Jul 202007
An album cover that would not have been possible…
Townsman Al posed the following question that I think is worthy of each of us taking a break or two in this busy day and allowing for some hypothetical discussion. Dig:
Let’s look at it a different way (and Mr. Mod, this may stray from this thread so feel free to move it elsewhere), would the Beatles be what they are today (and I don’t know that we need to or I want to define precisely what that is) if they started with Sgt. Pepper? I don’ think so.
Before you say, “Well that’s a hypothetical question I don’t think any of us are fit to answer!” Give it some thought. Then comment. Here.
I look forward to your responses.
in 1962 or 1967?
fun question to ponder, sort of like philip k. dick’s “man in the high castle”, which portrays america as if the germans and the japanese won wwii.
we DO need an answer to kilroy’s question.
but if their first album was pepper, and it came out when it came out, in the most mundane, practical sense, there wouldn’t have been any anticipation or buildup or expectations for whatever it was that the beatles were going to do next. and maybe everybody would’ve thought that pepper was just a busy, pretentious pile of crap. although i don’t think so. the songs are pretty good, and had it gotten airplay, i still think it would’ve sounded novel for the time.
on the other hand if we just consider the effectiveness of the beatles oeuvre from pepper on, i think that “what the beatles are today” is based largely on that material.
the perception of the mop-top era was that they were flashes in the pan, making teeny bopper music. al, you — and many others (including myself on some counts!) — may have a greater affection for that era than the post revolver stuff, but i think it’s pretty well documented that even more “established” spheres of western culture began to take the beatles seriously in their later years.
more of those songs are the ones that got covered (excepting ‘yesterday’).
booker t and the mg’s covered all of abbey road, and booker’s reason at the time was that he thought it was the best album by the beatles.
i think their later material secured their position over a broader base than their early material did.
one final thought. Pepper is an artificial dividing line in many senses. the beatles began to gain critical acceptance from “the establishment” as early as rubber soul.
It’s funny, but I played Sgt. Pepper last night for the first time in a long time, having only recently acquired it on CD.
What did I notice in comparison to Rubber Soul and Revolver? The downplaying of rock and roll drive in the rhythm section. In short, the downplaying of one of the essential elements of the Beatles’ greatness.
There’s no doubt about it, I think: Sgt. Pepper is an art rock album. Not rock and roll.
By 67, the bop-bop-a-lu bop of rock and roll was starting to be played out, for good and bad reasons. The good: well, it’s a limited form, and it has to either stretch out or be reduced to repetition. The bad: probably that late 60s hipness would have said trad rock and roll wasn’t just contemporary enough. Not “with it.”
Sgt. Pepper wowed everybody in 1967 because of its art rock studio complexity that seemed to “change the world” by expanding (or abandoning, take your pick) the vocabulary of trad rock and roll.
History can’t be rewritten, obviously, but a band playing the early Beatles sound in 1967 would have had a much harder time being more than a historical footnote, like the Zombies, say. And if the Beatles had come out of nowhere in 67 with St. Pepper, then historically they might lead, at best, by a nose over, say, Genesis, Procul Harum, and The Moody Blues.
The Beatles are as essential as they are not only because of what they do, but because of when they do it.
I think I started this. My comment in the other thread was admittedly intended to be provocative, but I did mean it. It was based on the original formulation of the question about artists who all of a sudden “lost it.” The question was later reformulated to mean something like “great work followed by an endless string of turds.”
I would not characterize everything produced after 1967 by the Beatles as a group and solo as uniformly turdish. But I do contend that nothing after 1967 has the spark of the era before Epstein’s death (to take an obvious but possibly irrelevant date as a guidepost). I find the idea that Abbey Road is the Beatles’ masterpiece unfathomable.
After 1967 there’s stuff that is variously nice, fun, interesting, rocking, sweet, bracing, sharp, tough, fine. There’s just as much that’s stupid, misguided, lost, boring, nice, smarmy, embarrassing, useless.
But there’s nothing truly great.
Townsman Mwall is getting at a lot of what I’m thinking.
First, let me tighten up the hypothesis (and answer Kilroy’s question at the same time). Let’s not say that Sgt. Pepper springs full blown from the mind of Zeus as the Beatles first album in 1967. But let’s imagine if the Beatles were, I don’t know, Herman’s Hermits or even the Kinks, or vice versa. Now, great as the Kinks were or Noone & company were (I know some believe that and I personally love my Herman’s Hermits greatest hits album) nobody is going to say they came anywhere near the Beatles.
Suppose, then, that the Kinks or the Hermits came out with Sgt. Pepper in 1967 and the rest of their career followed the Beatles (next came MMT, etc.). Or conversely, the Beatles, pre-Pepper, put out You Really Got Me, All The Day, Face To Face, etc. or Henry VIII, I’m Into Something Good, etc.
Would those Beatles be looked upon today in the same way? 30 years after they broke up, could they have put out a collection entitled “1” that sells over 10 million copies? Would everyone (an exaggeration for sure) know the lyrics to all their songs? Would they grace the cover of every 4th issue of Mojo and Uncut? Would Paul be writing classical oratorios and actually getting attention for it? Would George have had the pull to form the Traveling Wilburys? And a thousand other “woulds”…
I just don’t think so.
I think Mwall is correct about Pepper just being another (albeit maybe the best of) the art-rock albums. I think Sgt. Pepper was received as it was in large measure because of who the Beatles were. Their fans would follow them anywhere; I don’t think that can be emphasized enough in assessing the reaction to Sgt. Pepper. Even the Beach Boys, as popular as they were, could not get their fans to follow them into Pet Sounds. And Abbey Road is a masterpiece (although I won’t go so far as to call it the masterpiece of their career) but without the Beatles history, I think by the time it came out, the rock & roll world was already well into its splintering such that it would not be viewed in the same way without that history.
