Talkin About My Generation!

Where were you on June 1, 1967? I was at the Colony Record Store on 49th and Broadway buying one of the greatest records of all time! When it was being recorded, “Beatlemania” was waning. The Beatles had grown tired of touring and had stopped touring in August 1966. After one particular concert, while being driven away in the back of a small van, the four of them—including Paul McCartney, who was perhaps the most in favor of continuing to tour—decided that it was enough. With Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles wanted to create a record that could, in effect, tour for them — an idea they had already explored with the promotional film-clips made over the previous years, intended to promote them here in the US.

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

I spent hours studying the cover and reading the lyrics on the back.Moreover, we could spend weeks on this one landmark recording!

Here is a link to the Guide to the LP. This will tell you exactly who is on the cover and who bowed out and why. The recording took 129 days and by this time the Beatles were getting into recording late into the night.

Originally, the group had wanted the album to include a package with badges, pencils and other small Sgt. Pepper goodies but this proved far too costly to realise. Instead, the album came with a page of cardboard cut-outs carrying the description:

SGT. PEPPER  CUT-OUTS

The final bill for the cover was £2,868 5s 3d (equivalent to £37,531 today), a staggering sum for the time. It has been estimated that this was 100 times the average cost for an album cover in those days

Lovely Rita This is in my opinion where the Beatles really got funky. Ringo and Paul were so locked in! Paul’s piano work is brilliant and his bass lays it down. The unusual noises during the song after the lines “and the bag across her shoulder/ made her look a little like a military man” were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison playing comb and paper. Mal Evans was sent to Abbey Road’s lavatories to collect toilet paper (which was stamped with the words, “PROPERTY OF EMI”). This was used to cover hair combs, which they blew through to resemble the sound of a kazoo orchestra.

When my sister ran away from home she did it in style! Growing up in NYC, going to private school, you meet a lot of famous people’s kids. My  sister became good friends with Lorna Luft. When she ran away, she moved into the St Moritz Hotel on Central Park South with Lorna and her mother Judy Garland. Picture if you will my sister watching the Wizard of Oz with Dorothy! Why am I telling you this. Well, She’s Leaving Home has a special meaning to me. Now that she passed, I am playing it again for her.

When Beatles manager Brian Epstein decided that a new single was needed, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were issued as a double-A-sided single in February 1967. Unfortunately in keeping with the group’s usual practice, the single tracks were not included on the LP a decision George Martin states he now regrets. Can you imagine where these two songs would be placed if included on the LP? Or, would two other songs be shelved for a later time?

And as all LP’s have to end   A Day In The Life with Outtake Credited toLennon/McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney with orchestral additions. Originally it was given the title “In the Life Of…”While Lennon’s lyrics were inspired by contemporary newspaper articles, McCartney’s were reminiscent of his youth. The decisions to link sections of the song with orchestral crescendos and to end the song with a sustained piano chord were made only after the rest of the song had been recorded. There is some dispute about the inspiration for the first verse. Many believe that it was written with regard to the death of Tara Browne, the 21-year-old heir to the Guinness fortune and close friend of Lennon and McCartney, who had crashed his Lotus Elan on 18 December 1966 when a Volkswagen pulled out of a side street into his path in Redcliffe Gardens, Earls Court. In numerous interviews, Lennon claimed this was the verse’s prime inspiration. However, George Martin believes that it is a drug reference (as is the line “I’d love to turn you on” and other passages from the song) and while writing the lyrics Lennon and McCartney were imagining a stoned politician who had stopped at a set of traffic lights. The description of the accident in “A Day in the Life” was not a literal description of Browne’s fatal accident. Lennon said, “I didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out, but it was in my mind when I was writing that verse. The details of the accident in the song — not noticing traffic lights and a crowd forming at the scene — were similarly part of the fiction.  It was arranged for the orchestral session to be filmed by NEMS Enterprises for use in a planned television special. The film was never released in its entirety, although portions of it can be seen in the “A Day in the Life” promotional film, which includes shots of studio guests Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Donovan,Pattie Boyd and Michael Nesmith.

