Once upon a time, and for a good many crucial years, I knew everything an American could know about The Beatles. That’s because there was so little accessible information.
You didn’t have Rolling Stone. You didn’t have Crawdaddy. You didn’t even have the interweb. Let us remind ourselves—“Sgt Pepper” was the first album to include lyrics. You had the music and the album covers, and that’s it. I had listened to every note they recorded several gazillion times. So I knew everything there was to be known—precious little, if you’re a Generation Z infobit addict. Everything that matters, if you believe that what matters most is the music.
I’m not going to try to compete with all those myriads of young ‘uns who know more facts than I do about the Beatles. I’m also not going to analyze the content of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. My working assumption is that it’s a masterpiece. If you need convincing or affirmation of that, look elsewhere. What I am going to do is to try to provide some context for how this revolutionary recording came into being.
I’m taking the prerequisite key factor – John Lennon’s creative genius – as a given. But I do believe there are two additional crucial ingredients that are worth focusing on – the liberating impact of The Beatles’ massive success circa 1966, and the studio time afforded them.
(Up to) August 29, 1966
On that day, The Beatles played their last live concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The playlist included creaky Hamburg workhorses such as ‘Rock And Roll Music’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’, but not a single song from “Revolver”, which had been recorded from April through June, and was released just a few weeks before the concert.
Up till then, The Beatles had recorded 116 songs in 46 months – 30 per year, several hours per song in the studio time that could be jammed into their schedule between touring and filming and reigning as kings of the universe.
“Rubber Soul” and the singles of the period had included their first cautious steps into experimentation – the fuzz bass on ‘Think For Yourself’, the sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood’, the sped-up piano break on ‘In My Life’, the backwards outro on ‘Rain’. An indication of the schedule they worked under: ‘You Won’t See Me’ and ‘Girl’ were both done in a single day. Almost all the songs were recorded in a single day, with some overdubbing added on later.
George Martin: “It became easier to do experiments because we’d had a few hits. The key was success. As we had more success, it became ‘Come on, lads’. We were more and more able to try out some far-out ideas.” George Harrison: “You have success with what had seemed like a far-out idea, everybody says ‘Wow’, so you go back into the studio and George [Martin] was very keen, he’d say, ‘Well what other ideas do you have?’”
Pause and reflect on that for a moment. At the height of the era of The Suits, an artist being asked ‘What other ideas do you have?’ Had anyone asked that question of Sinatra? Of Elvis? Of the Four Tops? Of Brian Wilson? All he heard was Mike Love’s “Stick to the fucking formula!”
I worked as a creative artist for a decade. My next meal was never dependent on what I produced. But I assure you, every minute I spent trying to put my thoughts and words on the blank page, there were 10,000 Romans in the room demanding to be entertained, screaming for blood. I would recite to myself, “Jeff, you’re beholden to no one. You are your only audience. Ignore the world, do your best.” Very sound advice.
And then I would promptly turn and ignore it, looking over both shoulders as I typed, thinking “Aren’t I clever”, “Oh, this will tickle them—even if it’s just a little too obvious”, pandering my integrity word after word. That’s the difference between The Beatles and the rest of the world. They transcended The Need To Please. Their god-like status liberated them.
Then “Revolver” (recorded April–June, 1966) took much bolder steps, striking out in all sorts of directions, fueled by drug experimentation: ‘Taxman’, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Yellow Submarine’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, not to mention ‘She Said, She Said’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Still, only about a day and a half were allocated for the recording of each song. They had to get back on the road, which meant planes, hotel rooms, and screaming girls.
The Beatles were so sick of touring that after the Candlestick show George said “That’s it, then. I’m not a Beatle anymore.” Brian Epstein was forced to promise them they’d stop touring. The lads got a three-month vacation. George went to India to study with Ravi Shankar. Ringo vacationed in Spain. Paul composed the soundtrack for “The Family Way”. Lennon filmed “How I Won the War” in Germany and Spain, during which time he turned 26.
