Columnated Ruins Domino


Last weekend, various online elders celebrated the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper, recalling their youthful joy upon first hearing the Mop Tops’ conceptual break-through. Very nice, I thought. Music is as good a marker as any, and Lord knows I have my own faves from Back When, though my Sgt. Pepper was Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. Not exactly flower power time. But then, I was a child when The Beatles were dropping acid and wowing their audience. The Cowsills were more my speed.

All the tributes and remembrances inspired me to dig through my CD stacks, as my copy of Pepper has been buried for at least a year. The wonderful Aimee Mann said recently in the New York Times that there’s no need to listen to Pepper ever again, not if you’ve heard it four million times over numerous phases of your life. Besides, I prefer Revolver and The Beatles (White Album). To me, that’s the seminal Beatles sound. Sgt. Pepper was more show than substance — a strong melodic show, to be sure, an entertaining spectacle, but not the end-all, be-all that its fanciers claim.

After a ten-minute search, I found the dusty Pepper and took it with me as I ran various errands. I cranked up the volume with all the car windows down, not only to soak in the warm breeze and catchy hooks, but also to keep the Michigan drivers as far from my mind as possible without causing a wreck. (Maybe it’s me, but the local drivers seem to be getting worse.) It took all of 30 seconds to be locked back into the Peppery groove, the rest of the album played out in my head before I got through Billy Shears. That’s the problem with “Pepper”: I can’t hear it with fresh ears anymore. It immediately flattens out and quickly becomes boring. “Yeah, yeah — you get high with a little help from your friends. Tell me something I don’t know.” Halfway through “Getting Better,” I ejected the disc and replaced it with a home-burned compilation that kicks off with Sonic Youth’s “Drunken Butterfly.”

So went my brief Summer of Indifference.

Still, I couldn’t get The Beatles out of my mind, so I phoned my pal Mike Gerber, whose knowledge of the Four surpasses anyone I’ve ever met, including my longtime friend, former writing partner, and brother-in-arms Jim Buck, who can talk for days about Beatles’ minutiae. But Mike takes it to an even deeper level, and I sought not only his thoughts about “Pepper,” but also to challenge him with my notion that Brian Wilson’s “Smile” is a superior effort.

Mike appreciated my position, helped by his love for The Beach Boys; but needless to say, he wasn’t buying the “Smile” comparison. Not that Mike dislikes “Smile” — far from it. It’s just that he believes “Pepper” is the better album, and he gave me a serious tutorial to support his argument.

I was nearly swayed, for Mike speaks gently but with authority, and it’s always a pleasure to talk at length with him about creative matters. Still, I held my ground. Had “Smile” been released as planned in 1967, it’s my belief that it would’ve blown “Pepper” out of the water. But Brian Wilson was practically alone in his increasingly-fractured world, facing the anti-”Smile” hostility of his bandmates. The Beatles had each other, believed in the “Pepper” concept, and were helped along by producer George Martin, who did as the band members asked. Had Wilson received any serious support from the other Boys, musical history would be quite different. But he had to wait until 2004 to finally finish his pop masterpiece.

After talking to Mike, I decided to perform an intense, comparative taste test. I would listen to “Pepper,” then to “Smile,” uninterrupted, on headphones, alone in the dark of late night/early morning, assisted by chemical romance. When my mind plugged-in, I slipped on the headphones, hit Play, sunk into my chair and let the music swim over me.

This time, “Pepper” was a lot more interesting to listen to. Indeed, I hadn’t heard it this way since I don’t know when. Instead of mentally racing to the end of the album, I slowed down and inhabited each song, focusing on melody, transition, construction, pace. I moved beyond the pat familiarity and was rewarded with sounds I’ve long ignored.

“Fixing A Hole” was especially nice; “When I’m Sixty-Four” deceptively simple; “Within You Without You” perhaps one of the more experimental Beatles tracks (coming off “Tomorrow Never Knows”), given the time it was recorded and what Beatle fans doubtless expected; “Lovely Rita” and “Good Morning Good Morning” blended beautifully together. Then came “A Day In The Life,” the one “Pepper” song I’ve never grown tired of, simply because it’s the best cut on the album, and remains among the band’s strongest work. Overall, I enjoyed “Sgt. Pepper” more than I had in decades. Had “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” been included as originally planned, I would agree that “Pepper” is The Beatles greatest album.