The early ‘60s needed the Beatles and the Beatles needed the early ‘60s; it was truly an alignment of the stars. As great as I think the Beatles pre-Pepper music is, I don’t think you can separate that music and the cultural impact of the Beatles. (And there’s grist for another thread – who had the greatest combined musical/cultural impact? Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, Michael Jackson,…) But the Stones, the Kinks, and the rest came of age in the same era and they weren’t the Beatles because as great as their music was it wasn’t as great. And, I guess, then there are the personalities involved (the cute one, the quiet one, etc.) as a third factor.
So, twisting the hypothesis, if Meet The Beatles came out in 1967 and everything proceeded the same after that, I don’t think they’d have had the same impact. But I know I’d have all the albums and would be playing them regularly and loving them just as much.
Enough for now; this is getting too long and I’m losing focus.
If the Beatles hadn’t come along exactly >em>when they did, Sgt. Pepper by anyone in 1967 might not have mattered. Rock and roll was really breathing it’s last gasps around 1961 and 62. Girl Groups and novelty songs ruled the charts (and while I’ll agree they’re a subgenre of rock n’ roll, if there ain’t any geetars, it’s just real hard to get your rock across).
The Beatles showed up with all those glorious geetars and saved rock and roll in America. Just look at how the charts changed by 64 and 65. While I’m no big Beatles fan, I can certainly appreciate what they did for me by showing up when they did, with just enough cuteness and just enough geetars and all that stuff. So I tend to think if the Beatles hadn’t shown up until 67, we might all be discussing crooners and lounge lizards.
Oh, Al! Oh no you di’int!
While I’ll give the nod to The Beatles for crafting the most advanced, and possibly best music up to Sgt. Pepper, starting with the Jumping Jack Flash single, the Stones took that away. The Beatles wrote too many English Dance Hall Skiffle tunes and novelty songs (no album with Maxwell’s Silver Hammer can be the de facto masterpiece), and by the last note of Soul Survivor the Stones had earned the title “Greatest Group on Earth.” Their focus was as good then as the Beatles had been previously.
Why 2K man? (Pun out of the way!)
I’m not saying whether I disagree with you or not but you have no cause to disagree with me; in fact you agree. I was talking precisely about that pre-Pepper era when the Beatles were above the rest.
This is some fantastic stuff. Thanks, Townsmen Al, BigSteve, and the rest of you who’ve kicked this off. Thanks for allowing yourself to get hypothetical.
Al, the main problem you overlook in your premise is the role The Beatles played in establishing THE TEMPLATE for GROUP ROCK ‘n ROLL. I’m sure if you ask any of the Beatles, dead or alive, about this, that they’d go on about the importance of Buddy Holly and the Crickets or The Shadows or Cliff Richard’s band, if that’s not the same thing as The Shadows (I can’t keep those early Brit bands straight). Until The Beatles, there was not a rock group that was compose of four, almost equally essential members. Maybe George could have been replaced in the early Beatles – maybe – but the four of them each possessed rock super powers that would have been in evidence had they not made an impression until Sgt. Peppers. They would have emerged, maybe later than they did, as John, Paul George, and Ringo, much like Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb emerged in the mid-70s with Disco Super Powers (emphasis mine) after years of solid “second-rate” releases that kept them anonymously The Bee Gees. In the servise of Saturday Night Fever, however, they emerged with tremendous, readily identifiable powers, perhaps with Maurice playing the understated George role. This is a really good point, if I do say so myself.
Who, then, would have claimed rock’s first full-fledged super power status? The Rolling Stones? I think not. As great as they were, rock never latched onto the mortician character played by Bill Wyman. The Kinks? Nah, Pete Quaife never contributed a song and Mick Avory was spending all his free time thanking god for getting to hold the drummer’s throne in a cool rock band. The Beach Boys? Perhaps, but at a certain point the Rock Super Powers of Carl being able to sing higher than Al yet not as high as Brian and the powers of Dennis and Brian managing to maintain full heads of hair would have paled compared with the arsenal each Beatle brought to the table at any time in the band’s existence. These are also strong (emphasis mine) points to consider.
Listen, I don’t have anywhere near all the answers, and I’m excited to see where we all take this. So I’ll shut up for now. Just think about the band’s role at Rock Super Heroes and tell me how far white group rock ‘n roll would have gotten before they’d emerged as the leaders of the pack.
I think I very much agree with what you are saying here Mr. Mod, except I’m not sure I understand it. I get some sense that you are disagreeing with me but I can’t figure out where from your explanation.
I do think that your point of the Beatles setting the template strikes right to the heart of the matter. I referred to one facet of that prism by referring the the personalities but it applies to the musical talent as well.
But isn’t that why they couldn’t have started out with Sgt. Pepper? Isn’t that the most discernable point at which the template started to fall apart? The point at which the whole was no longer so far more than the sum of the four individuals.
And maybe that’s the way to view what set the Beatles apart from everyone else – there was no other group where the whole so far exceeded the sum of the parts. Which is not to discount how great a sum that sum was.
I SUMMON E. PLURIBUS GERGELY! What gives, brother? You’re probably the only person in these Halls of Rock who can name a second member of Hermin’s Hermits.
No, I can too. There was Peter Noone and there was Herman, whose last name I can’t remember right now…
Mr. Mod, you’re talking about image. I thought we were talking about music. I grant you that in pop cultural terms, image is important, and all that stuff about templates and roles and heroes figures into their cultural legacy. It’s just that I don’t really care all that much about that crap, except insofar as it affects the music. And the only way that I see that it does is that the group identity of the Beatles seems to have been lost after 1967, and their dissolution into individualism robbed the music of its essential spirit.