November 24, 1966
On that evening (the first time they escaped the punishment of recording during the daytime), The Beatles reconvened in the studio after having been apart for three months. Rested, buoyed by the success of “Revolver” (entered the charts at #1 in the UK, where it stayed for seven weeks), inspired by the drugs (marijuana and LSD), and driven by the competition (most notably Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds”), the lads and George Martin were at the peak of their creative energies.
George Martin: “Everything changed when they stopped touring. We could spend as much time as we wanted in the studio. That’s when things really started to go crazy.”
Over the next five months they would spend approximately 55 days in the studio, yielding (in order) :
‘Strawberry Fields Forever‘
‘When I’m Sixty-Four‘
‘Penny Lane‘
‘A Day in the Life‘
‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band‘
‘Good Morning, Good Morning‘
‘Only a Northern Song‘
‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite‘
‘Lovely Rita‘
‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds‘
‘Getting Better‘
‘Within You, Without You‘
‘She’s Leaving Home‘
‘With a Little Help from My Friends‘
‘Sgt Pepper (Reprise) ‘.
According to Geoff Emerick, their regular recording engineer, they showed up with a new colourful, mustachioed Carnaby Street look, and a new attitude:
Paul: “Now we can record anything we want, and it won’t matter [that we can’t perform them live]. We want to raise the bar a notch, to make our best album ever.”
Lennon (to Martin): “What we’re saying is, if we don’t have to tour, then we can record music that we won’t ever have to play live, and that means we can create something that’s never been heard before: a new kind of record with new kinds of sounds.”
Martin: “Right then, let’s get to work. What have you got for me?”
Paul started to say something, but before he could answer, John shouted out, “I’ve got a good one, for a starter!”
John played the song. When he finished, there was a moment of stunned silence, broken by Paul, who in a quiet, respectful tone said simply, “That is absolutely brilliant.”
John on accordion, Paul on trombone, George on trumpet
“The Beatles weren’t ever especially fast at working out parts…Several hours were spent deciding who was going to play what instrument.” Paul was practicing on the Mellotron, George was experimenting with his new slide guitar, playing ‘long, Hawaiian-style swoops’. Ringo was busy arranging ‘tea towels’ on top of his kit, to give it that distinctive muffled tone. The single take recorded that day was later abandoned.
Emerick on the Mellotron—“Each key triggered a tape loop of a real instrument playing the equivalent note. There were three sets of tape loops installed, so you could have flutes, strings, or choir at the touch of a button.” It was the first time any of them had seen the instrument, and they all took turns playing around on it. “It was Paul, as usual, who discovered the musical potential instead of just the novelty value. Dialing up the flute sound, he began experimenting with the chords to John’s new song. Within a remarkably short time he’d worked out an arrangement that beautifully complemented Lennon’s haunting vocal line.
November 28, 1966 – April, 1967
But after the weekend, Lennon announced he wanted a different sound. He and Martin started over from scratch. Here’s a nice description of that stage from George Martin, including isolated tracks of the percussion, cello and trumpet orchestral recordings, and vocal tracks.
Three more long sessions were dedicated to recording the song, about 55 hours of studio time in total. Martin: “About 30 hours were spent recording the remake.” Emerick: “We were after perfection: it wasn’t a question of being 99 percent happy with something; we all had to be 100 percent happy with it.” John was unusually patient, perhaps due to the drugs he was taking. ‘Strawberry’ received more time and attention than even ‘Day in the Life’ and ‘I am the Walrus’.
“Lennon wanted to try recording it again with more orchestration. He and Martin decided on cello and trumpets. After Martin wrote a score for the instruments, the Beatles recorded the song again. Martin was pleased with this version, but Lennon liked the beginning of the first version and the end of the second and asked Martin to join them together. Martin pointed out that the two versions were in different tempos and different keys”, but the Beatles were accustomed to getting whatever they asked for. Remember, all they had to work with was “a pair of editing scissors, a couple of tape machines, and a varispeed control.” Emerick and Martin slowed down one of them and speeded up the other. The slower version was only a semi-tone flat compared with the faster. They combined the two versions together with a variable-control tape machine.” You can hear the splice at exactly 1:00 in the released version.
