I love the Beatles. What is critical to know is the Beatles influenced a lot of acts I would end up loving to pick up a guitar, write songs and form a band. Knowing that, our debt to them is amazing. A lot of music we know and love may not exist without them. My cousin Justin and I have had long arguments how useless rap is . All this going back to 1994. One of the things that clinched it was I told him when I was first year high school hearing Joe Walsh made me wish I could play guitar. Listening to Rick Davies of Supertramp made me retake piano lessons. What does rap make you want to do? he said "Nothing" . I don't entirely believe that but that is a generation speaking of the uselessness of a genre. Rap music is an oxymoron.
Individually very few people would consider George Harrison a guitar whiz or confuse Ringo Starr with Buddy Rich. Yet put those four together with their talents as song writers and with people like George Martin further adding to the creative process, well immortal magic.
The very first sentence in Sgt. Peppers is "It was twenty years ago today , Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play". Some people think Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits was the first album to show that CDs have arrived. That was 1985. The Beatles catalog was released on cd two years after that. To show you how much of a weenie I was I bought my copy of Sgt.Peppers (CD) exactly twenty years after the release of the record which was the day of the CD debut. Twenty one years later after the fact I am admitting to you guys.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a lot like Citizen Kane in the sense that if you are younger like me ( I was a year old when it came out) You take for granted what is on it because it has been copied and added to so much since then. Below Bob talks about listening to only that for a week. He is not the only guy to publicly admit that. Peter Frampton did too and so many others. It's because Sgt.Pepper's was the first time any of this was tried before. Once you have heard the offshoots, the original sounds almost ordinary.
It was the first record with lyrics provided. Enjoy Bob Lefsetz's Beatles memories plus his meeting with producer Sir George Martin. I provided one of the cuts from Sgt.Pepper's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds along with some information on it. Link about the entire album itself is in the previous paragraph.
There's so much to say about the Beatles. But they are what they are because they were not complacent. They were already on top but they took advantage of their added clout by pushing the envelope more. Maybe those forces could not co exist for too long so don't go blaming Yoko too much.
Ed
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"Do you need anybody?"
Last night I went down to USC to hear George Martin tell the story of the making of "Sgt. Pepper".
Not that I usually go to NARAS events. But a friend I only know from the Internet bought me a ticket. And despite my arriving thirty minutes past the time of our assignation, when I phoned Mike he was still stuck on the freeway, so while I ate hors d'oeuvres I engaged in conversation with Mike Clink about producing the new Zakk Wylde album and Daryl Friedman regarding the Recording Academy's agenda in D.C. Daryl assured me that there would be a performance royalty for recordings played on the radio in 2009. And then we discussed the NARAS agenda. Clink and David Helfant laughed and said the board argued over all the same issues I bring up in my newsletter. And then the bell rang and we went inside.
This is not your normal Hollywood crowd. These are not the faces on TMZ. They're connected with the industry somehow, but I didn't know almost any of them. And not being connected, I found myself upstairs in the balcony, wedged in between unfamiliar faces. And the reason I'm complaining about this is when George Martin emerged, I couldn't hear every single word.
But I could hear enough.
I couldn't understand why the woman next to me spent the entire presentation with her head on her boyfriend's shoulder. Then again, she probably wasn't even born when "Sgt. Pepper" was released. She didn't live through not only one chart-topping success after another, but the endless limit-testing. Madonna kept reinventing herself, but the Beatles kept reinventing their music. They were always one step ahead of us, they pulled us into the future.
But they almost didn't get their chance. George spoke of making the deal with Brian Epstein, how he'd have passed if he knew everybody else had. How he thought the original material was rubbish. How the original version of "Please Please Me" was a lame Roy Orbison clone. But when they came back to record it...he was stunned... They'd delivered. You see the Beatles were hungry. They had an awful royalty rate, but they would have done it for free.
George told how Paul McCartney rejected his use of strings on "Yesterday" out of the box, worried about his cred, but then caved and was pleased and was ultimately open to George's rip of the "Psycho" soundtrack for "Eleanor Rigby".
Then we got to the main attraction, "Sgt. Pepper".
And George told how they'd cut "Strawberry Fields Forever" first. And then "Penny Lane". Breaking down "Strawberry Fields", hearing the original version sans mellotron, was fascinating. As was the use of a classical musician for the trumpet solo on "Penny Lane".
But then the real work began. On the album as we know it.
And to tell you the truth, although fascinating, very little of this was a revelation. Because it's been covered so many times before. But then, George starts breaking down the tracks.
I don't know what it's like being a kid today. Whether all the distractions make for the harried life the media depicts. What with soccer practice and music lessons and Facebook and Net surfing it appears kids have no free time. We didn't have so many diversions. To us, the music was almost everything. Sure, we had TV. But there were only three networks, and the programming was safe. The records were dangerous. Limits were tested aurally, not visually.