^{Reflecting The Beatles’ taste for experimentation and the avant gardeat this point in their careers, the orchestra players were asked to wear or were given a costume piece on top of their formal dress. This resulted in different players wearing anything from red noses to fake stick-on nipples. Martin recalled that the lead violinist performed wearing a gorilla paw, while a bassoon player placed a balloon on the end of his instrument.}

Following “A Day in the Life” on the Sgt. Pepper album (as first released on LP in the UK and years later worldwide on CD) is a high frequency tone and the repetition of the phrase “Never to see any other way” along with background noises. Recorded two months after the mono and stereo masters for “A Day in the Life” had been finalised, the gibberish (entitled in the session notes “Edit for LP End”, but widely known as “Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove”) was added to the run-out groove of the initial British pressing.

Magical Mystery Tour released on November 27, 1967. If you woke me up at three AM and asked me out of a sound sleep what my favorite Beatle album is I would have to say Magical Mystery Tour. And in fact, really side two of the US released LP. It was released in the UK as a 2 EP package which I still own!

After Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film based upon The Beatles and their music. The film was to be unscripted: various “ordinary” people (including John Lennon’s uncle Charlie) were to travel on a charabanc bus and have unspecified “magical” adventures, in the manner of Ken Kesey’sMerry Pranksters.

The Magical Mystery Tour movie was made, but the hoped-for “magical” adventures never happened. During the filming, an ever greater number of cars followed the hand-lettered bus, hoping to see what its passengers were up to, until a running traffic jam developed. The spectacle ended after Lennon angrily tore the lettering off the sides of the bus. I remember going to see it in NY

One of the most perfect basslines in rock music is the one on Hello Goodbye. It has a fugue like quality to it.

Under the working title “Hello Hello”, the Beatles recorded the backing track on 2 October 1967, and added vocals and a guitar overdub on the 19th. After further overdubs of bass guitar and viola, recording was completed on the 2nd November, and mixing on the 6th. The final lines of the song, where the entire band sings “Hela, hey-ba hello-a” came spontaneously in the studio. McCartney said “I remember the end bit where there’s the pause and it goes ‘Heba, heba hello’. We had those words and we had this whole thing recorded but it didn’t sound quite right, and I remember asking Geoff Emerick if we could really whack up the echo on the tom-toms. And we put this echo full up on the tom-toms and it just came alive.”

I Am the Walrus, the last song on side 1 is actually the B side of the single Hello Goodbye. Again, the groove is monstrous! Paul and Ringo have a lock that is so connected. Yea for the rhythm section! The walrus is a reference to the walrus in Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter” (from the book Through the Looking-Glass). Lennon expressed dismay upon belatedly realizing that the walrus was a villain in the poem. “I Am the Walrus” was the first studio recording made after the death of The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein in August 1967

The genesis of the lyrics is found in three song ideas that Lennon was working on, the first of which was inspired by hearing a police siren at his home in Weybridge; Lennon wrote the lines “Mis-ter cit-y police-man” to the rhythm of the siren. The second idea was a short rhyme about Lennon sitting in his garden, while the third was a nonsense lyric about sitting on a corn flake. Unable to finish the ideas as three different songs, he combined them into one.

Lennon received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank Grammar School, which he had attended. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyse Beatles’ lyrics. (Lennon wrote an answer, dated 1 September 1967, which was auctioned by Christie’s of London in 1992.) Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding The Beatles’ lyrics, wrote the most confusing lyrics he could. Lennon’s friend and former fellow member of The Quarrymen, Peter Shotton, was visiting, and Lennon asked Shotton about a playground nursery rhyme they sang as children.

Shotton remembered:

“Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,

All mixed together with a dead dog’s eye,

Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,

Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick“.^[5]

Lennon borrowed a couple of words, added the three unfinished ideas and the result was “I Am the Walrus”. The Beatles’ official biographer Hunter Davies was present while the song was being written and wrote an account in his 1968 biography of The Beatles. Lennon remarked to Shotton, “Let the fuckers work that one out.” Shotton was also responsible for suggesting to Lennon to change the lyric “waiting for the man to come” to “waiting for the van to come”.

Baby Your A Rich Man was the first song by the band recorded and mixed completely outside Abbey Road Studios. The song was recorded during sessions for the Magical Mystery TourEP, but was intended for the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. That plan changed when it was used as the B-side of the “All You Need Is Love” single. The strange oboe like sound is that of a clavioline which preceded the synthesizer

One last note, this LP and The Who Sell Out were my Christmas presents from my sister. I couldn’t thank her enough!