What I’m saying, Al, is that had The Beatles not hit their stride until Sgt. Pepper’s, they still would have filled out the suits better than any rock band at that time. They still would have quickly cemented a major legacy from that point forward. In my opinion there was something essential about them that was there at any point in their career. This “it” that BigSteve talks about – to me – was there at any time, even on some of the crap songs from any given period, be they “This Boy” (sorry, romantic hand-holders) or “Your Mother Should Know” (yeah, that’s a momma’s boy looking right back at me in the mirror). We agree on a lot of things in this discussion. Take heart in that.
Where we disagree is that there was a point at which the template broke up. To me it progressed about as far as almost any band has ever taken it. They went from the mop-top, all-for-one-and-one-for-all early Beatles to the we’re young men seeing the world in bold new ways, you can too Beatles to, by the time of The White Album, now we’re adults dealing with our own lives but still managing to come together under stressful situations and release records the thumb-sucking Beach Boys and tune-challenged Pretty Things and Pink Floyd would give their left nuts to release Beatles. They went through each phase as a group, and they accomplished a lot in each phase. I still care about each of them individually through each phase, and I’m still fascinated by them as a group. It wouldn’t suprise me, at this point, if a number of you suddenly see what I’m getting at and say something to the effect of, “Good god, man, I’m finding that I agree with you.” Perhaps Geo or General Slocum will step forward to drive these points home.
wake me up when the nerd patrol is done squinting so hard that they can no longer see the tree for the bark, let alone the forest.
criminey. almost every one of these posts is riddled with flaws in logic like:
“If the Beatles hadn’t come along exactly >em>when they did, Sgt. Pepper by anyone in 1967 might not have mattered.”
(butcha see, if they hadn’t come along when they did, then we don’t know WHAT would’ve mattered in 1967, or to whom)
Mod, you’re doing a splendid job of keeping this all in perspective, but i fear it’s an uphill battle.
i don’t envy your task today.
BigSteve wrote:
I figured our resident “blind man,” Mr. Ears himself, would object to this aspect of ahat I’m putting forth, but I love plenty of songs from Sgt. Pepper’s on, and I think they benefit from the fact that they are Beatles songs, not solo songs, despite the conditions under which many were recorded. They benefit from the group taste, the group playing, the sense of competition within the group, and the group history/dynamics. “Two of Us” is read as a song Paul sings to John, not to Linda or some anonymous “bird.”
Where’s the “Something” in George’s solo career? Where’s the “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”? NOWHERE! He’s struggling through the hell of being a late-period Beatle, and those walks through the fire almost always resulted in stronger material than any of them would do solo, with the likes of Denny Laine, Phil Spector, and Elephant’s Memory sucking their asses.
If you can’t find the magic in a wealth of post-Revolver Beatles music, then I better understand how you – or anyone would would see this issue as you do – can like all the mediocre-to-bad stuff that’s in your collection. Please note that this is said in good humor. I find magic in “Revolution”, for instance, that would not have been possible on a solo Lennon album, even the first one – you know, the one The Great 48 has never heard. Regardless of the process, the songs ran through the “function” of the band and its natural magic.
Only Ringo’s solo career, it could be argued, outweighed his singing/songwriting contributions to The Beatles at any point in their career. Can you at least agree with that?
I too have not much clue about what the Mod is ultimately arguing. Had the group template not been established in 1962, rock and roll would look different, yes. But we’ve got no clue how, and least of all can we say how the clean cut pop group “we’re all unique” template, considered seriously unhip by 1967, would have hit in 1967 because no one in 1967 would have thought that was a way to succeed. The Beatles would have known better and played something else.
You can’t take history out of it and say The Beatles would have been as big as they were at any time. If those same songs were coming out now, for instance, they’d be unlikely to get much airplay, and the group would be done by their second or third album.
Still if the Mod is saying that if the Beatles had started in 1967, they would have been as important as The Bee Gees and maybe even a little more so, I can buy that.
Hi y’all.
Just a couple of things:
1) Sorry I haven’t been around for a while. I’ve been busy as hell (a good kinda busy though).
2) Just bought a nice chunk of jazz stuff off a woman in Narberth. You think my bent about everything sucking after 1981 is bad. This woman’s husband says the cutoff is 1974. The guy really had me in stitches.
3) Have any of you checked out the new Gretsch electromatic guitars? Don’t know how they play, but they are absolutely mouthwatering to the eye. I urge all to go the Sam Ash website to check these things out. Yeah, I know they’re made in Korea and all, but if they pay well, who gives a rat’s ass. How ’bout it, Art or Big Steve? Have you ever played any of the reissues? Let me know ASAP ’cause I’m about a week or so away from forkin’ out the dough for one of those buggers.
4) Regarding the on-going Beatles question, good luck to all.
Talk to ya soon,
E. Pluribus
“(butcha see, if they hadn’t come along when they did, then we don’t know WHAT would’ve mattered in 1967, or to whom)”
Well, you know, that’s why the thread title includes the word ‘hypothetical’…
Townsman Mwall wrote:
My friend, turn off that Inarticulate Speech of the Heart album for bit and dig: do you even understand the premise of Al’s thread? Surely you’re not getting at all the strong points I’ve laid out. I don’t know how to better explain any of this except to suggest that you re-read what I wrote and turn that damn Van Morrison album off already.
Regarding The Bee Gees, I’m saying that at least, had they broke with Sgt. Pepper’s and then only occupied the spotlight for their next few albums, they would have cemented a critical reputation as identifiable as that of The Bee Gees in thier disco phase. The Bee Gees are the archetypes of a certain period of music, a significant and vastly popular period of music. That’s nothing to sniff at even if your ears are too clogged by pennywhistles to appreciate that.
You said you wanted war? I’m here for you, my friend, with metaphorical fists cocked and a big, warm grin on my face.
Epluribus, please click on this link to the thoughts that I believe all of us share.
Call me dense, Mr. Mod (“alright, you’re dense!”) but I still don’t think we disagree that much. Perhaps you are conflating me with BigSteve; if so, I need to disassociate myself from our N’Awlins townsman. From his postings in this thread, I think much more highly of post-Revolver and solo career Beatles than he does.
