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Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

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Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Released in the USA on June 20, 1966

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Sort of new

Every once in awhile there would be a new Beatle album. Sort of. Yesterday and Today was a new Beatle album. Sort of.

I was one (of the legions of) American kids who didn’t realize that Beatle albums we bought  were different than the Beatle albums UK kids bought. Perhaps the reverse was true as well.

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Backlog

The Beatles UK releases typically had 14 songs, not like the 12 on American releases. As a result there was a backlog of Beatles songs that didn’t reach American kids on their Beatles albums.

It doesn’t take much actuarial thinking to figure out that releasing an album with those backlogged songs and a couple of others made all kinds of business sense. The Beatles themselves did not like the idea of releasing two different versions of their albums. The UK version with 14 songs was the one they wanted. They took time deciding the sequence of songs. By 1965, they designed their albums as a whole, not a collection of single songs.

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

USA Yesterday and Today

In any case, here’s the breakdown of the Beatles Yesterday and Today:

  • from the UK LP Help!, “Act Naturally” and “Yesterday” 
  • from the UK LP Rubber Soul, “Nowhere Man” and “What Goes On”  “Drive My Car” and “If I Needed Someone”
  • the single “Day Tripper”/”We Can Work It Out”
  • from the not-yet-released UK LP Revolver, the tracks “I’m Only Sleeping”, “Doctor Robert”, and “And Your Bird Can Sing.”
Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Controversy

And as was often the case the Beatles stepped in some controversy. The original album cover, nowadays known as the “butcher cover” barely saw the light of day.

The photo was part of a shoot by Robert Whitaker. The Beatles were tired posing for typical group shots and Whitaker’s idea of putting them in butcher smocks, holding pieces of meat, and broken doll parts seemed a good change of pace.

John Lennon later joked, My original idea for the cover was better–decapitate Paul. [from Anthology]

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Backlash

It seemed a good enough idea for Capital Records to print 750,000 copies of the record and send them out. Immediately some critics, radio stations, and fans (lucky enough to get a copy) complained. Insensitive. Gross. Inappropriate.

Keep in mind that in 1966, a band had a toilet removed from its cover!

Capital recalled all. Some covers went to a landfill. Some had the new cover pasted over the old.

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today

Defense

John Lennon and Paul McCartney defended the decision saying that at a time when so many defenseless men, women, and children were dying in Vietnam, such a cover spoke to that senselessness.

George Harrison later said in Anthology: “I thought it was gross, and I also thought it was stupid. Sometimes we all did stupid things, thinking it was cool or hip when it was naïve and dumb, and that was one of them. But again, it was a case of being put in a situation where one is obliged, as part of a unit, to cooperate. So we put on those butchers’ uniforms for that picture.”  

Bad idea or not, the refurbished album reached #1 on the US Billboard charts by 30 July 1966 and certified gold soon after. It stayed at number one for five weeks.

My Lai Massacre

635 days later was the My Lai Massacre. 1,295 days later Americans could view those pictures.

 

Controversial Beatles Yesterday Today
Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Hendrix Plays Sgt Pepper

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Hendrix Plays Sgt Pepper

or

A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

June 4, 1967

Hendrix @ Olympia, London December 1967

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Geniuses plus

We all acknowledge the genius of  both the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, but we typically don’t associate the two together. Hendrix famously covered Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” but not Beatle songs.

Ironically the British Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, helped put the Yankee Jimi Hendrix on the American map.

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Long time coming

The talented Hendrix had already been an excellent guitarist backing up the Isley Brothers, Rose Lee Brooks, Little Richard, and Curtis Knight.  In 1966 in  Greenwich Village, he fronted Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, but it’s lack of success made it an easy decision for him to accept Chas Chandler’s offer to come to the UK. Chandler had just left the Animals and in the UK was able to connect Hendrix with various members of the British rock royalty such as Eric Clapton (nearly speechless after his initial experience hearing Hendrix),  Pete Townshend, and Paul McCartney.

Great Britain

Noel Redding came into Hendrix’s orbit because Redding was auditioning as a guitarist for the renovating Animals. Mitch Mitchell, a jazz drummer, fit the type of power trio Chandler and Hendrix were building.

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Beatles

The Beatles had completed recording Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on April 21, 1967 and the world received it on June 1. How Hendrix first heard the album, whether he purchased his own copy or Paul McCartney had given an copy to him, isn’t important. What is interesting was the Experience’s opening number at their concert only three days later: “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.” Hendrix may not have even known that McCartney and Harrison were in the audience.

Monterey Pop invitation

Even more important was what Hendrix did two weeks later at the last when he played the Monterey International Jazz and Pop Festival and changed American music forever.

Why was he playing that event? The festival’s organizers had invited the Beatles to play, but they declined as they still did not want to be on a live stage. They did do an illustration for the event:

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Jimi Hendrix Plays Sgt Pepper

Recommendation

Paul McCartney and the Beatles did something else. McCartney strongly recommended the “unknown” Jimi Hendrix Experience. And who would say no to a Beatle recommendation?

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr had first seen The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing on 11 January 1967 at the Bag O’Nails club in London.

So it was on June 4, 1967 that McCartney, George Harrison, Jane Asher and Pattie Boyd watched them headline a bill at the city’s Saville Theatre.

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Beatles > Jimi

Thank you Jimi. Thank you Paul and the Beatles. We may have heard Jimi on this side of the pond without your help, but we certainly did because of your help.

