Click to expand.I think I get your drift, but the imagery and flavor is totally Victorian rather than Elizabethan (check out Tull's 'Minstrel in the Gallery' for that!). The psychedelic salvation army band outfits, the funeral imagery, the careening circus music of the Mr. Kite benefit, etc.
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The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' change the world of music, and the world, when it was released in 1967, first in the United Kingdom on May 26 and then June 2 in the United States. The appearance of these spiritual masters on Sgt. Peppers album cover was a beacon set there by The Beatles lead guitarist, George Harrison, to shine light into the meaning of life. Paul McCartney pitched the idea of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, as another persona of a band.“It would free us,” McCartney said, from the confines of The Beatles they were expected to be.
All suggest an atmosphere of kitschy-ironic Victorian nostalgia. It is a rather 'dark' affiar. It is definitely not a California 'summer of love' album. These Beatles are not the carefree lads of 'Hard Day's Night' or 'Help!'
They're not the innocent hippie children of the Haight. They're adults haunted by what they see when they turn out the lights, Henry the Horse dancing the Waltz, and the 4000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire. Although George may be trying to peek through the doors of perception on 'Within You Without You,' they're mostly worried about getting through a day in the life and 'doing the best that I can.' In this sense, it's really post rock and roll (as youth culture). One of the first cultural products for children of WWII who find themselves settling into a melancholy middle age.I will hazard the theory that 'Sgt. Pepper' is (perhaps unconsciously) inspired by James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners.
Like Dubliners, where it is truly a 'concept album' 'Sgt. Pepper' is an attempt to paint the psychological portrait of a nation by offering a set of 'case studies' of typical people leading lives of mostly quiet desperation and reflecting on the coping mechanisms they use to get through life. In that sense 'Eleanor Rigby' really belongs on Pepper.
She's the first inductee of the 'Lonely Hearts Club' that the band memorializes. 'She's Leaving Home' - which always felt like a lesser retread of 'Eleanor Rigby' in particular seems very close to Joyce's story'Lucy in the Sky'= Lennon's 'Kubla Khan'?
Click to expand.Totally unpossible, tube signal path and 4 track vs solid state and 8 track. Recording equipment wise, AR was a watershed change in kit. Up until then, almost their entire catalog (Hey Jude and some White Album stuff notwithstanding) was done on a REDD51 tube console and Studer J37 4 track. Abbey Road was a TG12345 board with inline compressors and 8 track.Abbey Road, for me anyway, was the signpost of albums to come in the 70's. It changed the way records sounded. And there is amazingly mature use of a new instrument, the Moog synthesizer. The way it is integrated with the orchestral instruments on Here Comes The Sun is outstanding.Also, there is no mono version of AR.
It was the only album designed for stereo. I think I get your drift, but the imagery and flavor is totally Victorian rather than Elizabethan (check out Tull's 'Minstrel in the Gallery' for that!). The psychedelic salvation army band outfits, the funeral imagery, the careening circus music of the Mr. Kite benefit, etc. All suggest a somber, slightly sinister late-Victorian atmosphere. It is not at all a California 'summer of love' album.
They're not the carefree lads of 'Hard Day's Night' or 'Help!' They're not the innocent dancing hippie children of the Haight. They're adults haunted by what they see when they turn out the lights, Henry the Horse dancing the Waltz, and the 4000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire. Although George may be trying to peek through the doors of perception on 'Within You Without You,' they're mostly worried simply about getting through life and 'doing the best that I can.' In this sense, it's really post rock and roll (as youth culture).
One of the first cultural products for children of WWII who find themselves settling into middle age.I will hazard the theory that 'Sgt. Pepper' is (perhaps unconsciously) inspired by James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners. Like Dubliners, where it is truly a 'concept album' it is an attempt to paint the psychological portrait of a nation by offering a set of 'case studies' of typical people leading lives of mostly quiet desperation and reflecting on the coping mechanisms they use to get through life. In that sense 'Eleanor Rigby' really belongs on Pepper. She's the first inductee of the 'Lonely Hearts Club' that the band memorializes. 'She's Leaving Home' - which always felt like a lesser retread of 'Eleanor Rigby' in particular seems very close to Joyce's story'Lucy in the Sky'= Lennon's 'Kubla Khan'?
My dad was buying Beatles albums as they came out, and the build up to Sgt. Pepper was huge. He told me that when he first got it, he thought it was maybe the worst album he'd ever heard.
After two weeks of listening to it he thought it was probably the greatest.To me, it's the pinnacle of their development-so many breakthroughs executed so amazingly. And, it's an album.