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ will be John’s song forever. Still, it couldn’t have happened without George Martin’s contribution. Or that of the rest of the band.
Paul’s introduction on the Mellotrom is credited by all as having a profound impact on the sound and feel of the entire recording process.
According to Emerick (who on his first day at work for EMI was taken to view a live recording session – ‘Love Me Do’!!!), whereas previous recordings had been more of a group effort, “Sgt Pepper” was much more of a Lennon and McCartney album.
Nonetheless, Harrison contributed to ‘Strawberry Fields’ the descending raga scale on the svarmandal, a harp-like Indian instrument. Every time I’m tempted to diss Mr Starkey (especially for all that damned hissing cymbal racket dirtying up so many tracks), I think of the revolutionary, muffled tom-tom sound he applied here. Levon Helm of The Band, describing their ‘Tears of Rage’— “It had the moaning tom-tom style of drumming that I’ve been credited with by some observers, but I know that Ringo Starr was doing something like it at the same time. You make the drum notes bend down in pitch. You hit it, it sounds, and then it hums as the note dies out. If the ensemble is right, you can hear the sustain like a bell, and it’s very emotional. It can keep a slow song suspended in an interesting way.”
“Sgt Pepper” marked the height of the “Paul Is Dead” craze. In case you’re still wondering, John isn’t saying “I buried Paul” at the beginning of the fade out, but rather “Cranberry sauce”.
In 1970, Lennon claimed that of all his compositions, only two qualified as honest songs: ‘Help!’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. ‘Strawberry Fields’ is a stunning song, one of his best, one of The Beatles’ best, a cultural landmark of our times. It was born of Lennon’s genius. But it was engendered by Beatlemania – the miraculous, unique, liberating status The Beatles enjoyed.
“We got a call one day from Granada television in England. They said The Beatles were arriving in two hours in New York at Idlewild Airport. Would we like to make a film of them? I put my hand over the phone and asked my brother ‘Who are The Beatles? Are they any good?'”
Albert (1926-2015) and David (1931-1987) Maysles had been making documentary films for four years when they got that call. They had eschewed their conventional careers in psychology and Hollywood studio work to work in the new American style of “direct cinema” – a shoulder-held camera built by Albert, natural lighting, recording the natural unfolding of real events, akin to the French cinéma vérité.
Enid, Eva Gonzalez and Little Sister
The Maysles made the 81-minute film, “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A,” accompanying the lads from their disembarkment from the plane, through their entire first visit to the US, including the Ed Sullivan Show, travelling by train to Washington, D.C. for a live show, and then by train again to Miami Beach for another Sullivan gig. Much of the film takes place in The Beatles’ hotel rooms, cars and trains.
I probably know more about The Beatles than either of my next-door neighbors. I first saw “Hard Day’s Night” only a month after its release (and then at a 10 AM weekday showing), because I wasn’t willing to subject myself to all those screaming girls in the theater. I wanted to hear the lads under pristine conditions. I’ve seen Richard Lester’s film dozens of times over the last half century, and still think it’s really groovy. The Fab Four with all the concomitant excitement and hysteria.
I don’t know why I wasn’t aware back then of the Maysles film. I was even aware of the Maysles when I was studying film in the late 60s, having seen their documentary of the Stones’ ill-fated Altamont concert, “Gimme Shelter,” including live footage (in color) of Hell’s Angels murdering a fan directly in front of the stage. (The Angel was acquitted on grounds of self-defence, the Maysles’ film showing that the attackee was brandishing a pistol.)
But somehow the Maysles’ Beatles film never received the attention it deserved. Until very recently, I was unaware of it in any of its incarnations. Nor, as it turned out, were any of my aging hippie Beatles friends, fans, freaks and fanatics.
The film was an unnoticed revolution and a revelation – an intimate, candid, relaxed, jolly, amazing portrait of Beatlemania and its authors.
As far as I’m able to piece things together, the Maysles released the 88-minute 16mm version of “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A” in 1964. It’s virtually unavailable today, reportedly shown on occasion at festivals.
