No, not “The Beatles” as in “everything they ever did”.<\/p>\n
The Fab Four that got off the plane at LaGuardia and appeared on Ed Sullivan?\u00a0 They were one amazing band – all exaggerated backbeat and fearless looping harmonies and everything that was good about skiffle and white-boy R’nB all rolled into one.<\/p>\n
The band that did Rubber Soul<\/em> and Revolver<\/em>?\u00a0 With the fascinating harmonies and stuttering rhythms (“She Said”) and the palpable sense they were wallowing in the pure joy of being able to create music <\/em>for a living? Amazing stuff.<\/p>\n Even Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em> has its joys. \u00a0 But between the grooves the rot was showing.\u00a0 Where once there was joy and wit and the pure fun of playing rock and roll (even very inventive rock and roll) in front of a crowd, there was a new, introverted, baroque sensibility creeping in.\u00a0 And while Pepper <\/em>was a great record, it only got worse.<\/p>\n Over the rest of the band’s career (and it’s kinda funny to think that “the rest of their career” was only three more years, and their entire career as a superstar band was shorter than the run of That Seventies Show<\/em>), though…<\/p>\n …well, I’ll cop to it.\u00a0 I can’t stand most of it.\u00a0 Sure, there are enjoyable, even fantastic, moments.\u00a0 But there is no Beatles album after Pepper <\/em>that I can listen to all the way through without tuning out and looking for something else.\u00a0 From the self-indulgent baroque noodling of Abbey Road <\/em>to the self-indulgent psychedelia of Magical Mystery Tour<\/em> to the self-indulgent self-indulgence of The White Album<\/em>, everything the Beatles did after Sergeant Pepper<\/em> bores me stiff.<\/p>\n Espectially White Album<\/em>.\u00a0 After a lifetime of hearing friends tell me how absolutely freaking essential it is<\/em>, I just have to respond for the record; The White Album <\/em>is the most overrated record ever hatched upon the world. Not boring.\u00a0 Not bad.\u00a0 Just overrated.<\/p>\n You can disagree.\u00a0 I expect many of you will.\u00a0 Go for it.\u00a0 But after thirty-odd years of trying, I can not find a way around it; The White Album<\/em> doesn’t even rise to the level of “doing nothing for me”; it just falls flat.<\/p>\n Perhaps it’s the sound of John Lennon seizing control of the band; Lennon\/McCartney were geniuses – together.\u00a0 Separately?\u00a0 McCartney was a featherweight popster, and Lennon was a misanthropic mope.\u00a0 Up through Sergeant Pepper<\/em>, they cancelled each others’ worst characteristics out.\u00a0 After?<\/p>\n Ugh.<\/p>\n Every time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No, not “The Beatles” as in “everything they ever did”. The Fab Four that got off the plane at LaGuardia and appeared on Ed Sullivan?\u00a0 They were one amazing band – all exaggerated backbeat and fearless looping harmonies and everything that was good about skiffle and white-boy R’nB all rolled into one. The band that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[211],"class_list":["post-5005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-love-and-hate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26889,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5005\/revisions\/26889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}