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Author Topic: White Album and acid burn out  (Read 17030 times)
I. Spaceman
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« Reply #50 on: January 26, 2006, 12:52:59 PM »

Haha, you mean the cover of Julie Driscoll's "This Wheels On Fire"!
Glad you're hip to the Banshees, man.
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Aegir
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« Reply #51 on: January 26, 2006, 01:00:49 PM »

Actually.. that makes much more sense that Siouxsie and co. would be listening to Julie Driscoll as opposed to the Band or Dylan..

I discovered the Banshees on accident; I downloaded "Arabian Knights" thinking it would be a cover of the Alladin song.. I was pleasantly surprised. That "whilst you conquer more orifices of boys, goats, and things" line just completely sold me on them.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2006, 01:02:58 PM by Aegir » Logged

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I. Spaceman
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« Reply #52 on: January 26, 2006, 01:02:30 PM »

Yes, Siouxsie recently stated in Mojo that she's never even heard Dylan or The Band's versions.
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« Reply #53 on: January 26, 2006, 01:04:11 PM »

I'm a few pages late on this thread but I'll toss in this fresh perspective.

The Beatles as a band and as personalities thrived on excess. This ideal may not have been recognized as such as "excess" then since there wasn't any sort of gauge to compare-- in other words the Beatles self indulgence lead to either futher rock and roll extremism-- (Bowie, Alice Cooper et al) or the direct attack against in the form of punk (which in most cases was it's own debauched overkill.)

But I digress-- what I'm getting at is that the White Album isn't acid burnout, it's simply the next phase of the Beatles deliberatley and obviously topping their last major project. You can pretty much follow the band's self indulgence through Hamburg (all night shows, uppers. "mach schau!"), Beatlemania (insane crowds, insane workload, of which I believe they could have stopped-- it's not like Paul was up there saying "Come on now everyone sit down and we don't play." No they bobbed their heads and girls pissed themselves.), the middle era records (Rubber Soul and Revolver remain the finest in the catalog due to the excess being tempered by stunning great songcraft) right on up to Pepper and the White Album. "Pepper" is a huge production, a roly poly carnivale of an LP, a psychedelic slap to the masses and that's just the music. The album cover is pop art, overflowing with an overwhelming array of the sorta famous and various curios. But the album doesn't escape being just that, a single album. So where do you go? To film of course though the Pepper film evolved into the madcap acid flash of "Magical Mystery Tour." If you want acid burnout, look here but it's not the band that's burned out, it's the bus passengers and vicariously the viewers suffering the malaise.

Beyond that we arrive at the White Album. Bearing a remarkably crisp and clean sound and mix (thanks in part to some work at Trident on 8 track) in comparison to the psychedelic sludge that Pepper became due to endless bouncing) the lyrics are eclectic, crazy, emotional, dry, avant garde-- the record is as diverse as life itself and the record is spare enough to breathe on its own. And it's huge-- 30 songs, 30 songs about just about any and everything. So what do you put on the cover of a huge LP about EVERYTHING.  The answer: NOTHING. Sheer fodaing genius. Drop all the costumes, foda the walrus and all the rest of the bullmerda and it's about the excess of songs this time around.

So where does this path of "excess" lead? To further extremism, next project "Let's track live in a studio while being filmed and freezing our asses off" and maybe hit the road. Even further, "no overdubs" we need to "get back."

And in short it killed the band.
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I. Spaceman
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« Reply #54 on: January 26, 2006, 01:08:54 PM »

Yes. I would further define it to "lack of honesty" that killed the band. Post-white, they bounced from not enough production to way too much, neither of which being honest choices for the band's creativity and state in that era. White was a verite and hyper-real work, portraying exactly where the Beatles were at. If they could have made 2 more like that, we'd have 2 more classics and the Pepper-Tour era would be viewed as a psychedelic pit-stop in the midst of a straightforwardly brilliant career.
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Beckner
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« Reply #55 on: January 26, 2006, 01:14:20 PM »

Yes I didn't comment on Abbey Rd since in terms of the band's evolution it's a bit of apochrypha. Production wise, it was a throwback and Macca I'm sure kissed George Martin's ass to get him back on board. Between the full use of 8 track and Martin and the Side 2 song cycle, Abbey Rd is excess gone awry. "The milk's gone bad" as "Chappelle as Rick James" would say.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2006, 01:22:53 PM by Beckner » Logged
I. Spaceman
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« Reply #56 on: January 26, 2006, 01:18:13 PM »