In 1991, Albert (David died in 1987) re-edited a 91-minute version, called “The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit”. It added 22 minutes of their appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but excluded 20 much more interesting minutes of the original version. Some of that is available on-line, such as this 6-minute clip of the lads fooling around in their hotel room and joking with astounded passengers on the train.
And to make matters even more complicateder, there’s an 80-minute version of the material with Albert Maysles’ voice-over commentary.
My recommendation? If you’re a casual fan, find the 1991 movie fast. If you’re one of us, watch the Making Of.
If you think American media circa 1964 was creaky, the BBC was the barely living incarnation of stodginess. The Beatles had been coached by Brian Epstein to behave like well-trained monkeys for the press. The Maysles film shows one such an embarrassing photo shoot in the park.
But for JohnPaulGeorgeRingo, the Maysles weren’t Them – they were these two cool young underground filmmakers. In 1964, John Lennon was 24 years old, David Maysles was 33. The film shows the boys thoroughly enjoying hanging out with the film crew, absolutely comfortable and candid with them, as Beatlemania rages everywhere outside their room.
You see everything. The lads joking with each other, joking with the Maysles. Them against the world. Brian and the crew trying to manage the unimaginable unmanageable. The horrific, embarrassing Murray the K foisting himself upon the Beatles. Murray, in a phone interview with them live on the air: “We got one more week of this, then I’m gonna become the fifth Beatle, okay baby?”
Paul (to the lads, covering the mouthpiece of the phone): “Does anybody understand him?”
And you see the boys taking a keen interest in the film-making process. Think about it – they’re crazy talented, successful 24-year olds. Of course they’re interested in learning how a film is made. They’d soon be doing it themselves (albeit with limited success).
Maysles tells how no one knew if there would be five or 5000 people at the airport, that the Granada reps on the plane wanted standard archaic Auntie Beeb-style interviews. “We’d rather get information that is spontaneous, people experiencing something.”
You see the amazement on The Beatles’ faces as they step off the plane. I mean, this is America.
You see them at their charming, most insouciant best fielding imbecilic questions from the American press:
Q: ‘Are you going to get a haircut while you’re here’
A: ‘No’.
Q: ‘Can you really sing?’
A(John): ‘No, we need money first.’
And then Paul carefully reading the transcript of the press conference in the paper, commenting in retrospect on each of the questions and answers. But he doesn’t come across as calculating or manipulative. He’s overwhelmed. He’s as surprised by it all as we are.
You see all the lads with the Pepsi Cola transistor radios glued to their ears, listening to ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘Twist and Shout’. Paul, “Oh, I like this America.”
You see Ringo climbing onto the dance floor at the Peppermint Lounge – from the dance floor itself, the camera bumping and grinding and hitchhiking and frugging and whatever, girls throwing themselves at him.
You see John in the hotel room playing a series descending chords on a melodica – which would three years later become the chord sequence and sound of “Living is easy with eyes closed”. If you’re me, that penetrates to a very deep spot.
You see girls stalking their room in the hallways and boys dressed up as a adults trying to crash into the hotel. You see the boys get a phone call from Col. Tom Parker. You see George doing an imitation of Dylan singing a talking blues. You see Ringo, in total earnest, saying “I hope we’ll be coming back to America”.
Pride and Joy
The Maysles are brilliant filmmakers. In one early scene, Murray the creepy, sleazy K is talking to the lads on the phone while Marvin Gaye’s ‘Pride and Joy’ is playing in the background. But the Maysles keep the camera on this very, very sexy black chick hanging out in the waiting room on the far side of the glass partition. You see a 30 second shot(!) of Murray out of focus in the foreground, with her moving (in focus) to Marvin Gaye in the background, with the implicit message of ‘There’s a giant pile of hype here driven by Murray’s ego; but there’s also tremendous, real, palpable excitement’. Then they cut to an extreme close-up of a gaggle 14-year old girls shouting “We want The Beatles, we want The Beatles, , we want The Beatles”. Exactly what they mean by that I’ll leave implicit, a gesture to the more gentile among our readers.
I’m tempted to say that The Beatles brought sex to the 1960s.