But better than “Smile”? Tough to say. Perhaps equal to Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’ collaboration, but that’s open to personal interpretation. As it stands, “Pepper” is several steps behind “Smile,” and this was reinforced when I listened to it again. Unlike “Pepper,” “Smile” truly is an interwoven tapestry, not just some period concept held loosely together at the front and back end. “Smile” is deeper, richer, wilder, and riskier than “Pepper,” meshing sounds that have no inherent musical purpose (chomping celery, belch-like noises, hammering nails and sawing wood), but make perfect sense when arranged by Wilson, whose mind has seen and heard notes and melodies where most others would see static. It is easily one of the most magnificent and inspiring pop compositions I’ve heard in my life.

“Smile” does share one trait with “Pepper”: both albums close with a very strong number, in Wilson’s case, “Good Vibrations.” Only this isn’t the version that was a hit single in the 60s and became an orange soda theme. This is the original song co-written with Tony Asher, who penned the lyrics for “Pet Sounds.” This version is longer and much more majestic, so when you come to the closing mix of cello and Theremin, you’ve been taken to the mountaintop and back. It’s fruitless to compare “Good Vibrations” to “A Day In The Life” — both are brilliant. But “Good Vibrations” is more organically tied to “Smile” than “A Day In The Life” is to “Pepper,” which is why the latter stands out more on its album. I suppose that difference is what truly separates these two efforts, which is why I maintain that “Smile” is the better record.

After a couple hours of pleasurable listening, I floated to the front room to watch some old comedy on DVD. But when I turned on my set, the image of Hillary Clinton flashed on-screen, and while the sound was muted, her well-rehearsed facial expressions spoke volumes, for here is a true authoritarian personality just itching for more state power. It didn’t help that I was still being romanced chemically, and I shuddered to think that she might well be the next president.

I turned off the set, went outside in the cool of early morning, walked barefoot in the grass under a bright night sky of stars, let go of Hillary and the other monsters competing to rule us, hummed about good vibrations, and smiled.

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June 6th, 2007
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Viewing 12 Comments

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    Neddie Jingo - getting Mono / Soul ....hm... Thanks - but I don't dare. All my recollections are based on that sensation, the first time I heard such a divisively clean split, and turning the stereo to the left and right to listen to some instrument at work, or just their harmony lines. You know, it's the Beatles I grew up with. I still haven't gone for the de-Spectorized LetitBe, probably should try that first!
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    Nice post, Dennis--thoughtful and well-considered as always, which is all anybody can bring to a chocolate/vanilla discussion. Like Old Jack, after the 2004 Smile appeared, I assembled a "1967" version from a CD I got from Project Smile, a CD tree run by Wilson fans to disseminate the best available versions of every original Smile track. And like Old Jack, I think the old one is superior to the '04 edition in ways that are hard to describe.

    IMHO the fairest comparison would be that '67 mix of Smile, alongside the monophonic mix of Pepper. As this article notes, the mono mix was the one personally supervised by The Beatles and most if not all of the group and its inner circle expressed a preference for the mono mix. Perhaps now that Apple's being run by a reissue expert, EMI will finally release it.

    Sorry to geek out so hard on everybody. I may have to blog about this just to get it fully out of my system. Damn you, Dennis, DAMN YOU!
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    I listened to Sgt. Pepper for the first time in a while on a long night ride a couple of months back and was amazed at how open and sparsely instrumented it is.

    The genius of Geoff Emerick. My own reintroduction after a long separation was only last week, on the anniversary if its release, and what struck me was the buttery creaminess of Paul's bass. I've still got the bass line from "Getting Better" reverberating around in my head.

    In this respect, what Sgt. Pepper’s brought to the table was the feeling this music had evolved to another kind of studio and another kind of headspace, an atmosphere.

    "Revolver" fascinates me precisely because it's so clear that a quantum leap is just about to take place. You can hear them assembling the pieces -- Here's ADT, here's varispeed, here's Paul putting the bass on last, here's the Leslie speaker.... The element of play is very satisfying.

    Frank, have you ever heard the mono mixes of Rubber Soul? Worth seeking out if you can find them. (I have a copy if you'd like it -- neddiejingo at aol dot com)
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    Tommy - not a bad comparision. Some of the songs on Tommy I listen to, bt the album? Never. Quadrophenia's a different story.

    Generally, I prefer the albums just before and after to Sgt. Pepper as a finished piece.
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    Sgt. Pepper vs. Smile is a false choice, esp. since Smile wasn't finished in 1967.

    And Good Vibrations was actually conceived of for and recorded first during the Pet Sounds era. I always felt is was uncomfortably tagged on to Smile's meditations on Americana.