I can dig it. The pureness of White is why I love it, and the halfbaked and weak nature of some of the material in comparison to the masterpieces sitting beside them is part of the album's brilliance. The album's flaws are part of the brilliance, and vice versa.
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Beckner
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« Reply #57 on: January 26, 2006, 01:22:21 PM »

The album's "flaws" is it's strength. I'm not one to compile one of those "single disc" white album tracklistings-- the record is perfect right now right as it is. Change nothing, add nothing, move nothing-- "wild honey pie" is as important a song as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."
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I. Spaceman
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« Reply #58 on: January 26, 2006, 01:35:14 PM »

Yes, I totally agree, but it's also fun to compile a Revolver 2 from the album, to see an alternate route that could have occurred.
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pavlos brenos
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« Reply #59 on: January 28, 2006, 03:45:33 AM »

I think that "Revolution 9" was johnandyoko's attempt to display on an aural canvas the mental wanderings of a bad acid trip (I'd think that they would've tripped many a time in '68 which served to bond them together strongly) and the use of McCartney's plaintive "Can You Take Me Back" fragment served as a neat juxtaposition, as a voice of caution pleading for a retreat to normalcy. The troubled "Get Back" sessions were the result of going down McCartney's path................
"The Beatles" was prgrammed in a marathon session by McCartney and Lennono; to have been a fly on the wall...................
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jazzfascist
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« Reply #60 on: January 28, 2006, 04:14:04 AM »

For me "Revolution 9" is a little like aural Monty Python (who aired the following year), especially if you see it in connection with "Goodnight".

Søren
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pavlos brenos
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« Reply #61 on: January 28, 2006, 04:25:13 AM »

John was a great natural comic talent and he could have been an especially vicious Python!!
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« Reply #62 on: January 28, 2006, 06:42:53 AM »

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Between the full use of 8 track and Martin and the Side 2 song cycle, Abbey Rd is excess gone awry

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jazzfascist
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« Reply #63 on: January 28, 2006, 12:33:08 PM »

Yes. I would further define it to "lack of honesty" that killed the band. Post-white, they bounced from not enough production to way too much, neither of which being honest choices for the band's creativity and state in that era. White was a verite and hyper-real work, portraying exactly where the Beatles were at. If they could have made 2 more like that, we'd have 2 more classics and the Pepper-Tour era would be viewed as a psychedelic pit-stop in the midst of a straightforwardly brilliant career.
I would say it’s almost the other way around, it’s exactly because they were honest enough to realise that they were going different ways, that they split up. I think most of their career they seemed to pretty much be following their muse and that’s why they broke a lot of boundaries and in the end why they broke up. The only time they seemed to be going  a little through the motions was around “For Sale” and “Help”, otherwise they seemed to be doing more or less doing what they wanted to do. I don’t see their psychedelic period as particularly dishonest, that was where they were at that point, likewise their “White album period” which really wasn’t particularly underproduced, if you look at it more closely. What  is “dishonest” music anyway ?.  And even if Beatles was a “dishonest” and “selfindulgent” they were a pretty soulful and creative band and that’s what counts in my opinion.

Søren
« Last Edit: January 28, 2006, 12:35:44 PM by jazzfascist » Logged

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I. Spaceman
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« Reply #64 on: January 28, 2006, 03:47:16 PM »

If honesty is what killed the band, they would have broken up in 1966.
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jazzfascist
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« Reply #65 on: January 29, 2006, 05:54:39 AM »

If honesty is what killed the band, they would have broken up in 1966.

Yeah, I know that Lennon has said, that he started thinking about leaving in 1966, but even if he gave it a try after all and delayed the actual decision, I don’t think you could call it less honest. Also even if he had his doubts about being in Beatles, I don’t see why that would make his or the others contributions less honest. I don’t think it was a big secret, that there were frictions in Beatles at that point and it also showed up in the music, most notably on the “White Album“. So it seems to me that they more or less pretty honestly did what they wanted to do and when it was over, it was over. It’s not like other bands like BBs or Stones who have stayed together well beyond their date of expiration.

Søren
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I. Spaceman
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« Reply #66 on: January 29, 2006, 11:07:38 AM »

I disagree. I think the Beatles stayed together well past their expiration date as well.
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wind chime
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« Reply #67 on: January 29, 2006, 04:14:45 PM »

I disagree. I think the Beatles stayed together well past their expiration date as well.