You see the Maysles accompanying The Beatles to the CBS studios that Sunday night for their first American appearance. But they’ve been told that only union technicians are allowed on-stage. You see Paul try to get them in the stage door, to no avail.
Maysles: “Murray the K told us, ‘If you just walk down the street, go into the first tenement building, somewhere along the corridor there’d be a family watching The Beatles on television.’ So when we heard through one of the doors The Beatles’ music, we knocked, the mother came to answer it. We explained to her that we were making a film of The Beatles, could we film her family watching them, she said ‘Come on in.’”
American, 1964, two and a half months after the Kennedy assassination. The Family watching The TV. The Father in his tie. The Boyfriend sulking in the background. The Little Sister’s eyes following her older sisters as intently as a baby python or a tiger cub or a Bird of Paradise chick watches its mother to see just how to stalk the prey, how to dance the dance. You see the light flicker on in that 5-year old head, and you see the girl smile that “what only-women-know” smile.
But most of all you see Enid and Eva transfixed – undulating and squirming and squealing, far more intimate and sexually revealing than any home video by Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian.
The Maysles are brilliant filmmakers, flies on the wall at a fascinating, memorable moment. I’m sorry I missed their film back then and all along. So I’d just like to now grant them a much-belated Meshel Prize for their eloquent, revealing storytelling of a story most near and dear to my heart.
“Hey, Jeff, did you hear who just died? You gonna write about him?”
They’re dropping like flies.
Mose Allison, Leon Russell, Leonard Cohen, Paul Kantner, all jamming in that roadhouse honky-tonk in the sky.
Teenagers dying of old age.
Talkin’ ‘bout my g-g-g-generation.
For that matter, Dylan’s Nobel prize is also a death. How can you be a revolutionary when the establishment is embracing you? Well, I guess studiously avoiding the ceremony is one way.
And I went to see Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds” tour in the summer. There are things worse than death, I guess.
They say “Inside every grown man there’s a teenager screaming ‘WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?’” Actually, it’s not ‘them’ who says it, it’s us. We all know that we were our true selves at 15, and everything that’s happened since then has been a perversion of or deviation from the person we were then.
For me perhaps more than for some. I believe every person has his inherent age. I sometimes look at an 11-year old and see him as a 40-year old in disguise, or a man of 50 with the demeanor of a 9-year old.
Me, I’ve always been a teenager. You can call it youthful, you can call it creative and energetic. I usually call it arrested development.
I’ve always felt comfortable with people my own age – 17-23. Put me in a social situation with my chronological peers, I’ll most often gravitate to the more interesting among their children. Who wants to hang around with old people?
I was a high-school teacher for many years. During breaks, I’d usually hang out with the best and the brightest of the kids, rather than snore through the teachers’ room. I learned to speak Teenager. Which was perhaps pathetic in one way, but on the other served me in excellent stead for writing plays geared at a young adult audience.
Young Man
Then I began to work in hi-tech, where the median age was in the mid to late 20s. I never felt out of place there, at least age-wise. My temperament and metabolism worked well in that environment.
And now I spend my days with the 45-voice rock choir I formed three years ago. “The kids”, as I call the members, are mostly in their 20s. Those I work closely with still tell me I’m a kid at heart. They’ve witnessed up close just how profoundly irresponsible and snarky I am deep inside. But I’m the head of the group, and I try to behave in a dignified manner.
Yes, it is true that Yair and I once dropped frogs through the window into the girls’ shower and listened to them shriek. He was 17, I was 45, the drama teacher accompanying the cast of a play on an overnight.
Old Man
But now, with Vocalocity, I try to behave with the dignity becoming a mature and thoughtful leader. It’s a role I have some discomfort playing.
But I – the one screaming ‘WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?’ louder than anyone else louder than any other 68-year old in the tenth grade – am gradually becoming accustomed to the fact that I’m growing old.
I don’t eat Shredded Wheat, I don’t go wandering down the street in my bathrobe, and I don’t wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. But it’s there.
I communicate by phone, rather than by the latest digital platform. I believe in explaining an idea before condensing it into 140 characters. I express my emotions and I try to make personal contact.
