ... thick soup you were
wading through. You look at the footage from Let It Be. FMF: Another shit Beatles movie. McC: Yeah. All that atmosphere,
that soup, that was Yoko and me, desiring each other, carnally, yet staying apart
for the good of the band. Remembering our stolen moments of passion -
you can’t forget that. In the broom cupboard. On the bus. FMF: So why didn’t the Aloha album appear? McC: It just sort of faded away. Linda wanted us to work on a [finger-waggle]
“proper” album, this concept she had about a vegetarian landing on the
moon. We agreed to a new album, on the condition it wasn’t about
vegetarians on the moon. Other than that, we had no fucking idea where
we were going with that one. [blows raspberry] FMF: Apart from down the toilet. But you had a track listing for the Aloha album? McC: Oh yeah. Acetate pressed up. And a cover, Richard Avedon took the photos, it was ready to roll. Roll and rock! Wooh! [throws empty pork scratching bag off roof]. FMF: Anything we haven’t heard on it? McC: No. Yeah. We edited Hey Jude
down, faded it out before it starts to drive you nuts with that ner ner
ner ner-ner-ner nerrr thing. The album version’s much better. Shorter. FMF: How about letting me post the album on the blog? McC: Groovy. What’s a blog?
Mr. Martin - as he then was - [left - Ed.]
spoke candidly about the inception and intent of what has come to be
regarded as the Beatles' finest album in the relaxed ambience of his
Knightsbridge mews house.
GM It's a
beauty, isn't it? The boys wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, as
they called it - actually a working title for the album - and the cover
reflects that. Quite exceeded everyone's expectations, and makes Sgt.
Pepper look a very dull boy in comparison.
GM [chuckles] That
was unfortunately the, ah, consensus of critical opinion! Anyway, the
gang had a case of the glums, tails between legs all round, so Ringo
suggested, quite brilliantly, he never quite gets credit due, that
rather than split up on such a disappointing note - pardon the pun! -
they assemble an album from all the contemporary tracks that weren't
recorded for a specific Beatles album. The others leapt at the idea.
They were at the height of their creative powers, yet had the sense to
admit if they didn't split up they ran the very real risk of tarnishing
their record - pardon the pun! - with yet more sub-par material. And
here was this amazing treasure trove of fabulous songs - some of their
greatest - waiting to come together as a fitting envoi to their career! It was, as teenagers are yet to call it, a no-brainer!
GM The
blaze of glory they deserved! All those number one hit singles! And of
course it gave the boys the confidence they needed to launch the new
label and their solo careers. [looks at watch] Great
Heavens! Is that the time? I'll have to let you go, I'm afraid. I'm due
at Television Centre for an interview with T.V.'s Michael Parkinson, for
my sins!
Paul McCartney got it rightwhen he said Aloha was the best album the fab moptops ever made,
but a couple of their other albums have been given the supreme honor of
space on my iPod, and they're both improvements to the originals that
you, the home hi-fi enthusiast, can accomplish yourselves from household
materials and a little old-fashioned can-do gumption! Yessiree Bob! As even the least informed Beatles fan
knows, there were more tracks recorded for Sgt. Pepper than made it to
the album. Why they didn't, and why the album is improved with their
reinstatement, is what we're going to look at now. Firstly, it's not a
question of groove time. Adding the missing songs results in a
fifty-minute album; long, but do-able at the time of release. There are
two reasons why Northern Song, Penny Lane, and Strawberry Fields (all
recorded during the album sessions for the album) were left off.
It was current practice not to put singles on Beatles albums, because
fans would feel cheated at buying the same song twice. This is not a
concern today, when Beatles fans happily buy as many versions of the
same song as possible. When Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane were pulled as a
single the songs became ineligible for the album. Nuts by today's
standards, but there you go. It's not hard to speculate why Northern
Song got axed. In spite of some criticism from certain quarters it
stands up well to the Lennon/McCartney compositions, and is arguably
more interesting ("better" if you like) than Within You Without You. It
got cut because it would have given Harrison unprecedented groove time
on an album, something L/McC might have been uncomfortable with. Neither
reason should concern us today. Reinstating these tracks is bringing them home.
