Talkin About My Generation!

Well, I thought I was done but one of our readers informed me of a review in the NY Times that was extremely critical of Sgt. Pepper upon its release    I went searching for the article and after readiing it, decided that it would be of interest so I am submitting it for your approval.

On June 18, 1967 Richard Goldstein wrote this:

We Still Need the Beatles, but…

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

The finished product reached the record racks last week; the Beatles had super­vised even the album cover ^a mind-blowing collage of famous and obscure people, plants and artifacts. The 12 new compositions in the album are as elaborately con­ceived as the cover. The sound is a pastiche of dissonance and lushness. The mood is mellow, even nostalgic. But, like the cover, the over-all effect is busy, hip and cluttered.

Like an over-attended child “Sergeant Pepper” is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, as­sorted animal noises and a 41-piece orchestra; On at least one cut, the Beatles are not heard at all instrumentally. Sometimes this elaborate mu­sical propwork succeeds in projecting mood. The “Ser­geant Pepper” theme is brassy and vaudevillian. “She’s Leaving Home,” a melodramatic domestic saga, flows on a cloud of heavenly strings. And, in what is be­coming a Beatle tradition, George Harrison unveils his latest excursion into curry and karma, to the saucy ac­companiment of three tam-bouras, a dilruba, a tabla, a sitar, a table harp, three cellos and eight violins.

Harrison’s song, “Within You and Without You,” is a good place to begin dissect­ing “Sergeant Pepper.” Though it is among the strongest cuts, its flaws are distressingly typical of the album as a whole. Compared with “Love You To” (Harri­son’s contribution to “Revolv­er”), this melody shows an expanded consciousness of Indian ragas. Harrison’s voice, hovering midway be­tween song and prayer chant, oozes over the melody like melted cheese. On sitar and tamboura, he achieves a re­markable Pop synthesis. Be­cause his raga motifs are not mere embellishments but are imbedded into the very structure of the song, “With_T in You and Without You” appears seamless. It stretches, but fits.

What a pity, then, that Harrison’s lyrics are dismal and dull. “Love You To” ex­ploded with a passionate sutra quality, but “Within You and Without You” re­surrects the very cliches the Beatles helped bury: “With our love/ We could save the world/ If they only knew.” All the minor scales in the Orient wouldn’t make “With­in You and Without You” profound.

IHe obsession with produc­tion, coupled with a surpris­ing shoddiness in composi­tion, permeates the entire album. There is nothing beau­tiful on “Sergeant Pepper.” Nothing i^ real and thai* is nothing to get hung about. The Lennon raunchine$s has beeome mere caprice in “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” Paul McCartney’s soaring Pop magnificats have become merely politely pro­found. “She’s Leaving Home” preserves all the orchestrated grandeur of “Eleanor Rigby,” but its framework is emaci­ated. This tale of a provincial lass who walks out on a re­pressed home life, leaving pa­rents sobbing in her wake, is simply no match for those stately, swirling strings. Where “Eleanor Rigby” com­pressed tragedy into poignant detail, “She’s Leaving Home” is uninspired narrative, and nothing more. By the third depressing hearing, it begins to sound like an immense put-on.

There certainly are ele­ments of burlesque in a com­position like “When I’m 64,” which poses the crucial ques­tion: “Will you still need me/ Will you still feed me/when I’m 64?” But the dominant tone is not mockery; this is a fantasy retirement, over­flowing with grandchildren, gardening and a modest cot­tage on the Isle of Wight. The Beatles sing, “We shall scrimp and save” with utter reverence. It is a strange fairy tale, oddly sad because it is so far from the com­posers’ reality. But even here, an honest vision is ruined by the background which seeks to enhance it.

“Lucy in the Sky With Dia­monds” is an engaging curio, but nothing more. It is drenched in reverb, echo and other studio distortions. Tone overtakes meaning and we are lost in electronic mean­dering. The best Beatle melo­dies are simple if original progressions braced with pungent lyrics. Even their most radical compositions retain a sense of unity.

But for the first time, the Beatles have given us an album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent. And for the first time, it is not exploration which we sense, but consolida­tion. There is a touch of the Jefferson Airplane, a dab of Beach Boys vibrations, and a generous pat of gymnastics from The Who.

The one evident touch of originality appears in the structure of the album itself. The Beatles have shortened the “banding” between cuts so that one song seems to run into the next. This prod­uces the possibility of a Pop symphony or oratorio, with distinct but related move­ments. Unfortunately, there is no apparent thematic de­velopment in the placing of cuts, except for the effective juxtaposition of opposing mu­sical styles. At best, the songs are only vaguely related.