In other words, I don’t know how to communicate with Generation Y. They make me feel old. Well, they’re right, I am.
My contemporaries are dying, and in nature’s actuarial terms, it’s no longer ‘a tragedy’. It’s “young by today’s standards”, but come on – 68? As my mother-in-law RIP used to say: “So he lives to eat another sack of potatoes, so what?” We’re done. Extraneous. Over le hill. Bye, Baby.
Telephone
My granddaughter is a blossoming 16-year old.
I’ve met kids who know the facts of The Beatles’ career better than I do.
Barack Obama is 13 years younger than me.
I’ve fulfilled my biological, sociological and political role.
I’ve begun to reconcile myself to the fact that I probably never will learn to love opera, successfully finish writing an action novel, or date Scarlett Johansson.
Let’s face it, Jeff. You’re old. Your peers are dying. You got a few good years left, but you’re a senior citizen.
I know. But what the fuck happened? I didn’t use to be old.
I was recently in a fine, serious conversation with a bright and chipper 22-year old member of my group. She has the enthusiasm of a puppy. She’s only known me for a couple of years, and (for some reason I’m still struggling to grasp) does not really see me as her contemporary.
“I haven’t been old for that long,” I said to her. “It’s a new condition for me. I was young for a really long time. Up till now I wasn’t old.”
She looked at me with a sincere and utter lack of comprehension. ‘But it’s now,’ her expression said. ‘I live in now, not in then.’
I tell her I saw The Beatles perform, that I was at Woodstock. She’s as impressed as she would be if I were telling the story of the Exodus at the Passover Seder, that we all have to see ourselves as if we personally were taken out of Egypt. “That’s so cool,” she says, but in her bones she doesn’t really believe that I was there.
I’ve often thought about the fact that my grandfather was a teenager when he read in the (Yiddish) newspaper about the Wright Brothers; and that he had all his marbles when Neil Armstrong took his jaunt.
Me? I remember the Cuban missile crisis, and have lived to see the downfall of the Soviet empire. I fear that if I reach my life expectancy, I may witness the fall of the American empire as well.
I’ve lived through so many decades that I can compare them. For example, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that (at least for those choosing a traditional study>job>wife>kids>mortgage>career life path,) the decade of about 35-45 is the best one. The most optimistic one. You’re finally steady but still hopeful. The steadiness soon becomes a curse, and the hope a memory.
But, hey, you didn’t come here to hear a toothless old geezer rant and ramble about people and things that went before. You’re here for the music, and I’ve got a job to do.
Gnossos Pappadopoulis, Elston Gunnn
I’m no expert on Mose Allison (1927-2016), but I’ve got a lot of respect for him. He was born and raised in rural Mississippi, moved to New York in his mid-20s to make a respectable living as a jazz pianist, playing straightforward 1950s jazz with the likes of Stan Getz, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. But left to his own devices, he played and sang a unique blend of cool, sophisticated country blues (‘Your Molecular Structure’, ‘Your Mind is on Vacation’.
Mose had a long, productive, low-key career. He recorded an album every year for a couple of decades, then slowed down. But his career was always kept afloat by the great esteem in which he was held by the cognoscenti. Mose was always Mr Cool. All along, those in the know were covering his wry, sardonic, laid-back blues compositions.
I first encountered Mose through Gnossos Pappadopoulis, the hero of Richard Fariña’s 1966 novel “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me”. Gnossos was a fan of Mose (according to the book), as was Dick (according to his college buddy Thomas Pynchon).
Mose and Dick are the two coolest people I’ve never met. They’re inextricably intertwined in my fuzzy memory. One died tragically young, one had a long and respectable career.
Gnossos used to listen to Mose’s ‘Young Man Blues’ back in 1958. Since then it’s been covered by youngsters such as Joe Bonamassa and Foo Fighters, but most famously by The Who, a signature song of the lads at their manic best. You can read the lyrics (Oh, well, a young man/Ain’t got nothin’ in the world these days). But seeing is believing – here from the Isle of Wight, 1970.