To pick one song and say 'Oh.it's sort of weak.' Out of context is a mistake for that album in my book. As a whole, it's genius.
Click to expand.There are many bits hidden within the obvious.The narrative of the song is IMO this:Lennons stream of conscious ramble straight outof his sunroom - his lyrics are his reading of a newspaperand his internal comments regarding the events. He's the Nowhere Man.McCartney comes in as friend/guide (his line that Lennon sings ) 'I'd LoveTo Turn You On' - he wants to bring his friend back into life - and get himexcited about things again.After the rush of the orchestral lift - which is Lennon turning on -he's gone into a acid trip. I have two things to say on this subject.First, for those who weren't alive yet or too young at the time to have experienced what it was like when SP was first released, I would say this. In today's age, it's difficult even to imagine, anymore, what it was like. I was only 10 but I remember from the older kids on the block - and the adults - how mind-blowing the album was to so many (I recall it as such to me, too, but I was 10).Second, for some reason, it's become fashionable, even for Beatles fans ourselves, to dish on SP. I don't know, maybe, like Stairway, it got overplayed. I still absolutely love the whole album incredibly much.
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I think I get your drift, but the imagery and flavor is totally Victorian rather than Elizabethan (check out Tull's 'Minstrel in the Gallery' for that!). The psychedelic salvation army band outfits, the funeral imagery, the careening circus music of the Mr.
Kite benefit, etc. All suggest a somber, slightly sinister late-Victorian atmosphere. It is not at all a California 'summer of love' album. They're not the carefree lads of 'Hard Day's Night' or 'Help!' They're not the innocent dancing hippie children of the Haight.
They're adults haunted by what they see when they turn out the lights, Henry the Horse dancing the Waltz, and the 4000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire. Although George may be trying to peek through the doors of perception on 'Within You Without You,' they're mostly worried about getting through a day in the life and 'doing the best that I can.' In this sense, it's really post rock and roll (as youth culture). One of the first cultural products for children of WWII who find themselves settling into a melancholy middle age.I will hazard the theory that 'Sgt. Pepper' is (perhaps unconsciously) inspired by James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners. Like Dubliners, where it is truly a 'concept album' 'Sgt. Pepper' is an attempt to paint the psychological portrait of a nation by offering a set of 'case studies' of typical people leading lives of mostly quiet desperation and reflecting on the coping mechanisms they use to get through life.
In that sense 'Eleanor Rigby' really belongs on Pepper. She's the first inductee of the 'Lonely Hearts Club' that the band memorializes. 'She's Leaving Home' - which always felt like a lesser retread of 'Eleanor Rigby' in particular seems very close to Joyce's story'Lucy in the Sky'= Lennon's 'Kubla Khan'? Click to expand.Not sure where to start in reply to this, but I'll have a go.The psychedelic outifts were de rigeur in London at the time - they were just following current trends by wearing them.Being for the benefit of Mister Kite was taken from an old poster Lennon had seen. It was the case that songwriters drew from personal experiences and what they saw and heard. Nothing unusual whatsoever in that.4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire was simply lifting a line from a newspaper about the state of things in that town.This is the most hilarious thing in your post: '.They're adults haunted by what they see.'
No they're not, they're musicians at the top of their game writing lines that THEY want, whether that be to convey ideas, or nonsense lines. '.what do you see when you turn out the light, I can't tell you but I know it's mine.'
(to quote the full line) is typical of Scouse call and response wit, but you wouldn't know that. The same kind of piss-taking as when they used the word 'tit' for backing vocals in the song 'Girl'. They're singing 'tit, tit, tit, tit, etc., in that song.Being into drugs at that time, the album perfectly encapsulates the drug influence on their song writing. Or simply their devilment at putting together lines that people will try to explain away in the following years and decades (Newpaper taxis apear on the shore = wicked hilarity on the part of Lennon, as with many of his other lyrics around that time).As for 'settling into melancholy middle age' - do me a favour! You ARE joking.Now this: '.'
Pepper' is an attempt to paint the psychological portrait of a nation by offering a set of 'case studies' of typical people leading lives of mostly quiet desperation and reflecting on the coping mechanisms they use to get through life.' Psychological portrait, case studies, quiet desperation, coping mechanisms - I do think you are completely overemphasising what they were writing, and seeking out hidden meanings that were not there.
When a music critic talked about Paul using a plagal cadence at the end of 'She's leaving home', Macca wouldn't have known about a plagal cadence at the time if he was twatted over the head with one!!!' Eleanor Rigby' is simply one of Paul's little stories, like 'She's leaving home' 'When I'm 64', and 'Martha my dear' and countless others.
