This one is a complete cheat, breaking all the rules. I don’t own this album. I don’t own any Beatles albums nor any of the Fab Fours’ solo efforts. I have a complicated relationship with the Beatles; I don’t dislike their music, nor what they’ve done since (apart, obviously, from Frog Chorus and Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime) but neither have I felt the inclination to investigate further.
For the sake of undoing the cheating, I will buy this album as soon as I see it.
I appreciate the seismic effect these four lads had on modern pop music, but I don’t feel it. Growing up in Liverpool in the 1960s (and attending the same primary school as Lennon and Harrison, twenty years later), it felt like they had always been there, they were the status quo. When, in the 1970s, I started to listen to and obsess with music, they were the old farts I wanted to rebel against. There was a time when I would have sneeringly claimed not to like the Beatles, a conceit I hope I’ve long grown out of. Indeed, last year I went to The Beatles’ Story in Albert Dock with a cousin visiting Liverpool, and really enjoyed the experience. So I’m softening
But even now when I listen to Beatles music, so much of it feels dulled by over-familiarity, ever present for more than half a century, so it’s difficult to try to put any sort of cogent review of the songs together. So why break the rules for this album? Because today is my 64th birthday, and inevitably I’ve been asked if I’m still needed and fed, and whether Vera, Chuck and Dave are well. This is my response.
And I can’t do this one without again mentioning and thanking my friend at Albums In 200 Words, who reviewed this album last week and put this idea into my head.
Starting with the orchestra warming up, and the guitar licks on the title track, it’s a well crafted piece of theatre, with a compelling overture in Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, fading into With A Little Help From My Friends, a pleasant little ditty allegedly written in a very narrow register so that Ringo could sing it. The ‘call and response’ is cute but this feels a ‘let’s write a hit’ effort. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, on the other hand is the archetypical psychedelic Beatles tune, which still makes an enjoyable listen. Getting Better is one of the lesser known songs on the album, but is a light and jolly ditty, and Fixing A Hole continues with the same feel, and is a really nice listen. The mood is taken down with the kitchen sink drama of She’s Leaving Home, a lovely song, before the first half concludes with Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite a theatrical billboard set to music, and a song I really enjoy, in a slightly bonkers sort of way.
Let’s metaphorically flip the disc and start the second half with George’s sitar led Within You Without You, certainly listenable but feeling incongruous, other than as a little bit of gentle music leading into Paul’s music hall song When I’m Sixty Four, sounding like it could have been written a hundred years earlier. It’s a nice song, but as I said earlier, over-familiarity reduces its impact. But I do like Lovely Rita, (another Paul music hall contribution?) the meter maid references keeping the song stuck in the 1960s, and Good Morning, Good Morning is so nicely uncommercial with its shifting time signatures and animal noises that it’s hard not to like it. There’s a brief reprise of Sgt Pepper, slightly muted and faster, before the grand finale, A Day In The Life, an epic fusion of two songs in a stream of consciousness, musically impressive and ambitious, and it works perfectly. It’s a fantastic way to end a very good album.
I can see why if I’d been ten years older and heard this in 1967, it would have had a completely different impact. Let’s not forget that the first albums from Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground also came out in that year, so The Beatles weren't the only ones pushing boundaries, but these were artists starting out – this was the Beatles’ eighth studio album in five years, so it’s notable for being an established band partially straying from their safe ground.
And to me, it’s a really enjoyable piece of work, with enough to keep me interested. Did it change the face of pop music? Possibly, but for me it had already changed and moved on by the time I was getting interested. This album belongs to people slightly older than me.
4* - it’s undoubtedly a great album, but the real impact is historical rather than musical when listened to with 21st century ears.
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