You want me to make sense of all this? Ferget it. I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’. Some fine old singers are dying, and I listen mostly to music made by people in their 20s, whether now or 30 or 50 or 70 years ago.
Although Chuck Berry just turned 90 and is releasing his first album of new material in 38 years.
There’s probably a profound lesson to be learned from that, but I’m not sure what it is.
Carpe diem?
After my nap.
Los Angeles circa 1970 was rock’s Medici Florence. Seemed like every time you turned around some new whippersnapper was tossing off a classic for the ages.
The truth is, when Leon Russell’s first album came out in February 1970, the only thing we knew about him was that he was the music man behind Joe Cocker’s spasticism; and some of that music, like Cocker’s version of Delta Woman, was pretty darn fine.
We had no idea that Leon (b. 1942) was Phil Spector’s pianist in the classic Wall of Sound era, that he was instrumental in arranging Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ (what George Harrison called “a perfect record”), that he had played on The Byrds’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and Gary Lewis’s ‘This Diamond Ring’. To tell the truth, we had forgotten his sterling performances from 1964-5 on Shindig of songs such as ‘High Heel Sneakers‘, ‘Jambalaya‘ (compare this to ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ five years later), or ‘Roll Over, Beethoven’ (wearing tails!).
What we did know when that eponymous first album was released in 1970 was that on the back cover it said he was assisted in the recording by George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Winwood, along with an aristocratic cadre of studio musicians. In 1970, that kind of stuff just didn’t happen. Stars stuck to their own solar systems. This was by far the most impressive assemblage of luminaries on a single album (outstripping even that on Stephen Stills’ first solo LP). Know what? It might still hold that honor today, ‘The Last Waltz’ and ‘We Are the World’ notwithstanding.
A year later, he produced and played on the only original song Dylan recorded in a two year period, ‘Watching the River Flow’. It’s a great cut, with Leon written all over it. Having fun wasn’t usually part of Dylan’s repertoire at that point. During the same period, Leon was also playing with B.B. King, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and in the Bangladesh concert.
He had a hit album in 1972, “Carney”, and a hit single ‘Tight Rope‘. But then his career went spotty, and he spent the 1980s outside the music business. Even after he returned to producing, recording and touring, he remained in the shadows, till Elton John decided to repay a musical debt. In 2010, Elton John asked him to co-write and co-record a double CD called “The Union”, with guests such as Booker T. Jones ‘(Green Onions’), Neil Young (‘I Am a Child’) and Brian Wilson (‘Surfing USA’). Here’s their single ‘If It Wasn’t’ for Bad.’ Earlier this year (2011) Leon was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
But for me, Leon is all about that first album. It brought us oh so many hours of listening pleasure, and remains for me one of the most evocative of the era, especially three songs that justify Hall of Famehood, each and every one. I recently discovered videos of two of them from an eye-, ear- and mind-boggling recording session in 1971. It was broadcast on PBS and seems to have been called either “Leon Russell & Friends – ‘Homewood Sessions’,” or “Live at Vine Street Theater, Hollywood, California, USA”, or “Vine Street Theater presents Homewood”. Well I don’t care what you call it, it’s downright marvelous. ‘They’ say it was the first national stereo rock-and-roll TV broadcast. That’s nice, but what makes it memorable is – well, you just look at these clips, and you don’t need me to tell you what’s memorable about them.
You got Leon’s own version of ‘Delta Lady’, complete with a false start, the ugliest shirt every sewn by humankind, an unforgettable puff on a cigarette in slo-mo, and at the end the most bizarre silence you’ll ever not hear.
You got his cover of The Rolling Stones ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, where you hardly see Leon, but you do see an awful lot of Sweet Emily and a very potent rolling pin. I didn’t realize till I saw this that Leon wrote the song in some sense. I won’t tell you whether I prefer this cover or the original. I’ll let you guess.
And you got ‘A Song For You’, Leon’s heart-wrenching ballad that’s been covered by Dusty Springfield, Michael Bublé, Carmen McRae, Aretha Franklin, Cher, Nancy Wilson, Donny Hathaway, Peggy Lee, Elliott Yamin (American Idol), Natalie Cole, Herbie Hancock and Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Simply Red, Petula Clark, Donna Summer, Beyonce Knowles, The Temptations, and Neil Diamond.