I’d agree with your analogy to the Bee Gees. If the Beatles came along only in 1967 with Sgt. Pepper they’d certainly be as well regarded as the Bee Gees. But I don’t recall that the Bee Gees version of “1” (and there was one) topped the chart for weeks and sold 10 million copies. And I can’t remember anything about Robin Gibb’s Symphony in B Minor. And those day long tributes, playing only Bee Gees stuff when Maurice died (is he the one who died?) must have been on a station I don’t get.
I thought the premise was, if the Beatles early records didn’t exist, how important would the rest of their music be. Right?
Now, I don’t mind war in this case. But about what? I’ve already granted that I have no problem believing that they’d be as important as the Bee Gees.
Al, I get what you’re saying about The Bee Gees 1. What this 1 issue has ignored, however, is whether The Beatles’ 1 would have topped the charts for all those weeks without Sgt. Pepper’s and beyond? I don’t think so.
I’m going to follow this through. Here’s their recorded legacy:
Sgt. Pepper’s: “One of the greatest art rock albums of the 60s, this was a debut record that seemed attuned to the ambitions of its moment.”
Magical Mystery Tour, etc: “However, the band’s sophomore effort and subsequent fragmented song releases, while featuring flashes of brilliance, nonetheless seem to be a band searching for an identity.”
White Album: “Admittedly, the Beatles first record was an art rock classic, although their follow-ups failed to match it. With this record, despite its greater ambitions, they overreached, and despite a number of excellent moments, this album is ultimately less than the sum of its best parts.”
Abbey Road: “At last the Beatles make an album worthy of the promise they first showed on their debut, Sgt. Pepper’s. Although the first side has a few of the pleasant goofs that have marred their recorded output, the second side shows that this is a band that has finally learned how to combine their early art rock leanings with stripped down rock and roll. This is a band at the top of its game.”
Let It Be: “An intriguing compilation of surprisingly folk rock oriented tracks by the recently disbanded group that put together the impressive debut Sgt. Papper’s and a final art-pop masterwork, Abbey Road. We can only wish that this band had stuck around long enough to put together more releases. Industry word is that each of the band’s members is planning on a solo career. Given their talents, we wouldn’t be surprised if each of them on their own turns out to be capable of a few great tunes.”
Nice work, Mwall, despite whatever quibbles any of us might have with your assessment of a particular album. Now, again I ask, would the story be that much better if the band broke up at Revolver? Would Rubber Soul be considered this great, transitional album that it is, or would it be “merely” a pretty great album before the band’s more visionary swan song? Would that run of sing-songy pre-pot smoking albums not begin to bore more of you and blur together as they do me without the balance of the rougher, more exploratory releases that now no longer exist? Specifically, would those albums get “penalized” more heavily for what would, in time, be seen as an abundance of “outdated” Chuck Berry and early Motown/girl group covers? In short, would the Beatles through Revolver only be seen a little more than a superior version of The Hollies? Would they have possessed only limited, as BigSteve, phrased it, it?
Oh, I see now. Your argument really is with BigSteve. But here’s what I’d say:
The Beatles: “British pop band, 1962-67. Probably the strongest pop rock outfit of their day, with much more range than many similar groups, and certainly the largest-selling. With their final two records, The Beatles began to show just how complex the pop rock vocabulary could become. On those two albums, the band managed to incorporate some of the new directions of the psychedelic era without sacrificing the rhythmic drive that had put them significantly above the competition. One could only wonder what would have happened had Paul McCartney not died. But the great successes and excesses that marked bands in the late 60s would not come from The Beatles, although bands as wide-ranging as The Velvet Underground, King Crimson and Fleetwood Mac would later claim them as influences. As it is, Rubber Soul and Revolver still stand as two of the strongest and most original pop rock records ever released.”
Mwall summarized this so well that no further comment is necessary.
But I have to cry foul on Mr. Mod for disagreeing with me based only on the fact that he’s changing my hypothetical. The premise wasn’t “would the Beatles be regarded the same today if they stopped after Revolver?” so it’s pointless to argue against my premise (“would the Beatles be regarded the same today if they started with Sgt. Pepper?”) by changing it into this one.
I’d agree that they wouldn’t be regarded as highly under your premise.
Al, either you were being disingenuous as to the point i was making, or you were so incensed by the overall tone of my “nerd patrol” post that you didn’t realize i was arguing FOR you: of course i know that the thread is hypothetical (i was the one who got the ball rolling). my point was that in order for such a discussion to work, people have to respect your idea and follow through on the hypotheticals, which the comment i singled out does NOT do.
plurbis, i’ve heard bad things about the gretsch reissues, though i haven’t played one. word is, they feel okay, but there are problems with the sound. the natural, clean tone, played through a good tube amp, just don’t have IT. it’s not surprising to me that a company offering reiusses wouldn’t sweat the natural tone, since nowadays, everybody puts their guitars through all manner of doohickey. but i warn you because i know you’re a purist like me.
I agree with everything that Mr. Moderator has said.
I’ve heard good things about the Electromatic bass, but I suspect it’s easier to make a good bass than a good guitar.
If the Beatles had stopped with Revolver (the opposite of the original hypothetical), say if there’d been a horrific plane crash, their reputation would likely still be that they were the greatest 60s group. All of their ‘it’ recordings (let’s throw in Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, ok?) would still be there, they still would have “changed the world” AND they’d have the added cachet of having died.
While My Guitar or Revolution are still fine records, but whatever magic they have is given to them by listeners. I don’t think it’s in the grooves. And remember that after the Maharishi and Epstein’s death, the Magical Mystery debacle, and the ‘bigger than Jesus’ scandal, the Beatles were widely thought of as washed up. The dream was over, and it’s amazing they produced any good work at all later.
