We turn now, to the music of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. as I think I said a couple of weeks ago. Here are two bands that not only share the same listeners, in many cases, but they share the same label Capitol Records in Los Angeles. At least, in the United States. Now, the Beatles were signed to EMI, and that was the the Important signing for them in the UK, but in this country they were on the same label with The Beach Boys, Capitol out of Los Angeles. So, they not only shared common listeners, they not only shared a common label, but they also shared a lot of other characteristics that are maybe sometimes overlooked as they begin to sort of push the boundaries of what it means to be a musician. With artistic ambition for their music. Now we talked a bit about this when we talked about The Beatles earlier and we talked about The Beach Boys earlier. So, we're going to sort of continue that story for a minute as a way of setting the scene for the psychedelic musicians that come after them. both of these bands explored new possibilities. And enjoyed freedom in the studio because of their success. Because their records had been successful they were able to do things in a studio environment which was in those days a very expensive environment to be in. Record companies weren't interested in giving just any group hours, days, weeks in the recording studio, they had to be clear there was going to be some financial return. And with the Beatles and the Beach Boys it was, to continue to push the envelopes and experiment. They both used the recording studio as a kind of compositional tool, as a way of expand the possibilities of what could be done in the recording studio and search for new stand, new sounds. And both of them used classical features. in their music, drawing both from the nineteenth century tradition and from Avant-guard. So in this case, we can talk about the use of strings or orchestra instruments generally, tape editing, tape loops. These kind of things you find, you find throughout the music. of The Beatles and The Beach Boys to some extent with both groups. we turn now to the music of The Beach Boys and how it became increasingly ambitious from about the mid 1960's through 1967 or so. we need to remember that Brian Wilson is now at this point. But after about 19's, certainly by early 1965 in the studio full time. He's no longer touring with the group as they tour because he's had a problem being able to get onto an airplane. So he stays home and works on the music and the other guys go out and tour it. And so he's got the luxury of being able to sit in the studio. He's sold a lot of records. He can book studio time without any problem. Sit there and experiment with things. He's using some of the best session musicians in L.A. A group called The Wrecking Crew. Well a group of sort of a kind, a bunch of musicians, not just one band. There were, there were probably a dozen that were involved in The Wrecking Crew. But they're the top studio musicians and they're coming in and he's working on all kind of music. There's a There is a box set for Pet Sounds that you can get that's four cd's worth of of stuff to make up one album that maybe lasts maybe 35 minutes top to bottom. and, and that's, even that's just a selection of the tapes that were there. I mean the guy did a lot of recording, he did a lot of experimenting. Probably the first sign we see of that is his, is his track California Girls, which we talked about earlier. but the big album that sort of is the arrival of the Beach Boys Sort of more experimental artistic approach is Pet Sounds from mid 1966. That album is influenced by Rubber Soul, the Beatles had released in late 1965. Probably the two tracks on Pet Sounds you really want to check out to get the idea of the Beach Boys at their most ambitious is a track called Wouldn't It Be Nice and most especially, A track called God Only Knows. They then went on to do Good Vibrations in late 1966, which was released after The Beatles album, Revolver. Which had been released in August of 1966. Good Vibrations is a track where you can clearly hear Brian Wilson setting the different sections up, and sort of editing them together to create this kind of composite very, very kind of trippy. a kind of peace. We're talking about late 1966 now, and what Brian had intended to do was to release an album called Smile. It was even advertised for release in 1967 but didn't seem to pull it all together, too much music going on, maybe too much acid, whatever, in the studio, and so that fell apart. In the meantime The Beatles in 1967 released Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields as a double sided single so the sm-, the Smile Project falls apart and the, the Beach Boys instead release an album called Smiley Smile in August, 1967, which was released after Sgt Pepper, which had been released in June of 1967. So by comparing the releases of these two groups you can see that they get increasingly ambitious. Brian Wilson, I guess, kind of loses in the, the, the ambition sh, sweepstakes because he isn't able to bring Smile out, although it's been rerecorded in recent years. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. and it's a fantastic record on its, of its own merits. Had it been released I think it would have had a tremendous amount of. influence, but it wasn't. you can see the kind of back and forth between the two groups, a friendly kind of competition. Maybe friendlier from the Beatles side than from Brian Wilson's side. I don't know for sure. let's turn now to the, the Beatles themselves and what they were doing. Of course Revolver is usually seen as sort of the album that really introduces at least some element of psychedelia to The Beatles music, released in August of 1966. Primarily because of the last track on that album. Tomorrow Never Knows, which is certainly the most avant guarde, experimental, ambitious piece the Beatles had released up to that time. we talked a bit about that a couple of weeks ago. As I said before, they followed with Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. They, those two tracks were originally going to be part of a concept album When they decided to stop touring in 19, in August of 1966, they decided they would do, they would just be a studio band. This new album was going to be written purposely to be not, that they would never have to worry about performing. They were going to try to do all kinds of things in the studio that they never had to worry about doing. live. The first two tracks, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields were going to be on that concept album which was going to be all about growing up in Liverpool. but because they had used those two tracks, they didn't want to use them on the album that followed. So the concept of the album became Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles would actually be Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. They would come out, they would say, we're Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the tunes would go