The Beatles-While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The Beatles - The White Album (1968)

The Beatles self-titled 1968 release, known most famously as The White Album due to its white cover was one of the first double albums to be released by a prominent artist in popular music. This album was recorded during a turbulent period for the group, with the sessions dominated by in-fighting and disinterest, while Ringo Starr also quit the group for a brief period before being enticed back. Despite the recording of this album being un-harmonious and tense, the music was in no way affected and in fact what the band lay down on this album was some of their best work, resulting also in one of their best albums.

The White Album is an incredibly diverse album musically, containing a whole range of different styles across the two sides. There is seemingly something for everybody on this album with the genres on display including folk, rock and roll, alternative, avant-garde, music hall, pop, country, blues, heavy metal and even a child lullaby, and that’s not even everything. This album probably more than any of their others also highlighted strongly their overall musical talents, as on this release they played most of the instruments on the album relying on session musicians only on the odd occasion. The band would taken turns playing lead and rhythm guitar, bass, drums, percussion, keyboards, piano, harmonica and even saxophone and flugelhorn, interchanging across all sorts of instruments. Part of the reason for this was because many of the songs were recorded as solo pieces with minimal effort from the other band members. This highlighted the tension that was building within the band, as well as the desire for each individual to have their own song recorded and recorded the way they wanted.

The majority of the songs on The White Album were written on acoustic guitar while the band was in India studying transcendental meditation. Although the songs as usual were credited to Lennon-McCartney, this is by no means correct with most of the songs individually written and only a few co-written. When listening to the album you can even get a clear picture of who wrote what based on the different styles of each song. John Lennon tended to write more experimental and heavier tracks, while Paul McCartney wrote more pop oriented and somewhat softer songs, although there is the odd exception such as McCartney’s “Helter Skelter”. What makes this album an incredibly enjoyable listen and a very interesting album is the themes and ideas on display within the songs, of which many contain a subtle quirkiness and underlying humour. Just some of the themes that appear include a hunter named Bungalow Bill on “The Continuing story of bungalow bill”, Paul McCartney’s dog on “Martha My Dear”, the Maharishi on “Sexy Sadie”, and of all things Eric Clapton’s chocolate addiction on “Savoy Truffle” – weird I know. Interestingly enough in connection with the song themes, the band helped to fuel Paul is dead conspiracy theorists on this album with subtle clues appearing to stoke this infamous conspiracy. These included the famous line “the walrus was Paul” on “Glass Onion”, as well as the supposed hidden message on the end of I’m So Tired” which if played backwards sounds like “Paul is dead miss him miss him”.

I just love the satirical and ironic nature of some of the songs on the album where they appear in many ways to mock the very style or theme of the song, something which critics derided them for after the album was released. “Yer Blues” is in many ways a pisstake of blues rock with its heavy reverb and distortion, as well as the all out solo where the band just let rip. On “Rocky Racoon” a country styled track, McCartney starts the song in a mock fake American country accent, while on “Piggies” a song about corporate greed, Harrison sings the chorus in a posh English accent. It’s these little things which make some of the weaker songs on the album musically an enjoyable listen. Despite this, incredibly enough some of the contemporary reviews of the album slated the band for not being serious enough and not writing songs about the political and social climate of the time. In one especially ridiculous comment, critic John Landau said that ‘the band used parody on the album because they were afraid of confronting reality and the urgencies of the moment’, a bizarre comment if there was one considering the previous year they were on a global telecast singing “All You Need is Love”. At the end of the day if they felt like writing social or political they would have done, and in fact three songs “Blackbird” “Revolution 1” and “Piggies” all had underlying political/social ideas in them, which then makes you wonder if people like Landau were expecting an all out protest album or something in a similar vain.

Although there is occasional filler material such as “Wild Honey Pie” and “Don’t Pass Me By”, while the less said about “Revolution 9” the better, I find it hard to criticise much about this album. It has great diversity and an eclectic mix of styles across both discs which keeps me interested throughout, from the opening track “Back in the USSR” to the final track on side two “Good Night”. Double albums often end up failing because a lot of the material is second rate and is simply there to fill a side meaning the listener can lose interest very quickly. This is not the case on The White Album with the really good tracks such as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” evenly spaced out with what might appear to be weaker tracks musically but often more quirky and satirical such as “Bungalow Bill”. And in fact it is many of those lesser tracks which make this album such a quirky mix throughout, from half songs to unfinished songs of which anything less would take away the albums uniqueness and magical qualities.

The White Album is one of The Beatles best albums and certainly one of their most successful. It has gone on to sell over twenty million copies and was listed as the tenth best album of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. It is one of my favourites Beatles albums and is definitely to me their most diverse and interesting offering musically, with its range of styles and song themes ensuring that it is a standout album from The Beatles back catalogue and a must listen.  