I’m hard on the Beatles. I still take it personally that they blew it. I’ve said it before, I love the Stones and the Kinks and the Who, even the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and the Dead, much more than the Beatles. The Beatles were great in the 60s, but it was easy to be great in the 60s. Fucking Herman’s Hermits were great in the 60s. It was much harder to be great after the dream was over. I try not to begrudge those people who still keep seeing the late period Beatles as embodying the magic of their time. But I’m not buying it.
Sorry, Al. I’m on vacation so I’m having a hard time focusing. But if we agree at least mostly, then that’s cool.
Had the Beatles not come along when they did, and waited until 1967, I don’t think anyone in America would have any idea who any bands in Britain were. The Beatles were the catalyst, and without them rock and roll would have probably stayed much more American.
I’d like to step back further on the hypothetical and say, “What if Buddy Holly never died?” I think he’d have done the studio trickeration of Sgt. Pepper years before The Beatles.
Guys: I got no dog in this hypothetical fight, but BigSteve’s larger question…:
It was much harder to be great after the dream was over.
… sounds interesting. Except I don’t understand it. Can you elaborate?
HVB
p.s.: sounds like you gt a bad case of the guitar-snobs, Professor. Yes, Plurbs needs to be careful, but as long as he test-drives each and every guitar he plans on buying, he can be sure to avoid a costly mistake. Some of my fave guitars are cheap knock-offs; you just have to find the good ones. That takes time and patience, but they’re out there. The notion that an entire line of guitars by definition doesn’t have some kind of exotic, tube-wah-curly-maple-pre-CBS-jizz-factor IT thing is nonsense. Mot of those early Grestsch, Fender, Gibson (insert holy grail brand here) guitars sucked ass, *and* were made of far cheaper, less reliable stuff than 80% of today’s evil, mass-produced git-boxes. The cardinal rule, as always, is play what you plan to buy, and decide thusly — and only thusly — to part with your cash. Oh — and be aware of the fact that a cheaply made guitar will fall apart more quickly. *That* is a rule of thumb one can count on.
Al has engaged me in this conversation before. The Moderator mentioned a while back that my brain is naturally wired to listen like a stoner and I suspect that’s borne out by my preference for the White Album. I love the exploding mess of it and I do believe there is magic in the grooves, despite BigSteve’s claim otherwise. While it may be unfortunate that the ultimate result of the fragmentation was the demise of the group, the White Album has a delicious richness that comes from the individual ingredients competing to dominate the palate, rather than blending into a polite complementary whole.
I started buying Beatle singles around the time of the Rubber Soul/Revolver. I knew the early albums, Meet and Second because my married sister had them around her house, but Pepper’s was when I started buying them myself. This period was when the albums really came to dominate the market. Although the Beatles middle albums are rightfully considered masterpieces in hindsight, until Pepper they were not given the respect they deserved, as evidenced by Capitol’s slice and dice delivery to their American audience.
This period of individual growth was a proper cap to the promise of the early Beatles. Only they were capable of expanding the original roles of each member over time to the gigantic proportions that they reached in the post-Pepper era. This quality makes the post-Pepper Beatle phase so important.
PS: Like BigSteve, I feel that the Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane single makes Pepper’s somehow redundant. That is the moment when the group reached the height of it’s super powers. The White Album era single of Hey Jude/Revolution was another extraordinary feat.
Firstly, I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned here that I happened to pick up that Residents record recently, and it is more brilliant than I remembered. The lasting impression from 20 years ago was just one of the sonic strangeness, but the group musicianship of a sort is really engaging.
Now. On to the hypothetical Beatles. Since I just listened to a piece on the Monkees now developing a conspiracy theory as to why they’re not being inducted into the Hall of Fame on their 40th anniversary, alternate reality is in the air. The Beatles oligarchy of 60s pop culture has indeed stopped Herman’s Hermits and Freddie and the Dreamers from the Founding Father status they deserve. I think the Beatles did one thing in 67-68 that was useful and noteworthy. They changed not just their music and their drug habits, but their function. When (Steve, was it?) said they were no longer the voice of the times when they made the White Album, I think that was partly true. But they hadn’t really been that in the beginning, had they? When they sang ” I Want to Hold Your Hand,” it was a naive relief to a world that could have expected them to sing about doing speed and getting gonorrhea in Hamburg or God Knows What, but they didn’t. They drew on their naive music-hall sensibilities, and sold records. They kept that sensibility evident through Pepper’s, and right through the White Album. They didn’t lead the world through the awakenings of the sixties, as much as they followed along with nostalgia as they were caught up in those waves. To my mind, songs like “Warm Gun” and “Dear Prudence” and such do have it in the grooves. They are timely and brilliant, and no one, certainly not the Stones, was doing pop and poetry like that! No pretending to be old blues men on a farm, but letting their own selves be mutated by the tumult they were living in. Hell, the White Album even offers McCartney *I* can stand. Blackbird? Mother Nature’s Son? Nice stuff. Not too sacharine, no maddening Little Richard head shakes, no “I am SO a lovable mop-top!” moments. Well, ok, one or two. And George gets some nice bits in, IMO.
But in any event, Pepper’s to Let It Be would in my mind have left them at the top of the heap, as would the other half of their career. And Steve! It was “easy to be great?” Come on. You mean Strawberry Alarm Clock “great?” Or merely Byrds “great.” I know what you mean about the Beatles seeming less after a point, and Let It Be may have most of its greatness only with an aftertaste of Beatlemania still lingering. Surely not a “flameout” in anybody’s book, though.
One thing they also did was foster more pondering per recorded minute of material than almost anyone. Their uniqueness couldn’t be hung on their writing only, on their sum of the parts thing, on look, on voices, on luck, anything “only.” They juggled all of that at times, changed it, kept the fire lit, stopped before it was well and obviously too late, and produced enough reasonable work apart to keep from injuring the myth (but not such stellar work to deflate the myth!)