With one important excep­tion, “Sergeant Pepper” is precious but devoid of gems. ,”A Day in the Life” is such a radical departure from the spirit of the album that it almost deserves its peninsular position (following the rep­rise of the “Sergeant Pepper” theme, it comes almost as an afterthought). It has noth­ing to do with posturing or put-on. It is a deadly earnest excursion in emotive music with a chilling lyric. Its or­chestration is dissonant but sparse, and its mood is not Whimsical nostalgia but irony.

With it, the Beatles have produced a glimpse of modern city life, that is terrifying. It stands as one of the most important Lennon-McCartney compositions, and it is a historic Pop event

“A Day in the Life” starts in a description of suicide. With the same conciseness displayed in “Eleanor R|gby,” the protagonist begins: “I read the news today, oh boy.”

This mild interjection is the first hint of his disillusion­ment; compared with what is to follow, it is supremely ironic. “I saw the photo­graph,” he continues, in the voice of a melancholy choir boy:

He blew his mind out in a car He didn’t notice that the lights had changed

A crowd of people stood and stared

They’d seen his face before Nobody was really sure If he was from the House oj Lords.

“A Day in the Life” could never make the Top 40, al­though it may influence a great many songs which do. Its lyric is sure to bring a sudden surge of Pop tragedy. The aimless, T. S. Eliot-like crowd, forever confronting pain and turning away, may well become a common sym­bol. And its narrator, sub­dued by the totality of his de­spair, may reappear in count­less compositions as the silent, withdrawn hero.

Musically, there are already indications that the intense atonality of “A Day in the Life” is a key to the sound of 1967. Electronic-rock, with its aim of staggering an au­dience, has arrived in half-a-dozen important new releases, None of these songs has the controlled intensity of “A Day in th<? Life,” but the willing­ness of many restrained mu­sicians to “let go” means that serious aleatory-pop may be on the way.

Ultimately, however, it is the uproar over the alleged influence of drugs on the Beatles which may prevent “A Day in the Life” from reaching the mass audience. The song’s refrain, “I’d like to turn you on,” has rankled disk jockeys supersensitive to “hidden subversion” in rock ‘n* roll. In fact, a case can be made within the very struc­ture of “A Day in the Life” for the belief that the Beatles — like so many Pop com­posers—are aware of the highs and lows of conscious­ness.

The song is built on a series of tense, melancholic passages, followed by soaring releases. In the opening stanza, for instance, John’s voice comes near to cracking with despair. But after the invi­tation, “I’d like to turn you on,” the Beatles have inserted an extraordinary atonal thrust which is shocking, even painful, to the ears. But it brilliantly encases the song and, if the refrain preceding it suggests turning on, the crescendo parallels a drug-induced “rush.”

The bridge begins in a staccato crossfire. We feel the narrator rising, dressing and commuting by rote. The music is.nervous with the dissonance of cabaret jazz. A percussive drum melts into a panting railroad chug. Then

Found my way upstairs and had a smoke

Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.

The words fade into a chant of free, spacious chords, like the initial marijuana “buzz.” But the tone becomes myster­ious and then ominous. Deep strings take us on a Wagner­ian descent and we are back to the original blues theme, and the original declaration, “I read the news today, oh boy.”

Actually, it is difficult to see why the BBC banned “A Day in the Life,” because its message is, quite clearly, the flight from banality. It de­scribes a profound reality, but it certainly does not glori­fy it. And its conclusion, though magnificent, seems to represent a negation of self. The song ends on one low, resonant note that is sus­tained for 40 seconds. Hav­ing achieved the absolute peace of nullification, the narrator is beyond melan­choly. But there is something brooding and irrevocable about his calm. It sounds like destruction.

What a shame that “A Day in the Life” is only a coda to an otherwise undis-tingished collection of work. We need the Beatles, not as cloistered composers, but as companions. And they need us. In substituting the studio conservatory for an audience, they have ceased being folk artists,, and the change is what makes their new, album a monologue.

What is extraordinary to me, was at age 14, I was only interested in the music! I knew nothing of the nonsense Mr. Goldstein was writing about. I believed in Duke Ellington’s theory of only two kinds of music:good and bad. This LP was good, very good, even great! It was on my turntable for quite some time!

Oh, by the way, here is the definition of critic:  a person who expresses an unfavorable opinion of something

Need I say more!