Kwai Chang wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 1:16 pm
The MOST clever thing about The White Album is ALL of its gimmicks made the the music secondary...
...REVOLVER was almost gimmicky but then, LSD was legal and still just a novel piece of journalistic cannon fodder.
I appreciate the treatise on how The White Album presents an onion from which many layers can be peeled back. But careful, it's glass.
I agree with the sentiments and appreciate the many facets of the individual Beatles as presented in this tome of a record. I was listening to it the other day, in fact. Well, it was a collection of fan remixes. But still...
Revolution is an onion unto itself. I only just began to appreciate #9 after I heard it as part of a much longer Revolution edit. Then it made more sense. The Lennon mind movies and general screwing around with tape recorders to create monstrosities of whimsy. I tended to that a couple decades ago as a kind of release from the rigidity of being in an originals band. And to use it as a self forum for coming up with riffs, mashing them together, seeing what happens.
And that's inspiration from just a single track from The White Album. Your appreciation of this album is more than warranted. And I am just one Beatle fan. So what do I know, anyway? A cavernous posit. I know that if my patient's hgb suddenly drops below 4 that most likely the RN made a boo boo. And that appears nowhere in Beatles music. Yet I was led there, in part, through my love of The Beatles.
Revolver, to me, presents a solid step forward into new horizons. New studio tricks. The Beatles seizing more control over the expression of their ideas onto tape. And the eschewing of all that came before. Yeah Yeah Yeah is far in the past, though it's only been three years at that point. Simple songs of puppy love? The same fate. Much more complex tales of desire, communication gaps, and impending loss. Certainly the lysergic stuff is there in spades. They navigated through its many chasms and made probably the most unique album of the time. Not too many albums stand up to it. Pet Sounds and Forever Changes maybe. Revolver presents The Beatles harnessing all their horses and bringing the listener with them. It is at once accessible and confounding. It took many many years for me to appreciate Love You To. So even today, there are new wonders for me when I listen to this record.
I still find Revolver (and Rubber Soul) more frequently in my playlists than the rest of the catalog. And then there's tomorrow, where I'll place a different album on the pedestal. What album will it be? TNK.
