I don't understand how people can say "Abbey Road" is the best Beatle album. It's got no darkness.
Funny world we live in. Everybody talks about the upbeat. Everybody says they're happy. They want to DENY the darkness. But you're always dodging the shadows. And eventually they catch you.
In the shadows, you can't tell your story. You can't stand in front of the class and say how depressed you are. When the perfunctory "How are you?" emanates from the other end of the phone line, you can't say NOT SO GOOD! You see, the secret is, everybody's afraid of the darkness. They just don't want to admit it.
But artists admit it. That's why we love their work.
Clive Davis isn't in the business of darkness. And it's Clive's world we're living in. Once he created the vapid superstar, marketed in all media, he changed the business. Why build careers when you can run singles up the chart, and sell millions IMMEDIATELY!
Donnie Ienner left Clive and employed the formula at Columbia.
And Charlie Koppelman got his own label at EMI and imitated his hero.
Mo Ostin didn't know what hit him. He was in the business of building CAREERS! No wine was sold before its time. The record came out when it was THROUGH, when the artist had FINISHED IT!
But soon, Mo himself was finished. Seen as old-fashioned. A man of the seventies. Passe.
Then it got worse. We had the boy bands. Who were the ESSENCE of sunniness.
As a reaction, we got truly dark metal. But that wasn't for the mainstream. That was for the truly alienated. People who dropped out of school and worked day jobs. It wasn't for US! Where's the music for US!
That's the promise of Arcade Fire. There's no single. No major marketing campaign. Word was spread via the Web, via word of mouth. The band refuses to sell out. It's the biggest story of the year. THEY know darkness. And that's why they're successful.
Oh, you don't have to be depressed to love dark music. One bad episode, and you never forget it. You never forget your first breakup, never forget your first panic attack. They stay with you. And hearing these tunes is like visiting a museum of your past. All the memories are dredged up. But at least you're just looking at a diorama, you're not actually LIVING THESE MOMENTS!
But sometimes you do. And that's when you TRULY depend on the music. That's when it comes through for you. That's when it saves your life.
TV doesn't save lives. Nor do movies. But talk to any career artist of yore, who made dark music. He or she will tell you they hear it all the time. They're somewhere, maybe even the SUPERMARKET, and a fan comes up and says their music, almost always a deep album track, saved their life.
That's why the music business is in the crapper. Because THIS ISN'T THE EXPERIENCE WE'RE SELLING!
Then again, maybe it's coming back. For in many ways, 1968 wasn't that different from 2005.
In 1968, Richard Nixon was elected. We'd been in Vietnam so long, that the average American stopped paying attention. We all felt POWERLESS!
But that's not what you saw on television. On television you saw "Laugh-In". Sitcoms.
But in music, the human condition was put forth. What we were FEELING was in the grooves of "Beggar's Banquet" and the White Album.
Have you listened to "Beggar's" recently?
It's actually a bit creepy. A bit unsettling. In the way "Exile On Main Street" was SUPPOSED to be.
"Beggar's" doesn't sound like any other Stones record. It's more acoustic than electric.
Oh, sure, you're familiar with "Sympathy For The Devil" and "Street Fighting Man". You've heard them on classic rock enough to slide right off of you.
But when that groove of "Parachute Woman" begins, you've got no framework to place it in. It's somehow delta. It's the BLUES! But it's played by these English WHITE cats. And it's overtly SEXUAL!
And speaking of sexual, I wonder if the younger generation has discovered "Stray Cat Blues". That INTRO! Salacious. Titillating in a way no nude scene in a movie ever was.
And the ending note of "Salt Of The Earth". God, America is becoming England. We've got a class system and the poor people don't even KNOW it. They THINK they can get rich. But really, the rich are an elite that they can't join. They're being kept out.
But as good as "Beggar's" is. Considered till very recently the BEST Stones album. It's eclipsed by the double Beatle album released the very same Friday in November '68.
The White Album had no singles.
Truly, it had NO SINGLES! Not one single track that was played on AM radio.
Oh, it's not that you didn't HEAR the White Album on the radio, it's just that you had to be tuned into FM! It would be as if Don Henley suddenly announced he was THROUGH with the major labels, and he was ONLY going to distribute his music via P2P.
The Beatles were the OPPOSITE of today's hit acts. They weren't playing it safe, they were TESTING THE LIMITS! Constantly. A new Beatle album was not understood immediately. It sounded so DIFFERENT initially. You had to get to KNOW IT, DIGEST IT!
And "Sgt. Pepper", although SO different, was all of a piece. A CONCEPT RECORD!
But the White Album was ALL OVER THE PLACE!
There was no way "Revolution 9" fit in with ANYTHING else on the record. And was "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" a JOKE, or were we to take it SERIOUSLY!
Oh, the White Album arrived like a jet on your doorstep. Truly, you heard the plane in the opening moments of "Back In The U.S.S.R.". And you've got to know at this time the cold war was STILL HAPPENING! Nobody joked about Russia. FURTHERMORE, not with BEACH BOYS HARMONIES! Brian Wilson wasn't imitating the Beatles, how in the hell could they be imitating HIM! THIS is art. When you don't listen passively, but wonder where the creator is COMING FROM!