Today in history

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

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Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

First, I’ll clear up the seemingly ignorant error in my post’s title. Yes I know that it is Sgt Pepper’s (possessive) but for Search Engine Optimization purposes, the algorithm rejects apostrophes. And besides that, as you can see Ringo’s drum kit has the leaders last name as Peppers, not Pepper.

So I stand on one weak leg to support my blog’s title.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Recording

The Beatles (and George Martin) completed recording the album on  21 April 1967 and had used–by today’s standards–primitive four-track equipment to do so.

They did use various tricks with that equipment. Geoff Emerick was the lead engineer.

Forbes magazine did an excellent article about the recording.

For example, Emerick, “…had Ringo tune his toms very low by loosening the skins on the drum heads. Emerick then removed the skins from the bottom of the toms, wrapped a mic in a tea cloth, put it in a glass jug, and placed it on the floor under the drums. The result was the huge, tympani-like drum sounds you hear on the verses in “A Day in the Life”.”

For Lovely Rita, he “…introduced a wobble underneath the piano sound by sticking pieces of editing tape to the guide rollers on the tape machine that was feeding the audio from the piano to an echo chamber. “

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Officially released June 1, 1967

The official release date was June 1, but it was rush-released in the UK on May 26 and actually released in the US on June 2.

It spent the rest of the year at #1 on the UK charts and 15 weeks at the top in the US.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Feast of the Lonely Hearts Club Band

Keep in mind that although some might have been able to know that the Beatles were releasing something new and different, for most fans, given the lack of accessibility to such information, Sgt Pepper was a surprise.

At the beginning they greet us as Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and by the time we get almost to the end of Side 2 they are hoping that we’ve enjoyed the show.

Of course, the end was “A Day in the Life.” “A Day in the Life”!!! The BBC banned the song because of it’s “I’d love to turn you on” lyric.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Long road

How far the Beatles had taken us on that album. For thirty-five minutes we’d listened to song after song, not realizing that “A Day in the Life” was about to tell us, among other things, how many holes it took to fill Albert Hall, whatever and wherever that was.

Did you follow along with each song because the lyrics were right on the back of the album. Right there!! That was a first.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Or we were trying to decide whether to actually cut out the pieces from the insert? Should we? Shouldn’t we? Should we? Shouldn’t we? What did you decide? Do you still have that vinyl? Mono? Stereo?

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

And if we weren’t following the lyrics (because this was the 10th time we were listening to the album–“I’ll be down soon, Mom.”), were you trying to figure out who’s who on the cover?

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Fortunately we are caught in the world wide web today and can easily get those 62 answers.

1.Sri Yukestawar Giri
2. Aleister Crowley
3. Mae West
4. Lenny Bruce
5. Stockhausen
6. W.C. Fields
7. C.J. Jung
8. Edgar Allen Poe
9. Fred Astaire
10. H.L. Mencken
11. Early Vargas Girl
12. Huntz Hall
13. Simon Rodia
14. Bob Dylan
15. Audrey Beardsley		 16. Sir Robert Peel
17. Aldous Huxley
18. Dylan Thomas
19. Terry Southern
20. Dion Di Muci
21. Wallace Berman
22. Tony Curtis
23. Tommy Handley
24. William Burroughs
25. Marilyn Monroe
26. Guru
27. Stan Laurel
28. Richard Lindner
29. Oliver Hardy
30. Karl Marx		 31. H.G.Wells
32. Guru
33. Lawrence of Arabia
34. Stuart Sutcliffe
35. Early Pretty Girl
36. Max Miller
37. Early Pretty Girl
38. Marlon Brando
39. Tom Mix
40. Oscar Wilde
41. Tyrone Power
42. Larry Sell
43. Dr. D. Livingstone
44. Johnny Weismuller
45. Stephen Crane
46. Issy Bonn		 47. Goerge Bernard Shaw
48. Alexander Graham Bell
49. Albert Stussing
50. Guru
51. Lewis Carroll
52. Sonny Liston
53. Gorge Harrison
54. John Lennon
55. Ringo Starr
56. Paul McCartney
57. Albert Einstein
58. Bobby Breen
59. Marlene Dietrich
60. Sukarno
61. Diana Dors
62. Shirley Temple
Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

Decades Later

Here we are: decades later and we still know in our hearts that those Lonely Hearts led us along paths we had never known. The introduction (an introduction?) hoping we’ll enjoy the show and telling us to sit back and let the evening go.

Good ol’ Ringo getting a little high with his friends. John’s Lucy. How long did it take for you to see the initials?

Getting better. Optimism. “Me used to be angry young man.” And how each song slides into the next one. Not angry because I’m fixing a hole. Then we pause because she’s leaving home. Motorman?

And good morning. Feeling low down. You’re on your own. Take a walk.  Time for tea and meet the wife. But it’s OK. That dog barking reminded a few of us of Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds.

And back to the beginning to get to the end.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Holy Shit moment

This finish may finish us. A holy shit moment. John’s voice warning us. He blew his mind…lights changed…[Ringo’s drums!]…had to look…I’d love turn you on!

Woke up…late…hat…bus…smoke…went into a dream…[Ringo’s drums!]…

The holes were rather small…I’d love to turn you on…

It didn’t end!

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

It hasn’t ended!

Thank you.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band