I Blew My Cool through 'The New York Times'
If being a critic were the same as being a listener I could just enjoy "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Other than one cut which I detest ("Good Morning, Good Morning"), I find the album better than 80 per cent of the music around today; it is the other 20 per cent (including the best of the Beatles' past performances) which worries me as a critic….
When the Beatles' work as a whole is viewed in retrospect, it will be "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" which stand as their major contributions. When the slicks and tricks of production on this album no longer seem unusual, and the compositions are stripped to their musical and lyrical essentials, "Sergeant Pepper" will be Beatles baroque—an elaboration without improvement.
I find it easíer to explain that statement by comparing a song like "She's Leaving Home" with "Eleanor Rigby" because while the musical motifs are similar, a profound sense of tragedy is conveyed in the earlier song through a series of poignantly ironic vignettes. This "tactile" agony within detail has exercised a profound influence on the poetry of rock; you can see it in Donovan's brooding "Young Girl Blues" and in the Bee Gees' stark "New York Mine Disaster."
"She's Leaving Home" is unlikely to influence anyone except the Monkees. Its lyrical technique is uninspired narrative, with a dearth of poetic irony. All the despair is surface, and so, while "Eleanor Rigby" seethed with implication, "She's Leaving Home" glistens with a flourish of tragedy…. "She's Leaving Home" is too apparent to be worth the trouble….
I feel the same about most of the music on this album. It is dazzling because it is the most spectacularly produced record in pop, but fraudulent because, beyond the razzmatazz, the songs just aren't as good as they were on "Revolver."…
In "Revolver" I found a complexity that was staggering in its poignancy, its innovation, and its empathy. I called it a complicated masterpiece. But in "Sergeant Pepper" I sense a new distance, a sarcasm masquerading as hip, a dangerously dominant sense of what is stylish.
Much of the radicalism on Sergeant Pepper has appeared elsewhere, in a less sophisticated form. There was musical posturing in a song like "Something Happened to Me" (on the Rolling Stones' "Between the Buttons") which resembles "Sergeant Pepper." (p. 14)
"Sergeant Pepper" is not a work of plagiarism, but neither does it represent a breakthrough. It is an in-between experience, a chic.
The Beatles, I am informed, are "head composers." To turn on, goes the reasoning, will admit the enlightened to a whole range of associations and subtleties unfathomable to the straight mind. My experience till now has been that what I like straight, I like all the time. The idea that certain progressions, tonal nuances, or lyrical flights, are comprehensible only to the turned-on smacks of critical fascism. I think of the psychedelic experience as an elaboration of a given reality—not a substitute.
Since Lennon-McCartney reflect almost all of pop in 1967 (this should be, since they define it), it would be difficult to avoid a thorough awareness of their interests and influence. The Beatles are the creators of the rock ethic. Without them there could be no such discipline as "rock criticism." The new music is their thing. (p. 25)
The physical continuity on this album invites a structure, just as the printed lyrics cry for textual analysis, but in unadorned fact, the Beatles had composed a healthy chunk of this new work before they wrote the "Sergeant Pepper" theme and thought of centralizing it. The "banding" innovation came later too. Only in mid-production then did the thought of producing an album which would resemble a concert take hold, and the finished product shows this late commitment to the idea of unity. George Harrison's piece has no place in a band concert, and neither do "A Day in the Life" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."…
The only conceivable way to treat "Sergeant Pepper" would seem to be as caprice. "Sit back and let the evening go." But you and I know the best Beatle music is only deceptively casual….
Part of the trouble with "Sergeant Pepper" is its determination to be a game, and the shallowest cop-out is to excuse this work by reporting jubilantly that it has no meaning. It does. "A Day in the Life" is no caprice, and it knocks me out to hear it. "When I'm Sixty Four" is delicately melancholy; they are not just funning.
All the cuts on this album have something to say. The difficulty comes in interpreting the work as a whole. It is much more sensible to talk of mood than actual structure on "Sergeant Pepper." The Beatles have always avoided producing "theme" albums, and despite its quasicontinuity, "Sergeant Pepper" represents no significant break with this tradition. There are no recurrent themes (outside of the reprise), and only hints (in the background vocalising) of what should have been repeating motif. Nevertheless, the album has a mood, even if it is only defined by its aims. "Rubber Soul" strove for tonal beauty and it is super-melodic. "Revolver" attempted to be eclectic; its compositions stand as utterly distinct and self-contained. "Sergeant Pepper" is a circus of sour.
"The Beatles" are dead; we are all watchers at their wake, where "a splendid time is guaranteed for all." They are no longer screaming "yeah yeah yeah," or crooning "Meeechelle." The new thing is pop destruction; the new technique is inundation; the new mood is merry nihilism. It shows everywhere in current English music.
Lennon and McCartney are destroying the popsong and with it, the old melodic Beatles….
"Sergeant Pepper" is an interim, and that is why, in retrospect, it is an "engaging curio" and not more. Nothing is real herein, and nothing to get hung about. Too bad. I have a sweet tooth for reality. I like my art drenched in it, and even from fantasy I expect authenticity. What I worship about the Beatles is their forging of rock into what is real. It made them artists; it made all of us fans…. (p. 26)
Richard Goldstein, "I Blew My Cool through 'The New York Times'," in The Village Voice (reprinted by permission of The Village Voice; copyright © The Village Voice, Inc., 1967), July 20, 1967, pp. 14, 25-6.
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