And the endless white noise at the end of I Want You? Thank you oh so very much, John. Maybe it's a gruelingly accurate reflection of your 3 a.m. smack boner or whatever, but - it's just noise. Revolution #9 was sound, this is noise, and fuck you very much. The new anniversary edition of Abbey Road shows us what this joyless shit-storm senselessly obliterates - a stunning extended jam, with Billy Preston's wild keys running the voodoo down. So that now forms the coda here, as it should have. Not for the first time during this album I have to ask myself what the fuck were these guys thinking?
The calm after the storm is Paul's lovely Goodbye, from the anniversary set. Why was this sidelined for Maxwell's? Why is Trump president? Descartes - it may have been Trini Lopez - in his Critique Of Pure Reason, posited that shit gets fucked up, and that's as close as we're going to get to an answer.
Both sides of Abbey Roadworks open with a Harrison song, and Old Brown Shoe makes the cut, as it would have had not L&McC been shitting themselves that it was starting to look like a Harrison solo album. I've mixed down the teeth-grating nuisance-guitar fouling up Oh! Darling, and Her Majesty is back in its original place, so the real majesty of The End isn't deflated by Paul's whimsy. What's that you say? You really enjoy waiting for Her Majesty at the end? Octopus's Garden is a fun tune? They made that album awready.
Pimp my iconic classic rock album classic.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about Maxwell's Silver Hammer. As a 15 year old boy, I loved that song, and I think it as written with youngsters as it's target audience.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not McCartney's finest hour, but if Ringo wrote it, people would have been very impressed.
Before John reached back in time for some childish fun on his Rock & Roll LP (Bony Maronie), injecting some whimsy was often up to Paul. - Stinky
I thought I'd been harsh in my criticism, but your "if Ringo wrote it, people would have been very impressed" is more damning than anything I could think of! Kudos!
DeleteThis is quite something, thanks!
ReplyDeleteThank 'ee, Barfers.
DeleteI lost interest in the Beatles after Revolver. Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt. Peppers, Abbey Road all suffered from weak songs with lots of studio gimmicks to hide the weak writing.
ReplyDeleteHello Goodbye is pound for pound, song for song, the best Beatles album they should have made, and kicks Abbey Road into the shade. For those new to Th' House O'Foam©, it's the very first post, at the bottom of the Click Bait Shop menu in the sidebar. Over there. To the right. March. Hup two three four!
DeleteWhen asked by a bunch of theologians what one could infer about the Creator, based on a study of His Creation, British biologist, mathematician and all round brainbox JBS Haldane replied "An inordinate fondness for beetles." (There are far more types of beetles than any other insect order).
ReplyDeleteThankfully, no such favouritism at Th'House O'Foam©.
I too was in love with the Beatles. They changed my culture and my life. But those times are gone, and we're left with a bunch of records. The Beatles as personalities, the group as a living dynamic and agent for change, these aspects aren't relevant any more. We should be able to assess the records (the artefacts of their art) for what they are: Abbey Road is essentially a couple of good Harrison songs and a ragbag of remnants cleverly sewn together to make new clothes for the Emperor. Yet millions of people still worship the thing, still sit through the awfulness of Maxwell & Octopus, the grooves pretending to be songs of Come Together & I Want You, the effortful irony (or something) of Oh! Darling.
DeleteWhat compounds the awfulness of Maxwell's Silver Hammer is the amount of time they spent on it in the studio. Maybe there is a book or a PhD to be written on this one song, and how it illustrates how hubris can afflict the mighty.
ReplyDeleteThe big, ballsy bag of annoyance that is Oh Darling was a type of song Macca revisited throughout his career. See also Let Me Roll it from Band on the Run, and Call Me Back Again from Venus and Mars.
Macca is a simpering Bambi-boy. And Jack Casady is a better bass player.
DeleteThanks, Farq. Tho any fule kno that the Pontardawe Goddess Mary Hopkin's version of Goodbye cuts the Beatles' into shreds of their nicey-nicey Pierre Cardin collarless jackets. Hopkin Rocks! Hopkin Roooooools!
ReplyDeleteThose Tiger Bay girls, eh?
DeleteBurly Chassis ain't got nuthin' on Hopkin...
DeleteYour "Roadworks" is an interesting idea but ultimately misses the mark.
ReplyDeleteStarting with "Here Comes The Sun" is fine, as is adding "Old Brown Shoe".
However, substituting the "Oh! Darling" remix is definitely a mistake. The guitars are just too low in the mix for no good reason.
The new "I Want You" is pointless, as all the good bits of the "extended jam" were present in the original. The only "wild keys" of Preston's that were missing are the parts where he is literally just banging the keyboard. There's nothing revelatory or necessary there, and in fact *that* was "just noise". That fake Italian gibberish in "Sun King" is also "just noise" but you didn't take that off the album. It turns out Lennon made the correct call.
Ditching "Maxwell" is no big loss for the album, but including "Goodbye" is nothing really gained. Neither one belongs on the album. But "Garden" is missed, if for no other reason than the "underwater 'ahhhhhhs'". Why not let Ringo have a last one on their last album.
And they again made the correct call by cutting out "Her Majesty" and turning it into a "hidden track", if accidentally.
So, again, an interesting experiment. But ultimately just as flawed, if not more so, than the original. But we do appreciate the effort.
Gee! That's mighty swell of you, Mister "Royal We" Anonymous!
DeleteBy "we" I meant all the readers of your blogsite. We do sincerely appreciate what you say and share.
Delete"Abbey Road" is at best a Beatles reunion album--and should be judged as such. Meaning: The dead should bury the dead. Necrophilia never makes for good music. You're absolutely right about this album: poor remains of the greatest band of its time.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'd go a little further back. The white album is four separate guys trying to find a direction, trying to be The Beatles again (even calling the album THE BEATLES in some kind of desperation) and failing. The spirit of the times had left them by then. It's a mess, without a single great song on it. There have been many fan attempts at the "what if" single album but none of them works, none of them is better than the double, because the lack of strong songs becomes immediately apparent. The album needs all that "sprawl" and filler - the smoke and mirrors - to cover up the emptiness and lack of inspiration that characterizes all their work post-Pepper. It's all reheating, back-referencing, and "irony". There are some who dismiss Pepper, but it's a worthy conclusion (especially in the Compleat version) to a recording career nobody wanted to end. Denial and delusion set in with MMT, because lovers don't want to break up, and anything that reminds them of the good times is better than admitting they're over.
DeleteA little late to the discussion, but hey.
DeleteIn the Beatles Anthology film, the three surviving Beatles (Threetles) all cite the white LP as being their fave of all their work together, as they claim it was in fact the last time they actually did worked together.
I fell for that working solo line for years too. Think about it. Just back from India. Eppy is gone. They pulled together as a team, and the Esher demos show that to be true also.
Time to put that old white LP canard to rest once and for all.