Beatles Dept. - Beatles Content Overload!

By way of an explanation

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).

So what follows is CURATED from old and forgotten pieces on th' IoF© which are actually about the group in some way or another. Only one is deadly serious, the TL-DR assessment of The White Album, but most of it makes some point or another under the guise of Whimsy and Pastiche. We'll see if it's as popular as the post with nothing at all to say. Over to you, Fabs Fans and Beatlemaniacs!

 

This interview, exclusive to False Memory Foam©, took place in Sir Paul’s “Fortress of Solitude” - a partially converted warehouse in the meat-packing district of Poughkeepsie, NY. Paul was a gracious host, apologising for the mess (body parts don’t worry me), and leading me up to the roof, where he shook out some pork scratchings on paper plates and decanted vintage Cisco© wine into Flintstones© sipping beakers.

FMF: Cheers! Nice place you got here.
McC: [shrugs] I need to get away, sometimes. Be me, you know?
FMF: Okay. Can I start the interview with a question?
McC: That’s a question already.
FMF: Not that one. Another one?
McC: Is that the other one?
FMF: I remember you saying the Beatles [popular singing group - Ed.] should have broken up after Sgt. Pepper. I thought I was the only person to think that, so I was surprised to hear you say it.
McC: We went a bit shit after Pepper, to be honest. Yeah.
FMF: Sixty-eight was a bust.
McC: We didn’t know what the fuck we wanted to do. No direction. There was that home movie we did ... [clicks fingers]
FMF: Magical ... something?
McC: Yeah. That was embarrassing, you know? Everybody hated it. We hated it.
FMF: Some people like it.
McC: [laughs] Some people on drugs like it. Not good drugs. Prescription drugs.
FMF: So why did you stay together?

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?

The Aloha album may be familiar to th' Four Or Five Guys©, so we're delighted to run, for the first time ever, an exclusive interview with "fifth Beatle" George Martin, recorded just prior to its release in 1968, and the Beatles' break-up.

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.

FMF© Firstly, Mr. Martin, I hope you won't take offence at my not calling you Sir George, on account you're not getting knighted until the end of the century.

GM Good Lord. That long? But do please call me George.

FMF© And secondly, thank you - George - for letting us reproduce the original cover, as an exclusive for th' Isle O' Foam©.

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.

FMF© Can you tell us a little about the genesis of the album?

GM Well, the boys were more than a little hurt by the adverse reaction to the Magical Mystery Tour project -

FMF© [cutting in] Shit movie.

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!

FMF© It was also their best-selling album, and regularly tops critics all-time best lists. Jann Wenner [magazine printer - Ed.] said it was "not only the Beatles' greatest and most lasting achievement, but captured the essence of the era like no other work of art in any field."

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!

Part of Beatles mythology is the supposed antagonism between two of the most flamboyant “rock chicks” in the World of Pop - Yummy Yoko [Ono - Ed.] and Luscious Linda [Oh fuck - Ed.]! Nothing could be further from the truth! FMF© can now “set the record😀 straight” with an exclusive interview granted by the talented twosome back in 1970, but unpublished anywhere until now! The interview took place at Bakersfield’s secluded Ernie’s Five Buck Motel n' Lube, where the dishy duo were preparing their “top secret” duets album. They share the double bed and a pitcher of root beer as they talk, unashamedly displaying their affection and professional respect for each other during the interview.

FMF: Thanks for inviting me, girls. Nice room you got. View over the dumpsters.
YO: [giggles] We got a vibrating bed!
FMF: And your own casette recorder! Is that for your songs?
LM: We have like a bunch already? Gonna surprise a lot of people.
FMF: Could you describe your working methodology? How you write together?
YO: Hmm. I guess I’m, like, the tune thing happening? I have a melodic gift. So I like, you know, make my vocals in the shower and we record that and then Lin, who’s way more ... she’s ...
LM: [nods] I make the words. I guess you could say that words ... is my business.
FMF: What about instrumentation? I see a Bontempi Chord Organ over there.
LM: I am classically trained. Yoko does her sound art.
YO: I move around the room, hitting things? Places have voices - I set them free. And the bed motor is cool, like this primal heart beat.
LM: Chugga-chugga.
YO: That’s one of our songs, Chugga-Chugga. [feeds quarter into bed]

[edit]

FMF: [zipping up] What will you do with the demo tape?
LM: [from shower] Demo tape? What?
YO: This is the Yokolinda album. Recorded live. No plastic overdubs.
LM: Pure music, raw talent. Like lentils. And straw.
YO: It will bring world peace. To the world!
FMF: Could you give me the titles of some other songs?
YO: There’s, uh, The Turnip Screams As She Is Torn From The Bloody Womb Of Mother Soil. That’s the single. It's like thirty minutes long!
LM: More like half an hour.
YO: And Pinky Poo Poo. Paul [McCartney - Ed.] wrote that one for us. It’s cute!
FMF: So your guys are cool with their old ladies doing their own thing?
LM: They give us our space. John [Lennon - Ed.]'s even paying all the recording costs. Bag of quarters for the bed. Everything.
YO: [counting off on fingers] And there's Chugga-Chugga ...
[one minute of tape silence here]
FMF: Okay. In the future, when there’s an internet, can I make the Yokolinda songs available free of charge? In case, you know, it’s never released as an album by a record label?
YO: [snorts] Ri-ight. Like that’s gonna happen.

 

Paul McCartney got it right when 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. 

So why and wherefore is this appearing on th' IoF©? Because this is the original vinyl mix, which is strangely hard to find these days. Not only that, it's pbthal's needledrop (if you know, you know). Not only that, I am rendering a pubic cervix by offering both flac - no, really, it should be available, consarn it - and the Baby Jesus Bitrate of @192, for th' jes' plain folks sudge as like I. Om shanti, bitches!

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.

 

 

ALOHA means hello/goodbye.