He was a soppy story teller; John was the hard bitten piss-taker who weaved all kinds of imagery into his songs, as well as things he knew (Glass Onion: standing on the cast iron shore yeah - the cast iron shore being a feature of Liverpool docks at the time, known as 'The Cazzie'). Read his two books from earlier years to get a real idea of where his head was in terms of writing.SPLHCB album was what it was: an album that captured exactly where the Beatles were at that point in time, 1967. It drew influences in from the music, fashion, and other social things of the time, and threw out a myriad of thoughts and ideas that had not previously been touched upon. They were still pushing the boundaries (tape loops, reverse tapes, etc.) that others had got nowhere near to doing. It was of its time, whilst at the same time being timeless (apart from the shoite that Harrison put on the album).But to say it is a psychological portrait of a nation is in my view, bollocks.
Click to expand.There's your problem right there. What you don't recognize is that using a plagal cadence may be totally unrelated to knowing the technical term. So what if he didn't know the term? How does that invalidate the observation that he was using it? He absorbed it from his vast practical knowledge of and experience with music.People speak prose their entire lives without ever realizing that there is technical term for it. People create songs with rhyming couplets without knowing the term.
People write stories with protagonists who have internal conflicts resulting in rising action, climax and resolution without any conscious knowledge of such terms. They absorb these things and repeat them in new works because they are members of a culture that uses those forms and regards certain subject matter as important.Your entire post is an exercise in the - that a work of art is to be judged by the artist's conscious or stated intent.
But artists are not always the best judges of their own work and they may not even be aware of all the influences that created their work, the traditional forms and subject matter they are using, or the layers of meaning that their work is capable of bearing. The artist is not a god-like genius living in isolation directing his work with perfect conscious attention to all possible meanings. He's a sensitive and talented member of a society-attuned to its ways, language, forms, subject matter, and rituals, etc.- who has absorbed billions of bits of information, most unconsciously. All kinds of things come out in art that may never have been under the full conscious control of the artist-including artistic forms and subject matter that may be grasped intuitively without conscious theorizing.What does it even mean to call 'Eleanor Rigby' just 'one of Paul's little stories'? How condescending to Paul! As if it did not emerge from a culture and a story-telling and song-writing tradition and refer to common cultural phenomena such as language, rituals, classes, religions, etc. As if it was just a whimsical exercise rather than an attempt to communicate something and connect with other members of his society.The Eleanor Rigby character is practically a cliche of modernist literature-lonely average person who is defined by the institutions of her society-marriage, the church, etc.
But who is, in the end, 'buried along with her name' -never understood, never understanding herself or her situation (in other words the tragedy of not becoming an artist!). See the Robinson's Spoon River Anthology for many more (Paul Simon got 'Richard Cory' there). Further, Paul M (whether consciously or not) puts a modernist spin in that song on the traditional rhetorical question 'where have they gone?' That goes back at least as far as Roman poetry. Instead he asks of 'all the lonely people' ' where do they all come from?' And ' where do they all belong?' Again, very typical concerns of modernist literature (alienation, mass society, loss of identity and social substance, etc.), which Paul has absorbed by being an intelligent, attuned, curious, artistic member of his society.Why can't 'one of Paul's little stories' also be like James Joyce's little stories, an effort to dramatize and articulate a certain kind of character caught in a certain kind of typical and sad situation?
The song has resonance because people recognize parts of themselves, or people they know, in the character and the cultural situation she is embedded in. And they realize that the refrain about 'all the lonely people' generalizes the situation-we are all like her in our own ways. Sorry, but the author's statements about a work cannot control interpretation. I think it's a shame that George's Indian infatuation was indulged (again) at the expense of limited track capacity and during what was obviously a rich vein of form for Lennon/McCartney.
Sorry but the links between Harrison's second hand raga and the rest of the album are largely a product of imagination and hindsight.George had proved well before this and well after this that he was capable of writing excellent songs and he did himself a disservice by not taking advantage of such a prominent, unique opportunity.' At once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy' - the usual word salad bollocks from the gravely self-important David Fricke.
Peppers 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe boxset, Vinyl & merch available now:Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band presented with new mixes in stereo and 5.1 surround audio; previously unreleased complete takes of the album’s 13 songs, newly mixed in stereo and sequenced in the same order as the album. Expanded with previously unreleased session recordings, video features & special packaging.Order here:Official site:Facebook:Instagram:Twitter:Music video by The Beatles performing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (C) 2017 Calderstone Productions Limited (a Division of Universal Music Group) / Apple Corps Limited.