The only other context you're going to hear them in is record-label
marketing projects (the MMT album, and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack)
that had little or no Beatles input other than signatures on a contract.
Reinstating these songs isn't screwing around with the classics. It's
not sacrilege. It's artistically, historically, and musically the right
thing to do. The only problem is - and it's an enjoyable one -
programming the tracks so they fit with the album. Adding them at the
end as "bonus" tracks doesn't work. They need to be integrated. Cutting
into the impeccably engineered segués is neither an option or necessary,
nor is altering the original track order. You can either solve the
problem yourself, or click in the comments to hear how I did it. The
result is an album that sounds complete and correct and natural. I never
now play the original edited release because it sounds like there's something missing. Which there is. Beaucoup.
Compleating Revolver involves slipping
in the associated singles and B-sides, making a 16-track forty-minute
album - again, totally do-able. I think altering the track order is
permissible here, and even necessary. I was never happy with Taxman as
lead track for a number of reasons, but Tomorrow Never Knows is a
natural and epic finale. Again, the easy way out - of adding the tracks as "bonus" material at the end - is unsatisfactory.
I toyed with using Robert Freeman's rejected circular design for the
cover, but rejected it in favor of this colorful outtake from the
sessions, as I did for Pepper. Neither of these solutions claims to be
definitive, and there may be technical aspects that could be improved.
You may, if the idea doesn't make you throw up your pale hands in
horror, prefer your own solutions.
This isn't really an interview in the accepted sense of the word. I didn't get the opportunity to ask Ms Ono about John's unreleased Single Fantasy
album as she basically had her foot on my throat the whole time. What
follows is a direct transcription of the contents of the tape, and I
think her stream-of-consciousness delivery and elliptical zen-like
utterances give us a better insight into her process than the normal
question-and-answer dynamic. "Single Fantasy was going to be John's
album, always. I gave him the artistic freedom he needed, like snow in a
very small room, a dark room, and this snow was my gift, but he said, I
can't do this, mummy! Please help me! I'm all alone! And I said John
you are strong, like an orange in a subway train that's slowing at a
station, and it's rolling on the floor, and this is your strength, John,
you can hold it. Can you hold the roundness? And he said, but what I've
done is just me, like you're not there, and it's empty. And I said it's
a beautiful album, John, it's like a drop of water at the bottom of the
lake, and it's looking up at a leaf, and it's beautiful. But he said I
need your talent, Yoko, only you can save the album, please make it my
Double Fantasy! And he started screaming EEEEEEEE!!!!! and I screamed with him, EEEEEEEE!!!! and
the air was full of tiny, tiny stars, but made of pasta, that were
songs, and we painted our bodies with them and they became the Double
Fantasy album."
In November '68, the band staged
an impromptu rooftop concert, filming the event as a
documentary "happening". Check out the somber tones of the grim urban
setting! The delighted crowds gathering in the street! The band dressed
warm against the wintry weather! Guys hanging out of windows, digging
the action! The cutaway shots of disapproving old-timers! The arrival of
the cops, signaling the end of a revolutionary and totally original
free concert! Hoo boy! Some exciting gig, right? But that's
enough about the Airplane. The fact that the Beatles replicated the
event - down to the last detail - a scant couple of months later is a
testament to their genius. Not The Beatles' genius - they were just
doing their copying thing again - the Airplane's.
The irony! Just when the Beatles started believing in their own myth, their audience started seeing through it. Magical Mystery Tour
arrived on a great blue wave of post-Pepper excitement and good will,
which broke into gray scum after a few uncomfortable minutes of viewing
time. The backlash was almost universal - the Beatles had at last
alienated the Man In The Street and the Man On The Clapham Omnibus.
They’d tested the public’s patience with the unsettlingly weird Strawberry Fields Forever and the less whistlable parts of Sgt. Pepper, but this shabby, vaguely unpleasant, and above all ballsachingly boring
home movie effectively squandered the affection of a nation.
Beatlemaniacs will scoff at this, but we’re not here to pander to fans,
who are by nature strangely unbalanced. We’re here to understand why
love affairs go sour.
