We Still Need the Beatles, but…

We Still Need the Beatles, but…

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN June 18, 1967, The New York Times

The Beatles spent an unprecedented four months and $100,000 on their new album, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” (Capitol SMAS 2653, mono and stereo). Like fathers-to-be, they kept a close watch on each stage of its gestation. For they are no longer merely superstars. Hailed as progenitors of a Pop avant garde, they have been idolized as the most creative members of their generation. The pressure to create an album that is com plex, profound and innova tive must have been staggering. So they retired to the electric sanctity of their re cording studio, dispensing with their adoring audience, and the shrieking inspiration it can provide.

The finished product reached the record racks last week; the Beatles had super vised even the album cover a mind-blowing collage of famous and obscure people, plants and artifacts. The 12 new compositions in the album are as elaborately con ceived as the cover. The sound is a pastiche of dissonance and lushness. The mood is mellow, even nostalgic. But, like the cover, the over-all effect is busy, hip and cluttered.

Like an over-attended child “Sergeant Pepper” is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, as sorted animal noises and a 41-piece orchestra; On at least one cut, the Beatles are not heard at all instrumentally. Sometimes this elaborate musical propwork succeeds in projecting mood. The “Sergeant Pepper” theme is brassy and vaudevillian. “She’s Leaving Home,” a melodramatic domestic saga, flows on a cloud of heavenly strings. And, in what is be coming a Beatle tradition, George Harrison unveils his latest excursion into curry and karma, to the saucy ac companiment of three tambouras, a dilruba, a tabla, a sitar, a table harp, three cellos and eight violins.

Harrison’s song, “Within You and Without You,” is a good place to begin dissect ing “Sergeant Pepper.” Though it is among the strongest cuts, its flaws are distressingly typical of the album as a whole. Compared with “Love You To” (Harrison’s contribution to “Revolv­er”), this melody shows an expanded consciousness of Indian ragas. Harrison’s voice, hovering midway be tween song and prayer chant, oozes over the melody like melted cheese. On sitar and tamboura, he achieves a remarkable Pop synthesis. Be cause his raga motifs are not mere embellishments but are imbedded into the very structure of the song, “Within You and Without You” appears seamless. It stretches, but fits.

What a pity, then, that Harrison’s lyrics are dismal and dull. “Love You To” exploded with a passionate sutra quality, but “Within You and Without You” resurrects the very cliches the Beatles helped bury: “With our love/ We could save the world/ If they only knew.” All the minor scales in the Orient wouldn’t make “With in You and Without You” profound.

The obsession with production, coupled with a surprising shoddiness in composition, permeates the entire album. There is nothing beautiful on “Sergeant Pepper.” Nothing is real and thare is nothing to get hung about. The Lennon raunchiness has become mere caprice in “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” Paul McCartney’s soaring Pop magnificats have become merely politely pro found. “She’s Leaving Home” preserves all the orchestrated grandeur of “Eleanor Rigby,” but its framework is emaciated. This tale of a provincial lass who walks out on a repressed home life, leaving parents sobbing in her wake, is simply no match for those stately, swirling strings. Where “Eleanor Rigby” com pressed tragedy into poignant detail, “She’s Leaving Home” is uninspired narrative, and nothing more. By the third depressing hearing, it begins to sound like an immense put-on.

There certainly are elements of burlesque in a composition like “When I’m 64,” which poses the crucial ques tion: “Will you still need me/ Will you still feed me/when I’m 64?” But the dominant tone is not mockery; this is a fantasy retirement, over flowing with grandchildren, gardening and a modest cot tage on the Isle of Wight. The Beatles sing, “We shall scrimp and save” with utter reverence. It is a strange fairy tale, oddly sad because it is so far from the com posers’ reality. But even here, an honest vision is ruined by the background which seeks to enhance it.

“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is an engaging curio, but nothing more. It is drenched in reverb, echo and other studio distortions. Tone overtakes meaning and we are lost in electronic mean dering. The best Beatle melodies are simple if original progressions braced with pungent lyrics. Even their most radical compositions retain a sense of unity.

But for the first time, the Beatles have given us an album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent. And for the first time, it is not exploration which we sense, but consolidation. There is a touch of the Jefferson Airplane, a dab of Beach Boys vibrations, and a generous pat of gymnastics from The Who.

The one evident touch of originality appears in the structure of the album itself. The Beatles have shortened the “banding” between cuts so that one song seems to run into the next. This prod uces the possibility of a Pop symphony or oratorio, with distinct but related move ments. Unfortunately, there is no apparent thematic de velopment in the placing of cuts, except for the effective juxtaposition of opposing mu sical styles. At best, the songs are only vaguely related.

With one important exception, “Sergeant Pepper” is precious but devoid of gems. &ldquo...

https://www.beatles.ru/books/paper.asp?id=2504

The New York Times
June 18, 1967

dissect... он что, Сальери?

А по-моему, всё по делу написано. С автором согласен. И заметьте, он оценил "A Day In The Life" и очень интересно про неё написал. Я тоже считаю, что это единственная песня в альбоме, заслуживающая внимания. Остальное - хорошо, но не на уровне Битлз.

ИМХО!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2Макс Жолобов:

>Остальное - хорошо, но не на уровне Битлз.

Ну дык а концепция-то альбома какая? Мы не Битлз, мы Оркестр одиноких сердец, играем на празднике...так что всё в тему ) А в конце в гости пришли Битлз и сыграли День жизни. Всё путём.

Мне с "Сержанта", кроме Дня жизни, нравится песенка Ринго (про помощь друзей))) А, да - Лавли Рита еще.
И все, собственно...

2VadLit:

>Ну дык а концепция-то альбома какая? Мы не Битлз,
>мы Оркестр одиноких сердец, играем на празднике...

Всё верно: я - не я, корова не моя. Мы, если что, в домике. К слову, это был первый большой анонимный проект, к созданию которого Маккартни приложил руку. В дальнейшем он поступал так не раз, и не два: вспомним альбом Wings "Wild Life", сингл The Country Hams, работы, изданные под вывесками Thrillington, The Fireman, Twin Freaks, проект под названием "Liverpool Sound Collage", и т.д. - всего сразу и не упомнишь.

Увы, полностью анонимным "Сержанта" сделать не удалось: менеджмент настоял на том, чтобы всё-таки в выходных данных пластинки значились The Beatles, и мы видим название группы, напечатанное на ярлыках LP, но на корешке его нет.

Зачем вообще это делалось? Конечно, чтобы позволить себе безграничную творческую свободу. Но мы всё равно воспринимаем "Сержанта", как альбом Битлз (потому что трюк с "анонимусом" не прошёл) и судим его по меркам типовой битловской продукции. И это прекрасно, что альбом так высоко оценили, в противном случае таких недовольных, как я, или этот мальчик-гей, написавший статью, было бы намного больше ))))

Вот спасибочки. Утащил кой-что к себе в материал на 1 июня.