But whatever that initial journey was about, whatever "Back In The U.S.S.R." was supposed to mean, it was the FOLLOW-UP that is the heart of the album, "Dear Prudence".
Oh, it came RIGHT OUT OF "Back In The U.S.S.R." It was a SEGUE! But it was a switch from playing baseball to being on acid. From being upbeat to CONTEMPLATIVE!
"Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play.
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day.
The sun is up, the sky is blue.
It's beautiful and so are you.
Dear Prudence won't you come out to play"
Today we've got VIDEOS! Music is for the MASSES!
But even though the Beatles were the biggest band in the world, "Dear Prudence" was PRIVATE! You really though it was only you, John Lennon and Prudence out in an English field. Nobody was filming it, nobody was watching, it was just for you. An evanescent experience.
Oh, the White Album had upbeat ditties. Like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da". And even the catchy, delightful, "Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill". But those weren't the tracks that stuck with you. Rather it was the tunes which seemed like the Beatles had picked up a rock and were singing about what was underneath. "Rocky Raccoon" as well as "Helter Skelter". These were three-dimensional artists, singing about the whole PANOPLY of human life. And that's what endeared us so. The Four Seasons performed catchy tunes, but we played their records at parties. Not when we were home alone, feeling desperate, needing companionship.
God, the White Album is LADEN with tunes that penetrate you like medication delivered by patch. The quiet "Julia" closing out side two alternately creeped you out and made you feel wholly alive. It was the human condition incarnate.
Oh, the lyrics of so many of these songs on the White Album might not have been dark on their surface, but the tracks were dark in the listening. The people singing them weren't sunny automatons. Rather they were human beings who HURT! Somehow, the Beatles truly hadn't let fame get to their heads. Somehow, they were still the scions of Liverpool. Out of the mainstream. In a seaport. Contemplating their lives not clubbing in sunny Southern California, but in the damp, gray, rainy English landscape.
And it wasn't only John. Not just Paul. But George too.
It's been raining in SoCal today. And you've got to know, it only rains two ways here. Either a light mist, or an horrendous downpour. The type wherein you get soaked walking a block or two to your car, even if you're holding an umbrella.
You're in the city. Surrounded by people.
But you feel so alone.
And in this aloneness, what was comforting me today, was "Long, Long, Long". It kept playing in my head. Soothing me.
"It's been a long long long time"
Hasn't it. Isn't that what life is about, WAITING?
Waiting to be sixteen so you can drive. Waiting to be eighteen so you can move out. Waiting to be twenty one so you can drink. Waiting to fall in love.
"How could I ever have lost you. When I loved you"
That's the conundrum. You were so close. It worked.
But somehow it's finished.
This isn't Whitney Houston overemoting, rather it's a full-grown man, alone in his house, holding a glass of cognac in front of the fire. God, to be by yourself, thinking of the old connection, it's so PAINFUL!
But the lyrics of "Long, Long, Long" are secondary to the sound.
First of all, it's so QUIET! After "Helter Skelter", you can barely hear it.
But it builds. In the middle there's a RELEASE!
"So many tears I was searching. So many tears I was wasting, oh, oh"
That's life. An extended journey with little gratification. But you hang in there. Believing you'll be delivered.
And at the end of "Long, Long, Long", George is.
But that's not the point.
The media tells us that if we're just on a reality show, if we're just on MTV, our lives will WORK!
But ever run into a cast member of "The Real World"? They're some of the most lost people you'll ever encounter. Broke, and famous for nothing. Stuck in a bizarre child actor hole without the residuals.
But it's not only them.
It's the actresses who think that Botox will save their careers, and thus them.
It's Bernie Ebbers, who thinks if you've got money, it doesn't matter how you made it.
To not be a crook, to have reasonable values, is to be portrayed a loser. How do you exist in a world like that?
By listening to music.
But it's no longer MUSIC! The music is just part of a PACKAGE! One tied up with image and marketing. The music business is now in the STAR business, not the MUSIC BUSINESS!
Classical music does not beat you over the head. It opens your heart, takes you on a journey. And it's lasted for HUNDREDS of years, and YOU can't even remember the Top Ten hits of the 90s!
But you can remember every track on the White Album.
Then again, our time, those of us who LIVED through its debut, it's running out.
You can take the White Album out of 1968, but you can't fully understand it. Sure, it was anticipated, like the new 50 Cent record. But it didn't deliver what was EXPECTED! Hell, it didn't even have anything on the COVER! If any of the songs can be considered as simple as "Candy Shop", the Beatles were being IRONIC!
In 1968, music mattered. Music was the cultural drumbeat.
That's been lost. Only when we realize that concept albums, and free form radio, and the ability to PLAY are the FOUNDATIONS of our business will we have a chance to return to the golden days of yore.
Music must reflect life. It must emanate unfiltered through the minds of artists. Record company execs can't ask for singles. They can't ask for changes at all. It's like asking Picasso to change one of his paintings.
Nothing Picasso did looked remotely like anything else. He was testing the limits. And HE'S the greatest visual artist of the twentieth century.
I think we can now agree, the Beatles were the greatest popular music artists of the twentieth century.
And they've earned this accolade because they could sing, and wrote great changes. And made music that reflected every aspect of life, both the good and the bad.
Subscribe to Feed