The
Beatles believed they only needed a Super-8 camera and a bunch of
C-list pals sitting in a bus and a movie would happen. How hard could it
be? They didn’t bother with a script - genius is above such mundane
travail - so there is no story. Brilliant! They made a colossal error of
hubris by premiering it on primetime television.
Had they kept it a private project to screen in their living rooms it
could be forgiven, perhaps even loved. But they believed it was a
product of Beatle-genius, worthy of national exposure, and cleverly
hedged their bets by telling us not to take it seriously. A bit of fun for the Christmas holidays! Fuck us if we couldn't take a joke, right?
Except
nobody was laughing. There was nothing remotely fun, or even
entertaining, about it. Not a single line has been filed at the quote
bank - there’s no “it goes to eleven” here. No scenes are
replayed among friends, or even recalled with pleasure. Remember the bit
where ...? Nope. Maybe where they’re dressed as animals, miming to I Am The Walrus.
Or when someone explodes from over-eating. Oh wait, that’s another
movie. It was the first time Beatle fans had to defend their idols, and
it was hard going for the most articulate of them. Surrealist, brave, non-conformist, the Liverpool Lads cock a scally snook at the pretentions of cinema as art. Or something.
The
movie, with its insulting absence of talent, craft, fun, excitement and
charm - all signature Beatle qualities to that point - set the stage
for an album that bafflingly remains a cornerstone of pop; "The White
Album". Magical Mystery Tour was forgotten, maybe forgiven. This was The Big One. Even the title was shouting at us - this wasn't an album by the Beatles, this was an album about the Beatles. The
impact it had on release is unimaginable for anyone who wasn’t there.
It was a global event. That brilliant, brilliant cover. A double! How
revolutionary was that? Well, not very, actually, but hey! They printed the track timings! Wow! That’s really ... uh ...
I’d been one of the believers defending the Mystery Tour, even though the sour acid of I Am The Walrus and the miserablist Blue Jay Way, the irritating triteness of the title track and Your Mother Should Know, and the disposability of the instrumental Plodding left only the Clever Paulie song Fool On The Hill
to actually like. Hopes that the new album would be a return to form
(although that phrase was unheard back then) were put on hold by radio
previews. The songs, apart from the throat-slashingly horrible Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da,
were stubbornly unmemorable and, crucially, un-fun. Still - this was
The Beatles! I’d get up to speed. The spokesmen of a generation were
leading us to a new level. I ponied up for the album - about the price
of a small family car, as it seemed - and started to learn to live with
it. I studied the poster, the portraits and the small print as I
listened, like a homework assignment. I could find nothing to love. It
was a joyless, depressing thing. I had to be wrong. This was The BEATLES.
Although I lacked the courage to voice my doubts, I smelled a rat, and I smelled it from the first seconds of the first tuneless track. Sound effect of a plane? He's just flown in? Well, gee whiz.
The song left me baffled. Was it meant to be funny? Satirical? Was the
target Chuck Berry, or the U.S.S.R.? The U.S.A.? Fuck knew. Or cared.
The strongest radio presence was the cringing knock-off ska of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da,
covered by twinkling teenybop popsters The Tremeloes. Or was it
bouncing bubblegum combo The Marmalades? Whatever. It was another Stupid
Paulie song that not even a Joe Cocker could - or would want to - save.
Ska was not their only smirking musical affectation. There was the
not-even Yer Blues, the Clumsy Rock Helter Skelter, the Simpering Twenties Honey Pie, the cod psychedelic Glass Onion, the uneasy-listening Good Night, the potting shed C&W Rocky Racoon and Don't Pass Me By, and so on and on and on. Nothing was real. And the songs that weren't half-assed stylistic gestures were just ... half-assed. I'm So Tired, Happiness Is A Warm Gun
and others fell into a listless torpor, musically uninspired, and
lyrically about nothing - because the Beatles' contempt for the writing
process (cf Magical Mystery Tour) led them to believe that the
first words that came into their muddled heads were good enough -
poetry, even! Harrison's shrewish world-view, as always, extended as far
as his bank statement - Piggies was yet another ugly sixth-form
whine about his tax dollar putting bacon on the tables of the decadent
rich. Still - nice to be reminded of a time when billionaires actually
paid taxes.