So in the end, hypothetically, if the Beatles debuted in 67 with Pepper’s, they would have *really* become bigger than God, united the Masons and Islam by working with Bobby Kennedy, thereby establishing middle-east peace, and, in the “Butterfly’s wings” theory of causality, perhaps Linda Eastman would have spent that dollar on singing lessons. A different world indeed, friends. QED.
If Superman had landed in Germany would he have been Uberman?
What if Elenor Roosevelt Could Fly?
fritz,
i can see why you’d think i’ve got a problem with reissues in general based on my last comment (“not shocking that they’d forsake tone in this day and age”), but eff you, my post does NOT sound like i’ve “got a bad case of the guitar snobs”. i don’t.
i have a danelectro 12 string reissue, and i love it. i’ve got a ton of cheap guitars, too. love ’em all.
but what i wrote to plurb IS the particular complaint with the gretsch reissues. i just thought he should know.
“The cardinal rule, as always, is play what you plan to buy, and decide thusly — and only thusly — to part with your cash.”
well duh. do you really think plurb needs to be told that?
have you played one? know anyone who has?
your statement that…
“Most of those early Grestsch, Fender, Gibson (insert holy grail brand here) guitars sucked ass, *and* were made of far cheaper, less reliable stuff than 80% of today’s evil, mass-produced git-boxes.”
is a TOTAL crock of shit! my GOD, where do you get the stones? did someone cut the cheese while you were writing that? my GAWD.
“The notion that an entire line of guitars by definition doesn’t have some kind of exotic, tube-wah-curly-maple-pre-CBS-jizz-factor IT thing is nonsense.”
what? is there a word missing here? are you arguing against a point you think i made, but i didn’t?
this question’s profound sense of equivocation has me in state of zen clarity the likes of which i haven’t experienced since that time i did plurb played silk city and made his acoustic guitar strumming sound like sunbeams coming from the third eye of jesus piss christ himself.
fritz, is everything okay? call if you need to….
i just wrote: “zen clarity the likes of which i haven’t experienced since that time i did plurb…”
DAG! i hope that wasn’t around the time that the mod and plurb “fist fell for each other”.
in this vein, allow me to reiterate fritz, i want answers regarding your “jizz factor” statement above!
answers dammit!
The Prof writes:
your statement that…
“Most of those early Grestsch, Fender, Gibson (insert holy grail brand here) guitars sucked ass, *and* were made of far cheaper, less reliable stuff than 80% of today’s evil, mass-produced git-boxes.”
is a TOTAL crock of shit! my GOD, where do you get the stones? did someone cut the cheese while you were writing that? my GAWD.
Perf, it saddens me to have to lump you into the very sorry category of folks who believe that guitars made, you know, “back then” were intrinsically better. Never mind the fact that Leo Fender, Ted McCarty, and all the other schmos were (generally) MASS PRODUCING guitars and amps as quickly as possible, for as little money as possible, using the most utilitarian, easily stockable parts as possible. What they built defined a sound, yes. I’m not saying that they didn’t. But the notion that they were constructed with a greater attention to detail and better quality bits and pieces than “reissue” guitars today is pretty much wrong.
Seriously, there *was* a time when mass-produced guitars and amps sucked in comparison to the shit that was made in the 50s and 60s — and that time was called the mid 70s to early 80s. Yep, all that shit stunk real bad, like everything else manufactured in the USA. But the power of the global free market has resulted in a lot more quality for a lot less money in the built-overseas category, and a whole ‘nother world of quality as far as today’s boutique stuff is concerned. And, yes, that includes “reissue” gear.
The cardinal rule has never changed: you get what you pay for. What I’m saying is that the cheap stuff today is *much* better than the cheap stuff from yesteryear. I mean, come ON — how many pre-CBS Mustangs, Broncos and Teles have you played that didn’t totally suck? Or Les Paul Juniors? In general, they stunk! Saying anything else is just pants-around-your-ankles, gearhead wishful thinking.
Sorry to the rest of you who will find this sub-thread totally nerdy and uninteresting.
My doggs, Geo and General Slocum: to you I say Bravo…and thanks. Sammy, the check’s in the mail. The rest of you, although I’ve disagreed with more of what you’ve said than you’ve agreed with what I’ve said, you’ve said it with style and passion. For that, I salute you.
Great hypothetical question, Townsman Al. Great provocative suggestion before that, BigSteve. I think we’ve learned a lot. Perhaps there’s more yet to learn.
As long as everyone still believed in the dream, even the Strawberry Alarm Clock could make a record as good as a Beatles record. (The Beatles just made more of them than most people.) Once the inherent contradictions between do-your-own-thing individualism and join-together idealism set in, everybody woke up. And the serious people went to work, while the Beatles rested on their laurels.
fritz, thanks for your detailed response.
i finally get your “tube-wah-curly wood” statement…previously obscure to me.
the “IT” that that i’ve heard that the new Gretsches don’t have is not something abstract, it’s very concrete: the electronics don’t produce a good tone when played clean.
there’s nothing nonsensical about the notion that an entire line of guitars could come out of the factory not possessing that.
the rest of this discussion doesn’t even have to happen (an entire dissertation on the merits of today’s cheaper stuff versus yesteryear’s? sheesh dude, i never said anything about levels of cheapness…i just have some really nice old gibsons that sound and feel great, and i’ve never played a reissue that can hold a candle to them…and for the record, i LOVE those old mustangs…they don’t suck!)
but it is interesting and there’s nothing in your basic premise that i care to take issue with.
but again, the whole point, and i stand by it, is one that was prompted by plurb’s question about the new gretsches: PEOPLE I KNOW AND WHOSE OPINIONS I TRUST WHO HAVE PLAYED THEM CLAIM THEIR TONE STINKS.
have you played one? do you know anyone who has? cause that’s really all we’re talking about…
Art and Fritz,
Thanks for the input. I guess the key is testing the thing out.
