The Cavalier daily :: Wednesday, January 6, 1971 :: University of Virginia Library

There was a time when, for
many of us (particularly bored and
wasted students), the release of new
Beatles records were the main
points of reference by which we
remembered the chronologies of
our lives.

My freshman year was primarily
spent waiting for Sgt. Pepper to be
released; later there was the white
album winter and the spring of
"Get Back." Even if you are not a
raving hard-core rock freak, a song
like "Hey, Jude," played so
constantly for months on
jukeboxes, radios, and record
players, could not have failed to
become the background music for
whatever you were doing in the fall
of 1968.

Getting Worse

Somehow the importance of
rock and roll in our lives has
declined in the last year or two,
even for those who were the most
obsessed. This is partly due to a
falling off in the quality of the
music (viz. Dylan, the Beatles, the
Airplane, the Band, and Country
Joe).

And partly to our growing up.
But most of all it is the result of
our crumbling illusions about our
world, of our realization of the
forces of politics and power
structures that not only controlled
the world but even permeated out
sequestered university
communities. Placed beside these
new ideas, even Rubber Soul began
to pale in significance.

The concept of the Sub-Culture
became increasingly a political
concept. (The Sub-Culture itself
may never have really existed.) By
the time the Let It Be album was
released, it was not an event of very
great importance to anyone except
those who would make money on
it.

Break-Up

Around that time, the Beatles
broke up, mostly because Paul
couldn't get along with the others,
but perhaps also because they
sensed their own growing
irrelevance. In 1970, we did not
need the Beatles as much as we had
in 1967.

Since the breakup, they have
released five albums as individuals,
the worst of which is ridiculous and
the rest of which, while not bad,
remain decidedly tangential to our
lives.

Ringo's two albums serve only
to reinforce out previous picture of
him: lovable, but (with the
exception of his drumming) a
thoroughly inept musical
personality. His first release,
Sentimental Journey, featured the
title tune and eleven other oldies,
such as "Night and Day,"
"Stardust," and "Bye Bye
Blackbird," all sung off-key and
with a remarkable lack of
expressiveness, against a
background of lush 1940s Big Band
arrangements.

The total effect of the record is
to make you realize what a great
singer Frank Sinatra is within that
genre. Ringo's singing is a good
standard by which you can learn to
appreciate almost any singer, even
whoever is the second worst.
Sentimental Journey is so
Judicious that it will be worth
buying for a goof, once they start
selling the overstock for $2.00.

Ringo's second effort-effort
seems the most appropriate word-a
country record entitled Beaucoups
of Blues, is a vast improvement.
The songs (none of them written by
Ringo himself) are pretty good, the
arrangements are tight and the
Nashville sidemen are, at the worst.
competent.

Tonsillectomy

It's just that you can't help
wishing all the time that Ringo
would shut up. (The great rock
voice that Ringo had on the early
albums, on songs like "Honey
Don't" and "Boys," seems to have
disappeared with his tonsillectomy.'

In the last two weeks, both
George and John have released their
first solo albums, if we choose to be
kind and overlook the live Plastic
Ono Band album and John's earlier
"experimental" records. The
Harrison material is absurdly
overproduced, both physically and
musically.

Someone at Apple seemed to
think that George's solo debut
called for a boxed three record set,
complete with lyrics, a color
poster, and different kinds of
adorable record labels, all of which
is kind of a drag. The inclusion of a
third, "free" record, made up of
several rather uninspired rock jams
between George and his friends, is
pretty superfluous.

That Spector Spectre

The other two discs in the set
had the misfortune of being
co-produced by Phil Spector. One
would think that the Beatles would
never work with Spector again after
his disgusting butchery of "The
Long and Winding Road."

Yet here he is again, arranging
almost every cut as though George
were the Crystals or the Righteous
Brothers. Phil Spector has in fact
produced some great records, but
he feels obliged to force his style on
every song he touches, even when it
clearly doesn't fit.

Once you wade through the
orchestrations, there are some very
good songs, yet nothing that even
approaches the quality of
Harrison's earlier material, nothing
as good as "Here Comes the Sun,"
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps,"
"Something," "Sour Milk Sea,"
"Savoy Truffle," "It's All Too
Much," or "If I Needed Someone."

Best Cuts

The best cuts are those that
sound like they were recorded
while Spector was out of the room
("Apple Scruffs," "If Not For
You") and those that seem like
deliberate imitations of other
people. "What is Life," for
example, which is not nearly so bad
as the title suggest, is a cross
between "Keep on Runnin" by the
Spencer Davis Group and any
number of Paul Revere and the
Raiders songs.

"My Sweet Lord," a Top 40 hit,
is musically a direct steal from the
Chiffons' great "He's So Fine," and
must have been done as a deliberate
goof. There is something genuinely
funny about substituting "hare
krishna" for "dulang dulang
dulang."

Jesusgod

"If Not For You," a Dylan song,
is done slower than the original
version on the New Morning LP
and sounds better. The lyrics to
most of the songs are about God
and Jesus and sound best if you
ignore them.

John Lennon's new album is
hard to write about, because it
sounds like notes from Lennon's
psychoanalysis, which it may in
fact be, since he was in therapy in
Los Angeles before and during the
recording sessions.

Simple

Even if you're the type who
doesn't like to listen to lyrics, there
is so little going on musically that
you are forced to pay attention to
the words. The music is not bad;
it's just simple and not very
interesting and never more than
John singing and playing either
guitar or piano (on which he is
barely competent), backed by bass
and drums.

Once again, Phil Spector is listed
as producer, but Lennon seems to
have wisely restricted him to adding
echo and nothing else, giving the
whole album the sound of "Instant
Karma." All the songs are intensely
personal some of them resembling
the feeling of "Julia." (One cut,
"Look at Me," uses almost the
same melody.)

The End

More interesting, however, is
that half the songs have some kind
of political content, which implies
that John may be ditching his
simplistic "Give Peace A Chance"
ideas.

Toward the end of the record,
John apologizes for the breaking up
of the group. "I don't believe in
Beatles," he sings. "I just believe in
me/ Yoko and me / and that's
reality / the dream is over /
yesterday / I was the dreamweaver /
but now I'm reborn / I was the
walrus / but now I'm John / and so
dear friends / you just have to carry
on / the dream is over." There are
no more Beatles. And these aren't
Beatles albums. And it shows.