I think "The Ballad of J&Y" was certainly enough of sign that this wasn't a ship going where she ought to....but all their albums have greatness....I think they expired at Let It Be but then suddenly made Abbey Road. And a somewhat scraped together and yet pompous ending IMHO (Abbey Side 2 medley)
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cabinessence
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« Reply #68 on: January 29, 2006, 05:03:48 PM »

Even at the time, I recognized the 'posthumous existence' aspect of the late band. I found it morbidly fascinating like watching a couple doomed to eventual divorce still stuck in marriage therapy and trying to 'make nice' for the kids between stormy fights and slammed doors. I remember a bewildering bonanza of band and post-band-and-yet-still-of-it-somehow solo material coming out pretty much simultaneously all with the Apple label attached, sometimes bizarrely-confusingly out of sequence (EDIT: or so I learned much later: Let it Be was presented to the world (or innocent folks like me, anyway), as 'end of the Beatles', the final testament, a verite-like presentation of 'the breakup', whereas it pre-dated Abbey Road in actuality; echoing Ian here, I think:  I felt snookered when I discovered this. It was as if -or simply was- the handlers of the band knew the end was on the way and jiggered the history a little to make it play better in terms of a narrative arc. I wouldn't doubt the Lindsay Hogg docu was cut -from the thousand hours of footage available- to play this way instead of some other way, a bit opportunistically and legendarily, the 'truth' of the film being very relative and somehow fundamentally fake in the final analysis. I got the same queasy sense listening to the Beatles Anthology after hearing the bootlegs it was based on, uncut reality being conveyed but essentially  messed with. I'm not drawing any conclusions, but I don't like this aspect of the curating of the legend that crept in increasingly after the White Album, a return to earliest Fab Four P.R. band-protection and mythmaking)

Some good music was actually wrung from the tension, reflects it, moves beyond it.  On the one side, John asserting himself in a Post-Beatles-like way with or without the band, clearly announcing "It's over folks!" over and over again. Instant Karma! was clearly a "Plastic Ono Band" single, beyond the end, but it was also the party of the last couple years continuing. George was on board, Phil was producing, Billy Preston was reputedly in there somewhere, it was the same stripped down style as Lennon had been practising for a long time (and as good a Beatles anthem as he'd ever come up with); Ballad of John and Yoko was so definitively over, and yet it was a beautiful little John and Paul together one last time "One after 99" type nostalgic workout too.

Though the Side 2 Abbey Road collage has its ups and downs, I find Paul's "You Never Give Me Your..." theme pretty heart wrenching as  band-breakup material (..."I break down!") treated as if it were a literal marriage falling apart ("I never give you my pillow,I only send you my invitation"), or that's how I read it. Oh Darling! which is nominally a throwaway number likewise has a passion in the performance that's disarming and overwhelming, and possibly related to the charged state of things (an essential track in any event)
« Last Edit: January 29, 2006, 10:51:12 PM by cabinessence » Logged
wind chime
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« Reply #69 on: January 30, 2006, 03:11:36 AM »

Yes good points! Cabin...I think it was too hard to really let go until someone finally pulled the official plug. (Paul?) but the gems from this period for me are Georges stuff

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« Reply #70 on: January 30, 2006, 06:01:07 AM »

Good read, Cabin...I really want to play Abbey Road now!!

Oh' Darlin is a good number.  There's such a vibe on that whole album--it's warm, but not overly cheery, it's smooth but still has great traction.  That album has always defined the Beatles to me.
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jazzfascist
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« Reply #71 on: January 30, 2006, 07:24:01 AM »

I disagree. I think the Beatles stayed together well past their expiration date as well.

That might have been true if they had kept on playing the type of music that made them famous, but they didn't, they kept evolving and experimenting almost up to the end, so musically I don't think you could call them expired.

Søren
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Jeff Mason
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« Reply #72 on: January 30, 2006, 07:35:40 AM »

Depends upon your opinion of Abbey Road.  I love it.  Ian thinks it is way overrated and not so good.
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Daniel S.
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« Reply #73 on: January 30, 2006, 10:59:43 AM »

I also love Abbey Road. Gosh Darn, it's one of the best records ever made. Are people changing their mind on this? Sgt. Pepper is overrated, Abbey Road is not.
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« Reply #74 on: January 30, 2006, 11:23:12 AM »

This is a great thread...great comments by all, especially Cabinessence.  I really have nothing to add, except that  Abby Road is my favorite Beatles...however this thread is giving me a whole new perspective on late Beatles.
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