That said, where does one find the new Gretsches locally? And more importantly, where does one go where one does not have to deal with THE INSTORE GUITAR TECH BOZO WHO RATTLES OFF MINUTIA ABOUT SAID GUITAR AND ALSO GRABS SAID GUITAR OUT OF ONE’S HANDS TO SHOW OFF DEXTRERITY VIA VAI AND JERRY RUNS.
You all know who I’m talking about! The guy who previously worked at Zapf’s, the doofus with the pony tail, the lead guitar player for Living Earth.
Please direct me to a location where he will not be present and where a bevy of Gretsches will be available for “I Feel Fine” twang workouts -the ultimate guitar tester riff!
Hope to hear from you soon,
E. Pluribus
Steve absurdizes:
As long as everyone still believed in the dream, even the Strawberry Alarm Clock could make a record as good as a Beatles record.
I say:
It is my belief that the SAC and their ilk were of the notion that, if they did their homework right, I would have come away with the impression that they had worked some kind of Faustian bargain with Aldous Huxley’s junk drawer. The Beatles seemed to very rarely want to appear more bad-ass than they were (see Rolling Stones) and to the extent they wore their psychedelic dalliances on their sleeves, they didn’t want to leave the impression that that was an end, but was a means to, for example, music of a different kind. And if the SAC could have made records as good as Beatles records, why on earth didn’t they?
And he misremembers:
…everybody woke up. And the serious people went to work, while the Beatles rested on their laurels.
I scratch my head:
I’ll give you the freebie that the early seventies had a notable profile of “serious people” and that they “got to work.” But you can’t blame Lennon and Harrison’s activism by calling it lazy, even if it led to some less than stellar musical moments for them. I’ve been in a groove lately of a lot of 69-74 rock, and as such, have re-immersed in some Lennon along the way. I think, if it doesn’t match the Beatles in punch, it certainly holds it’s head up in that desolate period of dream-ending desolation.
And let me just say that I am aware of no era in American history when “psychic oblivion in every pot” was the law of the land as universally as it was in the era when pot came down from the celebrity aristocracy and descended to the run-of-the-mill pipsqueak like me and my pals. Most of us who took up such influences were certainly not aware of any dreams ending, and had only just figured out what everyone in the sixties had been going on about. We thought the sixties were a preamble to the age of Floyd, Sabbath, army jackets and hair parted in the middle. We were serious and we got down to work!
I think Incense and Peppermints is at least as good a record as Tomorrow Never Knows. And nowhere near as self-important. In the mid 60s you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a record as good as many of the Beatles’ hits. As I said before, it’s just that the Beatles in their prime produced more high quality records than any of their peers. I believe that their transcendent records were equaled by the transcendent records of their peers (I’d put Jumpin Jack Flash or Autumn Almanac up against any Beatles record). It’s only in the field of cultural and sociological significance that the Beatles triumphed.
And general, the ‘work’ I was talking about wasn’t activism. I meant the work of figuring out how to make great music after Woodstock, which I don’t believe the Beatles did, though they did occasionally make decent music.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, as much as I enjoy doing that in my spare time. And I understand that, though I’m making sweeping generalizations, the age at which one experienced these changes did definitely affect how one felt about them
BigSteve wrote:
I think you’re right about that. It’s interesting hearing you, who I feel is usually one of the more “objective” members of the Hall, state views that are so tied to your personal relationship with a band and a time. What you say about the “ease” of greatness in the ’60s almost sounds like something E. Pluribus or I would say regarding the 1981 cutoff date of great rock ‘n roll. It’s got that same sense of “It’s true because I know it is.” I’m not mocking your view, mind you. I believe you to a large extent because I know what it’s like to make such points. I only point all this out, even if I’m way off base, because I usually think of you as more balanced than most around here. Good stuff. Seriously. The power of passionate thinking! Take note all you AMG-linking pince nez-ers.
Me too.
Hey, BigSteve. This is slightly off-topic but: When the Kinks hit their mid-’60s American commercial slide (and their creative peak), were you able to keep tabs on their work? Were their albums and singles difficult to find? Did you have friends/acquaintances who did the same?
Have you considered changing your approach ala The Oblivians? When he takes the guitar from you, tell him you’d like to know how much it would be for “one guitar string and your cheapest pick.”
Oats, I wish I could claim to have been the faithful Kinks akolyte, but like most Americans I lost track of them after Sunny Afternoon. Fortunately a friend of mine’s father worked at a radio station, and he acquired a promo copy of Arthur when it came out, and it blew our collective mind. Then after we’d heard Lola and Muswell Hillbillies, Kink Kronikles came out, and that was how we discovered the Kinks’ golden age.
What was hard was getting those Kontroversy through Village Green albums in the early 70s. For the longest time I was the only one within earshot who had Face to Face, which was a cutout with bad surface noise. And I remember some of my friends filled in their gaps with South American cassettes that mysteriously showed up in the bargain bins. Good times.
BigSteve wrote:
Please confirm that your spelling of the last word I’ve quoted was in the spirit of the topic at hand. If so, bravo!
The drum intro on “Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of my favorites (right up there with
Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”). The thing is Lennon’s lyrics are genuine, yeah they’re influenced by the Tibeatan Book of the Dead, but they’re not just nonsense poetry as the way so much “psych” lyrics are.
The song just works for me. There are a lot of imitators (such as “Incense and Peppermints”), but nothing really comes close to the mood and power of the song. And, it being the last song on Revolver, it has a symbolic value, as if Lennon is saying where to go from here. And, for me, it is unfortunate that Sgt. Pepper’s is a historical retreat rather than an exploration of the “Tomorrow” that Lennon’s song hopefully promises.
Yes, Mr. Mod, of kourse it was!