A+

- Sam

Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends (1968)

There’s a strange, almost mythical image of folk duo Simon & Garfunkel, one which I used to share until I began going through their discography – it’s of a quiet, unassuming pair from (mostly upper-class) Forest Hills, New York that comprised of one guy (Paul Simon) strum-humming about marbles and promises while the other (Art Garfunkel) rocked back and forth on a petit stool with a vacant expression, occasionally singing a word or two. This particular image, I am glad to say, was more or less broken by the time I sat through Sounds of Silence (1966) and was completely shattered after listening to and digesting their fourth studio album Bookends, released in 1968.

Cultural champions after the providing the soundtrack for the film The Graduate in 1967, Simon & Garfunkel shortly returned to the studio to complete additional recording for their upcoming album. On the surface, Bookends appears to continue the duo’s tradition of packing Simon-penned acoustic pieces around pushed singles (in this case, “Mrs. Robinson”) but the album is really a story in two parts – these are purposefully separated by Side A and Side B. The album’s first half could be loosely described as a concept piece, covering themes of birth, life and death in 60s America, and the second half is mostly Simon flexing his newly acquired influences, and doing so much better than on the largely forgettable preceding effort Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme from 1967.

Beginning with the brief, breezy acoustic “Bookends Theme”, the album truly announces itself with “Save the Life of My Child”, opening with a surprisingly thick, ethereal moog synthesiser, completely breaking tradition from the pair’s previous releases. The duo break the mould even further, as additional sounds and voices flood the aural atmosphere, from distorted synths to snippets of “The Sound of Silence” (released two years prior) complete with almost ghostly wails while Simon sings the refrain “Save the life of my child / Cried the desperate mother”. Showing just how far Simon had come as a songwriter, the track is a greater reflection on particular attitudes within American society at the time, depicting a boy who is on the verge of plunging to his death, and rather than assisting him the adult population instead blame his actions on drugs and a lack of respect.

Following a smooth transition, “America” is perhaps the first indication in Bookends of Simon’s growing admiration for British music, featuring drum fills that sound like they were pulled straight from The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” (courtesy of legendary Wrecking Crew session musician Hal Blaine) along with psychedelic-tinged keyboards and incessantly pleasant double-tracked acoustic guitar, all providing a backdrop for vocal harmonies by the pair which range from soft and airy to emphatic and prolonged. It’s the first song with a real and distinctive sense of character that the pair had recorded, pulling in a range of influences but not really sounding like anybody else. The next track does sound like Simon & Garfunkel however, but not completely – “Overs” is a bare, pure acoustic piece which separates the two’s vocal duties, including a verse of Garfunkel singing solo, which is a rarity to hear. A sombre number, the track deals with a sort of helplessness and inevitability that usually accompanies a dying relationship, in this case being Simon’s lover Kathy Chitty, who was earlier referenced in “America”. Then there’s “Voices of Old People”, a track that has me completely stumped as to why it was included – it’s literally two minutes of recordings that Garfunkel had made, interviewing elderly people from (I’m assuming) his neighbourhood. I can appreciate what they were both trying to accomplish here, as the whole ‘concept’ approach (thanks Sgt. Pepper’s) was all the rage in 1968, but leading in from the superb “America” and “Overs”, it disrupts the flow of the album, acting as a bizarre and unnecessary segue into the sentimental, dreamy acoustic ballads “Old Friends” and “Bookends”.

Kicking off Side B, “Fakin’ It” is evidence that Simon also found a lot to like in particular strands of American popular music, in this instance borrowing heavily from the psychedelic-folk sounds of Love’s Forever Changes, making use of a strong, recurring acoustic riff as well as handclaps and brief, otherworldly bursts of horns and strings. A track that is littered with aspects of British psychedelic-pop, “Punky’s Dilemma” is a finely crafted happy-go-lucky piece that includes lines like “I wish I was an English muffin / ‘Bout to make the most of a toaster / I’d ease myself down / Coming up brown / I prefer boysenberry / Than any other jam”, and is really just Simon tipping his hat to groups like Small Faces and The Zombies in a very appropriate and charming way. Undoubtedly the album’s biggest audience puller, the endearing, folk-pop staple “Mrs. Robinson” is still a classic track, one that has probably been most associated with the pair, and deservedly so. Originally titled “Mrs. Roosevelt” but reworked to fit the narrative of The Graduate, the upbeat sing-a-long nature of the song belies Simon’s lyrics, who pines for the loss of American icons and role models, as well as being disillusioned with the political climate in the late 60s – “Going to the candidates’ debate / Laugh about it / Shout about it / When you’ve got to choose / Every way you look at it you lose”. A chart-topper through and through, “Mrs. Robinson” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 and later earned the pair a Grammy, in the form of Record of the Year. The album’s last pairing; “A Hazy Shade of Winter” and “At the Zoo” encapsulate the very nature of Bookends, or at least its second half, with the former imbuing the same driving, cheery vibe as “Mrs. Robinson” and the latter signing the album off by superbly balancing soft, quiet acoustic passages with verses in the style of a children’s song, and an incredibly infectious one at that.