The
material was partly written at The Maharishi’s Meditation Camp, and we can
imagine the nurturing atmosphere, perfect for song-writing; planeloads
of spoiled Western pop stars, WAGs, scenesters and spiritual pilgrims
(saintly Mia Farrow!), all sitting painfully cross-legged, struggling to control the eventful vegetarian diet,
while Ugly Bearded Guy mumbles into his love beads. The Beatles, to
their credit, fell out of love with the greasy-eyed slob pretty rapidly,
but their *cough* search for inner peace was symptomatic of
end-of-the-decade malaise, the overriding mood of the Gray Album. The
Beatles, the ’sixties, everything was falling apart, and nobody wanted
to admit it. Their
retirement from live performance, because the poor dears
“couldn’t replicate the sound of their records” (something that didn't
seem to bother any other band on the planet) was the beginning of
the end. They'd always been hot-wired to what was happening on the street,
supernaturally adept at appropriating an idea so quickly it looked like
their own. Now, they locked themselves away in their pig-sty manor
houses and stared at the bathroom tiles for inspiration. Blank white
squares.
In the absence of inspiration and experimentation we got ... reference points.
Fans love this, claiming it to be the first (finger-waggle)
"post-modern" pop album. It may well be. But it was not clever enough,
or too clever by half, a sterile vacuum rather than bubbling cauldron.
Who gives a shit about "post-modernism" except "post-modernists"? And
who gives a shit about them? A very few songs escaped through the Irony
Curtain, their sincerity intact. Mother Nature’s Son is sheerly lovely. Julia
wins - barely, on points - its fight against mawkishness. Clapton
clearly hadn't read the memo, his guitar wailing passionately instead of
gently weeping. Gently fucking weeps?? Jesus wept.
It’s the cookie-cutter Glass Onion that tells the story. The psychedelic effects were already, in ’69, quotes from the past. Beatle History 101: “I told you ‘bout Strawberry Fields ...” Stop right there. John is telling us he told us. That distance - self-referential, "post-modern" - pervades this melody-dodging shopping list of a song, and the entire album. There’s nothing remotely as direct and dazzling as Strawberry Fields Forever or Penny Lane. Nothing as thrilling as A Hard Day’s Night. As heartfelt as Help. As compassionate as Eleanor Rigby. The Beatles were history, and "The White Album" is their Coles Notes.
Nobody
wants to admit a love affair - a marriage - is over. Relationships are
dragged into the shit because we don't want to let go. The Beatles were
waist deep and we willingly followed in their wake, in denial of the
stink. The scuttlebutt was that the album was recorded mostly solo
(sorry - soli) because all the evidence pointed towards it; the music-biz gossip and tabloid tattle of breaking up, the scatter-shot lack of direction (sorry - dizzying eclecticism), the separate mugshots. And here’s another clue for you all - the trash-thrown-on-the-floor poster. All this told us what we didn't want to know but knew already.
The
recent cash cow box set spun a different story for the suckers. Jolly
Giles Martin decided the sessions were warm and fuzzy, a real team
effort, the lads on a creative roll and having fu-un in the
studio. Maybe - we weren’t there, but neither was he. Scag-panda Yoko
Ono was, though - nobody’s idea of a good idea, except her smacked-up
husband's. Geoff Emerick and Ringo Starr both walked out of the
sessions. How toxic do things have to get for Ringo to walk out?
Paulie bitching about his drumming, that's how. Giles Goat Boy’s happy
revisionism is nothing but marketing strategy - reassess this timeless classic in a fun new light!
As with the yoks-free Mystery Tour, there’s no evidence of brotherly
(or sisterly) love in the grooves. "The White Album" is Thirty Shades Of
Gray.
For the first time, nobody played a Beatles album from beginning to end. Its unendurable length (sorry, its epic scope)
is another clue. They knew they couldn’t come up with another Pepper,
so they kept flinging shit at the wall. Didn't know where to start, or
when to stop. The hubris that fueled the Mystery Tour is given free
rein. There’s an entire album’s worth of filler in there - Even Beatle Shit Stinks.