But those days are through.
I love a great record. But I don't hear as many as I used to. Or maybe it's me, I'm in a different part of my life.
But then, sitting high in Bovard Auditorium, George Martin isolated the background vocals on "With A Little Help From My Friends".
This is after telling the story of coaxing Ringo to do the vocal. Before Ringo complained that everybody else in the group was a frustrated drummer and told him how to play his parts. We were in the middle of the track. That's when the spine-tingling moment occurred.
We listen on earbuds. Most people's stereo is their computer, whose awful speakers, which including amplification, cost less than $100. We get a facsimile of the sound. It's so far removed from the studio that it doesn't make any difference if the sound was made by machines, machines are just about the only thing that sounds good using today's technology.
But we used to listen to analog recordings. On the best stereos money could buy. And what came out of the speakers was POSITIVELY MELLIFLUOUS!
Where were you during the summer of '67? I bought "Sgt. Pepper" the day it came out and listened to only it for a week straight. My favorite cut was "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite". Then I fell in love with "Lovely Rita". The title track's reprise was too short for me.
But that was eons ago, forty years, in fact. Not only has my body been ravaged by time, but my mind has been buffeted by life, and two of the men who made this music are dead.
But when I heard the band backing up Ringo, we were all suddenly ALIVE!
"Does it worry you to be alone?"
It does me. The joy comes from being a member of the group. As great as some of the band members' solo work was, they were best together. With egos clashing, laughing, trying to top each other.
This vocal sound was not something cut in GarageBand. Through experience George Martin blended the background vocals so you could hear the husky emotion in John Lennon's unique voice, imploring you to pay attention, riddled with the desire to leave Liverpool behind, yet still sweet. All of this baked into one little snippet, a movie appearing in the theatre of the mind.
Now the audience has a grip on our performers. Acts are afraid to take a step without checking the public's pulse. But we used to just try to keep up. We didn't own the acts, they owned us. We followed them to a better place. And, forty years later, when you hear these tracks it's all still there. The joy. Of life, of record-making, of experimentation, of music.
http://www.grammy.com/grammyfoundation/
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http://www.thebeatlesonline.com/pages/beatles_lucyintheskywithdiamonds.htm
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
John Lennon: Vocals, electric guitar, piano
Paul McCartney: Organ, bass guitar, vocals
George Harrison: Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, tamboura, vocals
Ringo Starr: Drums, maracas
Recorded March 1, 2 1967.
Available on:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles/1967-1970
Anthology 2
It's a well-known theory that Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds really stands for LSD (Lucy-Sky-Diamonds).
But John Lennon always disputed this.
Lennon said he got the idea to the lyrics one afternoon when his then four-year-old son Julian came home from nursery school with a drawing. Julian had drawn a sky, stars and a girl, and told his dad that it was Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lucy was in fact Lucy O'Donnell, one of Julian's school friends.
This triggered John's imagination. He had always been fascinated by the surreal, and in particular by two of Lewis Carroll's books, Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. He later said that the hallucinary images in the song were inspired by the chapter Wool and Water in the latter book, where Alice is taken down the river in a rowing boat ("Picture yourself in boat on a river").
However, Lennon did admit in later interviews that he frequently used the drug LSD between 1966 and 1968, and it's of course possible that Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was an attempt to describe a LSD trip. It is also possible that the lyrics were written while Lennon was under the influence of the drug. Nevertheless, the fact that the song title could be shortened to L-S-D is most likely to have been a coincidence.
The Beatles used several effects in the recording studio to create the dream-like, surrealistic atmosphere that surrounds Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
Firstly, Lennon's child-like, high-pitched voice was created by recording him at slow speed before playing the track back at normal speed. In addition, his microphone was put through a Leslie amplifier inside a Hammond organ (Beatles had used the same technique on Tomorrow Never Knows from 1966's Revolver).
George Harrison played the Indian tamboura on the song, an Indian, guitar-like instrument which makes a drone sound. Together with McCartney's delightful bass line and Ringo's timely use of cymbals it all sounded weird and wonderful at the same time.
It was McCartney who played the song's distinctive opening passage on a Hammond organ. The organ was taped with a special organ stop to create the celeste-like sound.
Several artists have covered Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds, the most famous version is Elton John's remake which was recorded in 1974 and which features John Lennon on backing vocals and guitar (he used the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie). This version was released as a single and topped the US charts for two weeks in January 1975.
Lennon's last live appearance was at Elton John's Madison Square Garden concert in 1974. The two friends did a version of Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds, which can be heard on the CD box set entitled Lennon from 1990. The single version is available on a number of Elton John's greatest hits records, such as The Very best of Elton John. (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Picture yourself in boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalde skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
And she’s gone
Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high
Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you’re gone
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Picture yourself on a train in a station
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
http://www.snopes.com/music/hidden/lucysky.asp
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