    Interestingly, in the end, Smile is a much more radical and ambitious album. Sgt Pepper in the end comes off less like a "concept album" and more like a collection of great tunes. It was never high on my list of Beatles albums (the white album, Revolver, Help, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul and A Hard Day's Night are all records I listen to w/ more frequency). I understand the contemporaneous and historical fuss. But how often to people actually play the record, I wonder? (Like, who plays Tommy? for example).
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    Once the lads started getting interested on the recording side of things, each Beatles albums began to have a definable sonic template, as well as certain influences. For example, I will always remember hearing the songs off of Revolver with the early head-numbing, cleanly split-stereo of Rubber Soul (some of Revolver too) in one ear a guitar, in other a voice.
    In this respect, what Sgt. Pepper's brought to the table was the feeling this music had evolved to another kind of studio and another kind of headspace, an atmosphere. Somewhere other than the recording studio, yet precisely only possible in the recording studio. That sense of discovery, which the best music-culture artifact brings with it, I still get when hearing some of those tracks today, especially in sequence. But now it's part of my own recollection as well.
    The outstanding sonic-fingerprint is crucial to the albums that stand out in your list - "Never mind the..." was argued about when it was released, specifically due to the fact it was such a production quality, not "punk" at all. But even though, sonically it precisely encapsulated the moment being expressed through the stance, the atitude. It's also hard to listen to the Pistols and Lydon's voice though, let's face it, unless you were "there".
    As for "Smile" - yes, yes, but ... except for two songs, you can't even manage to sing any along with him! And that remains a VERY important psychological character for an iconic work. Brian Wilson is so divided and that album reflects it, it isn't inviting but more an empty smile like that on Wilson's face and the expression of his condition at that time.
    He was an iconoclasts who wants mainstream affirmation but yet did not then. His "Smile" is never going to be a rewarding listen as "pop" culture, but as one you have to "listen" to, to think about. That's just another kind of category. Wilson recalls that, left to their own devices, certain performers are happy to convert the subtle complexities of their compositions to overly-complicated.
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    Tom, "Strawberry Fields"/"Penny Lane" has to be the single most amazing pop single ever. (And I'm not even much of a McCartney fan.) The next few runners-up are probably by this obscure 80s band called the Smiths.
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    I listened to Sgt. Pepper for the first time in a while on a long night ride a couple of months back and was amazed at how open and sparsely instrumented it is. Pet Sounds is one of my all-time favs but I have to admit, I've never heard smile. Guess I should track it down.
    By the way Dennis, its nice to be able to comment on your posts. See, we can be nice. I do appreciate that you answer all your emails, but there's something about comments...
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    “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” - exactly. Put those on there and it whips way past Smile, to me. (I still prefer Lennon-McCartney to anything Wilson has done - probably because of the combo/sounding board).

    I'll ignore the Hillary-snark! (I like her - and shudder at the thought that any of the Republicans might become President).
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    I'm feeling left out here, because my generation's "Sgt. Pepper" was "Sgt. Pepper'.

    I'm actually listening to The Seeds' first album as I type. I think it was Morrissey who sang, "There must be something horribly wrong with me."
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    I rather thought that "Never Mind the Bollocks" was our generation's "Midnight to Six Man" by the Pretty Things; our "Sergeant Pepper" was the Talking Heads' "Remain In Light."

    But I'm also the guy who thinks that our generation's "Village Green Preservation Society" was "English Settlement," our "Surrealistic Pillow" was "Marquee Moon," and our "Are You Experienced?" was the first 1:03 of "Wurlitzer Jukebox" by Young Marble Giants, believe it or not. Our "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" was the version of "Good Vibrations" that appeared in an ad for Dr. Pepper in 1978, our Dr. Pepper was Jolt Cola, and our LSD was this used kleenex I just chucked at my podmate, who's glaring at me and preparing revenge.
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    Although I was vastly impressed by Brian's 2004 Smile, and have played it tons, I prefer the bootleg I have of the 1967 album -- essentially this sounds like what was left in the stacks when the project was abandoned, so there are rough spots, but from the first notes (the "Prayer" bit) the depth of the sound + the general ambiance (sorry) are better. The band's voices are great. To sum it up, I told a friend it sounded like Disneyland after closing time while on acid; you definitely get a feeling of Brian's monomania in the cuts (some of which is imparted by the repetition of the Heroes & Villians refrain, which keeps popping up).

    Thanks for your column --
 

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