The White Album was released on November 22, 1968. Originally entitled A Doll’s House, the title was changed when the British progressive rock band Family released the similarly titled Music in a Doll’s House earlier that year. Most of the songs were conceived during a transcendental meditationcourse with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India in the spring of 1968. Lennon left Rishikesh because he felt personally betrayed by rumours that Maharishi had made sexual advances toward Mia Farrow, who had accompanied The Beatles on their trip. Shortly after he decided to leave, Lennon wrote a song called “Maharishi” which included the lyrics, “Maharishi/You little twat”; the song became   Sexy Sadie

Despite the album’s official title, which emphasised group identity, studio efforts on The Beatles captured the work of four increasingly individualised artists who frequently found themselves at odds. Long after the recording of The Beatles was complete, Martin mentioned in interviews that his working relationship with The Beatles changed during this period, and that many of the band’s efforts seemed unfocused, often yielding prolonged jam sessions that sounded uninspired. The sessions for The Beatles were notable for the band’s formal transition from 4-track to 8-track recording. The Beatles was the first Beatles’ album released by Apple Records, as well as their only original double album. Producer George Martin has said that he was against the idea of a double album at the time and suggested to the group that they reduce the number of songs in order to form a single album featuring their stronger work, but that the band decided against this. It was also was the last Beatles album to be released with a unique, alternate mono mix, albeit one issued only in the UK and a few other countries.

Dear Prudence The lyrics are about actress Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence who was present when the Beatles visited Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. Prudence, focused on meditation, stayed in her room for the majority of their stay. Lennon, who was worried that she was depressed, wrote this song for her, inviting her to ”come out to play”. Prudence explained years later that she was just trying to take Transcendental Meditation seriously. She said in Mojo magazine: “They were trying to be cheerful, but I wished they’d go away. I don’t think they realized what the training was all about.”

Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey

In 1980, Lennon said: “That was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you’re in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: You know, ‘What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?’ All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time.

The song’s title is the longest of any in the Beatles’ catalogue, and it originates from a quote by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, however, as for the “and My Monkey” part, George Harrison attested that he didn’t “know where that came from” though McCartney believes it was a reference to Lennon’s heroin habit.

Good Night This song still gives me chills. It was originally a lullaby written by John to his son Julian. Was it a better time back in the 60′s? Were we in a strange way more innocent? Less preoccupied? Kind of funny that this song ends the LP. It seems like it was a metaphor that really signaled the end of the Beatles.

Yellow Submarine released Jan 13, 1969 Only one side of the album contains songs performed by the Beatles; of the six, four were previously unissued. “Yellow Submarine” had been simultaneously issued in 1966 as a singleand on the album Revolver, and “All You Need Is Love” had been issued as a single in the summer of 1967. The second side features the symphonic film score composed by George Martin, in versions recorded specifically for the album.

I loved the instrumental tracks. Actually Pepperland is still one of my favorite songs. It has a beautiful melody!  Only four new Beatles songs appeared on the album, and two were recorded specifically for the film, All Together Now and  Hey Bulldog Only a Northern Song an indictment of there publishers had been recorded during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper, but was set aside from the final running order. It’s All Too Much like similar numbers recorded immediately following the Sgt. Pepper sessions, was not intended for a specific project.                                                                                                                      Although the essential artwork on the album covers issued in the United States and Great Britain are similar, there are a few subtle differences on the sleeves. The front of the British jacket contains the words “NOTHING IS REAL” in green print just below the album’s title. This subtitle had been omitted from the American album cover.

The Beatles were not enthusiastic about participating in a motion picture. They were displeased with their second feature film Help!, and were discouraged by the disastrous reception of their self-produced TV special Magical Mystery Tour. They did, however, see an animated film as a favourable way to complete their commitment to United Artists for a third film. (Ultimately, due to their relatively small roles and the fact it was animated, United Artists still considered them to owe another movie; Let It Be would be the third film to complete their contract with the studio.)

The Beatles were impressed after seeing a draft of the film, and agreed to make a live-action cameo appearance in the final scene, which was filmed in early February 1968 upon the band’s return from India. The cameo was originally intended to feature a post-production psychedelic background and effects; but due to time and budget constraints, a blank, black background remained in the final film.