With only a few glaring shortcomings, Bookends is a delightful offering of folk-pop, sure the vague concept in the album’s first half isn’t particularly well orchestrated, but the individual songs (not interview recordings) are still melodic, brilliantly composed and meticulously arranged. Not bad for a pair that I once thought of as guys that sat on stools and hummed a bit. Along with Sounds of Silence and their last studio album Bridge Over Troubled Water, it’s basically essential listening for anyone who, like myself not long ago, don’t exactly rate Simon & Garfunkel or aren’t aware of their true musicality – chances are your image may be shattered too, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

B+

-Karl

Listen to Bookends on Grooveshark

Blur - For Tomorrow (1993)

Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993)

Released in 1993, Modern Life Is Rubbish was Britpop band Blur’s second studio album. As a release it was the moment they began to move away from the baggy-influenced shoegazing style that they had explored on their debut album, towards the Britpop sound that would make them one of the biggest bands in the UK during the mid-90s. This album musically speaking in many ways was a homage to classic British 60s pop, with bands such as The Kinks and Small Faces having a significant influence on the material of this album both lyrically and musically. The change in musical direction was brought about by singer-songwriter Damon Albarn who had decided to go down a more melodic pop route, this after the bands disastrous 1992 tour of America. This change can largely be put down to Albarn’s experiences on this tour which left him dismayed by American audiences, in particular their interest in grunge and often hectic behaviour at gigs. The result of this was a feeling of dislike towards everything American within the band especially Albarn and in turn produced a greater love of England and everything English, something which would heavily influence the recording of Modern Life Is Rubbish.

Musically the sound of Modern Life Is Rubbish is by in large guitar based pop in the style of bands such as The Who, The Jam, and as I have already mentioned The Kinks and Small Faces. The band draw on a variety of different styles on this album in what is an eclectic mix of punk rock “Advert”, psychedelic rock “Chemical World”, 60s pop “For Tomorrow” and even English vaudevillian music hall “Sunday Sunday”. Although the band were moving in a different direction musically from their debut album, an alternative rock/shoegazing influence still exists on several tracks especially in the guitar playing of Graham Coxon. One such example was the experimental guitar driven track “Oily Water” with its layered psychedelic guitar drawing comparisons to bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Ride. Coxon’s playing is a definite standout on this album especially with his use of delay, reverb and distortion in creating a heavily layered sound which dominates many of the tracks on the album. His playing on this record shows why he is one of the best guitarists to ever come out of the British indie scene and how he is more than just a guitar player, but also a composer and inventor on the six-string. The band also experimented with different sounds on this album, sounds that were outside of the traditional rock band model. A woodwind section can be heard on “Star Shaped”, while brass comes to dominate “Sunday Sunday”. Vocally the band also experiment, with Small Faces-like choruses of la, la, la’s and Damon Albarn even singing in a fake cockney accent on some tracks, something that definitely contributed to the overall Englishness of the album.   

Damon Albarn’s desire to create an English influenced record comes to the fore more through the lyrics of the songs than the music. And although the music is a vital cog in this overall thematic concept, the songs on this album are in many ways little stories of contemporary English life based on Albarn’s own experiences, as well as what he perceives to be as traditional England.  With his song writing on this album, Albarn draws on the likes of Ray Davies, Steve Marriott and Paul Weller for influence as he gives a social commentary and often humorous take on 90s England suburbia, celebrating middle class existence as well as disdaining it. There’s the track “Colin Zeal” which is a humorous take on a London office worker called Colin Zeal. This is a man “who knows the value of mass appeal [while] “keeping his eye on the news and his future in hand”. And then there is the track “Sunday Sunday”, a song about traditional English Sunday activities such as having a roast and walking in the park. These are just two examples from the album where Albarn does a fantastic job with his lyrics in painting pictures for the listener of English life in a way which is not to dissimilar to what Ray Davies did on The Kinks seminal album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.

On its release Modern Life Is Rubbish was a modest chart success despite being lauded by critics as the album that helped to usher in Britpop in the UK. Despite not being an overwhelming smash, Modern Life Is Rubbish was significant in rejuvenating the band after their failure in America and helped also to set the tone for what would become their decade defining album and smash-hit Parklife the following year. The overall concept of celebrating England and Englishness was a good one for the band to explore and it definitely lent itself well to the majority of the material on the album. My only major criticism would be around the length of the album which I feel would have benefited strongly from being trimmed a little bit as it tends to lag on the second half and probably runs for two too many songs, but this is just a minor aberration more than anything. Overall though Modern Life Is Rubbish is a great 90s album and one of Blur’s best. I thoroughly recommend it to those into British indie, Britpop, or simply those who are looking for 90s nostalgia.  

B+

- Sam