It’s a popular fan exercise to try to construct the single album it
might have been (the Doll’s House), but none of them works because there
simply isn’t enough material to make a great single album. Godammit,
there isn’t enough to make a great single.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, the Rolling Stones confronted the times head-on with Beggar’s Banquet,
a blast of honest, unironic, and uncompromisingly adult
music beyond the scope of the Beatle-babies in their sound-proofed
playpen.
The Stones stayed together and went on to shape the 'seventies, while
the Fabs broke apart in cat-fight spite and sobbing sulks. Cry baby cry - you're old enough to know better.
I
wrestled with this four-headed monster until I believed in it. I
indoctrinated myself, and treasured my original lo-number mono and
stereo vinyls, bestowing on them a liturgical status, beyond criticism. I
came late - but not too late - to the realisation that my first
impressions were on the money. Falling out of love with the Fab Four was
a long and mostly unconscious process, but now I'm down to four (or
five) albums I occasionally listen to. "The White Album" was first for
the dumpster fire. I loved 'em back then, but I don't pore over old love
letters and photographs of ex-girlfriends. When you’re in love (as
millions still are with the luvverly lads) you’re blind to faults. Love is all you need, right? Belief frees you from having to think and see
and question and doubt. The Beatles are a religion with an enduring
recorded scripture, but forget about the Second Coming - their happy
clappers haven’t accepted the First Going. The Thirty Shades Of Gray
Album is both holy text and temple for the faithful, but for the Man In
The Street, the Man On The Clapham Omnibus, and The Man Who Fell To
Earth after years in the ozone of romance ... it stinks.
Jordan Alexander [who he? - Ed.] gushes over the Emperor's New Clothes ...
“The
greatest record ever made, not only in terms of its innovation and its
strange, impenetrable, endlessly suggestive beauty but also because of
its place at the apex of the Beatles’ career and its role as an
aesthetic keystone for nearly all the rock-and-roll recordings that have
followed"
... and Nik Cohn sees right through them:
“Boring beyond belief.”
"I am just a garden gnome on the lawn of life."
George Harrison's first
album is not only the finest work by a solo Beetle, a bar not as high
as some would argue, it's an astonishing album by any standard. Ignoring
the perhaps over-generous third disc of jamming, there's not a bad
track on it. Nor an even ordinary one. Except I Dig Love, which is crap.
It
was unaffordable for many on release, me included, but I picked it up
second-hand soon after. The thing is, and hear me out, I don't remember anyone
whining about Phil Spector's production back then. It was a massive
album, and sounded that way. The kind of massive that wouldn't be heard
again until Born To Run. You weren't meant to hear individual instruments in clinical separation, you were meant to be overwhelmed. And everyone was.
The Grumpy One said "I
didn't have many tunes on Beatles records, so doing an album like All
Things Must Pass was like going to the bathroom and letting it out" And it was good shit.
An
unnecessary note on the title: All Things Must Pass has a nicely
philosophical and comforting ring to it, and we can imagine it intoned
by the lamasery abbot as we genuflect before him. Let Abe Lincoln tell
the story: "It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his
wise men to invent him a
sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations. They presented him the words: and this,
too, shall pass away. How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour
of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!" This iteration of
the phrase is preferable to Harrison's tombstone dogmatism. All Things
Must Pass? Things are already passing, dude. There's a paradox at work
here: In the future, things must pass into the past, which is like
the present. So we're living in the future! Groovy! I prefer the beautiful phrase (which I got from a Shpongle record) nothing lasts, but nothing is lost, quoted in the blog header, which is the entrance to a very spectacular wormhole.
Sleeve job by Dave at the Pork Bend Kinko's - ask to see the range of wedding invites and corporate logos!
If Mr. Protheroe had focused his huge talents a little back in '74, if he'd ditched the whimsy and insisted on a better sleeve, he might have broken in the Untied Snakes of Amerigo instead of remaining a bit of a cult in the UK. A cult with a boney-fido hit in the terrific title track, which ensured his continued semi-fame as a one hit wonder.
Earworm melodies, chord changes to make the Dan Fan's mouth water, high quality vocals (including note-perfect harmonies), inneresding woids and soopoib production. You might call it jazz-inflected art-pop, if you knew what that meant, ya bum. Just make sure you download this sucker, because it's friggin' awesome.
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