“Please direct me to a location where he will not be present and where a bevy of Gretsches will be available for “I Feel Fine” twang workouts -the ultimate guitar tester riff!”
ahhh…thanks for chiming in, plurb. i knew that the tone was the important thing.
call dipinto’s and see if they have one in stock. ask them for advice on where to go to test one out. they know better than i do.
you may have to endure the guitar dork no matter what (you’ve already endured two on rth!!).
i’m a more compulsive buyer than i suspect you are.
so be as persnicketty as you’d like. suggestions: wherever you find a place that’s carrying them, ask them what kind of amps they have for your to test them thorugh. make them be specific. if they dn’t have anything that resembles what you’ll be playing it through on a regular basis, tell them you’re bringing your own amp and you’ll test it through that.
who cares about the awkwardness of rolling a twin or a vox through the store and having everyone stare at you? it’s your money you’re about to spend.
art
Unfortunately, this premise is flawed and presents a question impossible to answer, since the 1967 musical landscape would be radically different had the Beatles not shown up until this point. Instead, this should be approached as a complete alternate history (such as, “what would World War II have been like if aliens had attacked?”), contemplating the musical landscape of 1967 if the Beatles had never formed, though all would still have existed. We begin, then, with a starting point of Lennon and McCartney never meeting at the St. Peter’s Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete.
This new history means that there was no British Invasion as we know it. The “Fab Four” are Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker and Fabian, as the Original Philly Sound (which it would come to be known) sweeps the United States, and the Four make a series of popular, hijinx-filled teen movies about their shenanigans at the Jersey Shore, one of which debuts a young Bill Cosby. Chubby Checker will later spend the mid-1990s through the 2000s demanding that he receive the Academy Honorary Award prior to every Oscars telecast, dubbing himself “the soil Hollywood grows on.”
England responds to the clean-cut, genial sound gripping the States by countering with its own exports of boyishly-handsome actor/singers, possibly led by a young Davy Jones and (as he would be billed) Jimmy McCartney. I speculate that this Alternate Timeline Paul McCartney ends up with the lead in Alfie. John still ends up working with George Martin, but as a comedy record producer and part-time member of the Bonzo Dog Band. He gets into a fistfight with Peter Sellers on the set of I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! – which, for reasons that will soon become clear, is a film about surfing instead of hippies.
George Harrison’s fate is less clear in this Rock Earth 2 scenario, but Ringo stays on with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who become The Savage Young Rory Storm and the Even More Savage, Equally-Young Hurricanes when they back Tony Sheridan. Sheridan, incidentally, later forms The Tony Sheridan Experience, featuring himself, Ringo on drums, Ace Kefford on bass and a peculiar pair of guitarists named Jimmy James and Tommy Chong.
Post-Army Elvis fares much better in this Alternate Timeline, with Roustabout holding up better as a film in 1964 compared to the Bobby Rydell-led Fab Four vehicle Wildwood Days than it would against A Hard Day’s Night. An East Coast/West Coast Elvis vs. Frankie Avalon feud is narrowly avoided when Elvis instead turns his attentions that year to the Mike Love-led Beach Boys, now his chief US pop chart competition, though Elvis himself later grudgingly admits that he likes his rivals better after they “got rid of the fat one” (Mike and Murry Wilson secretly kill Brian, disguising it as a suicide, in early 1965 following his anxiety attacks, thinking him too much of a hassle and an anchor on the band’s appeal to their ever-growing surf song fanbase).
Elvis makes no fewer than four surfing movies in 1965 and 1966 (Hang Ten, Wave Goodbye, Surf & Turf and The Kokonuts), and things come to a head in November 1967 when Elvis competes with Mike Love and Dennis Wilson for a guest spot in that Batman episode where Batman and the Joker have a surfing contest. Neither ends up in the episode, but Elvis wins in the long run when he reveals that The Jordanaires had actually played The Penguin’s henchmen in the 1966 Batman movie. A disgraced Mike Love flees to India, where he meets the Maharishi Yogi, who puts together a band featuring Love, Brian Jones and Donovan. Love later goes on to take Jack Nance’s roles in all of David Lynch’s productions. In this Alternate Timeline, Frank Booth wears a captain’s hat in Blue Velvet, but the movie is otherwise unchanged. Dennis, meanwhile, comes up with the idea to do a TV show about a band, and The Sunrays debuts on TV (directed by Murry), with Dennis, Stephen Stills, Charles Manson and John Sebastian. Manson plays drums in the fictional band and 30 years later, becomes a radio DJ and kind of a jerk. This also results in that weird, creepy Dion submission for a Welcome Back Kotter theme actually becoming the theme song for the show, and thus it never becomes popular, preventing Gabe Kaplan from appearing on Battle of the Network Stars, which creates numerous and far-reaching historical shakeups which fall outside of our 1967 vantage point.
This all leaves out what becomes of Motown, which doesn’t run into a British Invasion and perhaps goes folk instead of going psychedelic, in response to Dylan, who probably makes it to this Alternate 1967 mostly intact. Outside of the scope of the question at hand, I also speculate that James Brown and Elvis eventually come to blows in the 70s when this Alternate Elvis – alarmed when Brown (who remains unchanged in all Alternate Timelines) stops riots in 1968 in DC – volunteers to go undercover as a member of the newly-formed JBs on behalf of Richard Nixon when the two meet in 1970.
All I can say, based upon Alexmagic’s excellent post is…….
Thank Gawd the Beatles existed for their entirety. The Phiily Fab Four would have killed rocjk as we know it.
andyr (who loves all periods of the Beatles including Abbey Road)
Townsperson Alexmagic, that was a stunning debut. We’re always on the look for those who see rock’s big picture. You could probably teach a few Townspeople some things with your continued insights. Thanks.
Yeah, nice work indeed. But all you have to say is that there were two bands, The Beetles (1962-67) and The Beatles (67-70), and all that heavy-lifting becomes unnecessary.