Elton John sang it as an intro to a medley of his own songs “Blue Eyes” and “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” on his 1986 tour.
But the best cover of it I know, hands down, is that by Ray Charles. It’s hard to believe the song wasn’t written for him. It also won him a Grammy Award.
Here are the original album versions of the three pantheon songs from that album— ‘Delta Lady’, the sublime ‘Roll Away the Stone’ (“Roll away the stone, don’t leave me here all alone; resurrect me and protect me, don’t leave me laying here—what will they do in 2000 years?”) and that most beautiful, soul-rending love song, ‘A Song for You’, the original LP version.
What is this song that attracts so many people to it?
I’ll tell you what. It’s a bitch to sing, even worse to play. It hasn’t got a cute little memorable hook or a jingly-sticky rhyme. It’s got honesty, passion, and overwhelming, self-obliterating affection. It’s the perfect love song.
I’ve been so many places in my life and time I’ve sung a lot of songs, I’ve made some bad rhymes I’ve acted out my life in stages with ten thousand people watching But we’re alone now, and I’m singing this song for you.
I know your image of me is what I hope to be
I treated you unkindly, but darling can’t you see
There’s no one more important to me, baby can’t you please see through me?
‘Cause we’re alone now and I’m singing this song for you.
You taught me precious secrets of the truth withholding nothing;
You came out in front when I was hiding. But now I’m so much better
And if my words don’t come together, listen to the melody
Cause my love is in there hiding…
I love you in a place where there’s no space or time
I love you for my life, you are a friend of mine.
And when my life is over, remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song for you.
We were alone and I was singing this song for you
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ — demo (home recording approx. Nov. 15, 1966)
I’m not going to try to compete with all those myriads of young ‘uns who know more facts than I do about the Beatles. I’m also not going to analyze the content of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. My working assumption is that it’s a masterpiece. If you need convincing or affirmation of that, look elsewhere. What I am going to do is to try to provide some context for how this revolutionary recording came into being.
On that day, The Beatles played their last live concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The playlist included creaky Hamburg workhorses such as ‘Rock And Roll Music’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’, but not a single song from “Revolver”, which had been recorded from April through June, and was released just a few weeks before the concert.
George Martin: “It became easier to do experiments because we’d had a few hits. The key was success. As we had more success, it became ‘Come on, lads’. We were more and more able to try out some far-out ideas.”
I worked as a creative artist for a decade. My next meal was never dependent on what I produced. But I assure you, every minute I spent trying to put my thoughts and words on the blank page, there were 10,000 Romans in the room demanding to be entertained, screaming for blood. I would recite to myself, “Jeff, you’re beholden to no one. You are your only audience. Ignore the world, do your best.” Very sound advice.
Then “Revolver” (recorded April–June, 1966) took much bolder steps, striking out in all sorts of directions, fueled by drug experimentation: ‘Taxman’, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Yellow Submarine’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, not to mention ‘She Said, She Said’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Still, only about a day and a half were allocated for the recording of each song. They had to get back on the road, which meant planes, hotel rooms, and screaming girls.
On that evening (the first time they escaped the punishment of recording during the daytime), The Beatles reconvened in the studio after having been apart for three months. Rested, buoyed by the success of “Revolver” (entered the charts at #1 in the UK, where it stayed for seven weeks), inspired by the drugs (marijuana and LSD), and driven by the competition (most notably Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds”), the lads and George Martin were at the peak of their creative energies.
Over the next five months they would spend approximately 55 days in the studio, yielding (in order) :
Paul: “Now we can record anything we want, and it won’t matter [that we can’t perform them live]. We want to raise the bar a notch, to make our best album ever.”
But after the weekend, Lennon announced he wanted a different sound. He and Martin started over from scratch. Here’s a nice description of that stage from George Martin, including isolated tracks of the percussion, cello and trumpet orchestral recordings, and vocal tracks.