one into each other and, as you notice at the beginning of that album, you get Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and they say, and now here's Billy Shears. Of course there's Ringo, who comes on to sing With A Little Help From My Friends, but as they get into the second tune, they kind of drop that format and just do tunes, until they get to the very end there's a reprise of the Sergeant Pepper music and then they go into a Day In The Life on the second side. But, because of the packaging which participated in this Sergeant Pepper idea. There was a gate fold cover that opened out like this, that had a picture of the Beatles. When you brought, when you pulled the record out it had a sleeve that had a, a little sort of cardboard mustache and a little sort of cardboard patch you could put on. Really participated a whole lot. And the back cover had the lyrics, all of the lyrics written out. Now surprising as it may seem today. This is the first big pop album that actually had the lyrics written on the back of the cover. Like, you could read em without listening to the music. Right? Of all those Dylan albums that we've talked about, the importance of Dylan as a lyricist, the lyrics were never written out on those albums. Right? So here is already a kind of a a step forward, a sort of putting into greater relief the context of the lyrics themselves. the album itself is often viewed as the first concept album. Even if it were a concept album, if that, e, even if that question, there was not a question about that, it probably still wouldn't be the first concept album. This i, this idea can be traced back. Even back before rock and roll, back to people like Frank Sinatra, maybe John Coltrane in jazz. But nevertheless, it was thought of as the first concept album because of the Sergeant Pepper idea. John Lennon always said, my songs could have appeared. On any Beatles record. I don't know what the Sergeant Pepper idea is. My songs didn't have anything to do with it. It doesn't really matter what John said. What matters is what people thought it was, because bands started imitating what they thought Sergeant Pepper was. They started imitating the concept album. Idea and that's what made the album so influential. If you're looking for the, the, the, the tracks that are perhaps the most ambitious, musically speaking certainly a track like Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite is one because of the sort of use of tape loops that occurs there. But, A Day in the Life, the one that follows it is a fantastic most of, sort of most epic five minutes of music, a lot of people have said in the rock catalogue. you know there's two transitions where they're done totally by chance. Where the orchestra players are just playing any instrument and any note on the instrument they just have to come together at a particular time at the end of it on these big sort of crescendos. I'm sure if you've listened to the track you know what I mean. And the whole thing of piecing together a John song at the beginning, a Paul song in the middle, and then returning to a John song, putting together fragments, doing this chant sort of orchestral build-up crescendo, all of those things make that track the most ambitious one that they had done to date. And really sort of set a model, raised the bar, for all those musicians that would follow and many of them began to imitate them. They tried to continue this idea with Magical Mystery Tour, which was released in late 1967, December of 1967, and they also did their own movie to go with it. But the movie flopped and most people didn't think the movie was very good. They loved to see The Beatles, they loved to see the music, hear the music, but the movie was not very good. and now the jer, now the journalists finally could say The Beatles had finally done something that's flopped. Now they're done for. Or of course, they weren't done, we know the story. But, even here at this late date, into 1967, into 1968, they still wanted, to write the story, that said The Beatles were all done, they'd finally flopped. I am the, Magical Mystery Tour does contain the video for I Am the Walrus and Paul McCartney has said a number of times he defends it on the on the value of that. also in 1967, in August of 1967, their long time manager, or the manger since 1962 anyway, Brian Epstein dies. apparently of a drug overdose. and so the Beatles are left without a manager at about the same time as they're getting involved with the [UNKNOWN] yogi and transcendental meditation. and so, in this I think we can read two things about The Beatles' career. One is that they've now got some management issues they're going to have to deal with, and it takes them a while to sort of get that together, and they lose a lot of money in the process. But also, this turn toward the east. We already heard the sitar. In Norwegian Wood going back to Rubber Soul. and George Harrison's interests in eastern music generally Within You, Without You on Sergeant Pepper. Now this east meets west thing that The Beatles sort of enact by getting involved in trans-elementation, going to India to visit with to study meditation with the Maharishi really sort of put it into the mainstream. Remember, when we talk about the Beach Boys and the Beatles, we're talking about the mainstream artists not the psychedelic underground. So by the time we get to the summer of '67, this east meets west thing, India as the source of wisdom and a kind of alternate spirituality really starts to come together. Of course, the Beatles after all of this sort of psychedelic stuff, take a real trip sort of step in reverse. The White Album from November of 1968 is really more of a songwriter's collective. they begin to sort of look back to their roots more and more. The most ambitious piece on The White Album is a taped piece by John Lennon called Revolution number 9 which probably has the distinction of being the most widely heard electronic music piece in the history of music. Although many people probably only heard it once and maybe didn't even let it play to the very end. Nevertheless, it exposed a lot of people to the idea of what electronic music could be. The Get Back project which ended up being the album, Let It Be followed in January 1969, again. Getting back to their roots and then finally, the last album The Beatles released in September of 1969, Abbey Road. and probably the most ambitious things that sort of fit with our psychedelic ID here. Alright at the end of side one. I want you she's so heavy which ends with a big creshendo of noise and looping of guitar chords and then a very sudden stop. And the side two where Paul put together many many fragments to create this sort of suite which kind of creates an extended piece. So now having seen what the Beatles and the Beach Boys are doing to kind of bring some of this ambitious stuff into the main stream. let's turn to the psychedelic sub-culture in San Francisco to hate Ashbury and see what was happening during just at the same time. But sort of off the radar developing out in San Francisco.
