“Innocence and sex in complete cohabitation” is the best six-word elegy possible for this band — and maybe of 20th century music as a whole.
My one addition, since Ringo gets a bit of short shrift here — the pocket of the Beatles sound is the interplay between the three-part harmony and his indelible, Little Richard-influenced half-shuffle. Listen to any cover of an early Beatles song and the absence of the Ringo feel is the most glaring difference. “She said she said” and the groove for “Tomorrow never knows” are two *outstanding* drum performances, among his very best. And yes, sometimes being the universally beloved punster is precisely the role the cosmos needs playing.
Hear, hear. Ringo’s drumming has attracted this or that loving tribute — more infrequently, a loving analysis — on YooToob. But most in-depth writing about his contribution has been about his personality, not his drumming style, which is one of the truly great and nigh-inimitable styles.
Agreed Eric - although I absolutely think you can hear his personality *in* his playing, and that's what gives it its magic. You can't be a great player unless you're expressing some beauty of spirit that's already in you.
Good point! I just wish music writers would write about his personality *as expressed in his drumming*.
Drummers, generally speaking, simply don’t get the vivid descriptions of their drumming-as-expression-of-personality that guitarists get of their playing, that vocalists get of their singing, or arrangers get of their arranging. It baffles me because, being a drummer, not only do I recognize personalities in drumming styles, I hear music and feel textures and see colors in them.
Very well expressed! I worked with the same drummer for years and years because he took such obvious joy in what he was doing - you could see it in his face, and the exuberance 100% came out in the playing too.
Totally competent drumming, completely uncompelling song. The difference is our man’s half-shuffle.
Also worth noting, Richie came from by far the poorest family of the four, and spent a huge chunk of his childhood in the hospital (burst appendix at 6, TB at 13), where doctors told his mum he was a goner.
And he’s still blessedly with us at 86. Consummately himself. Vive Ringo !
As someone who grew up with the Beatles (my dad had most of their records) and would go on to study music composition in university, I'm still surprised by what new things can be said about a work such as Revolver, which is arguably the group's greatest work in part precisely because of the era that birthed it and its place chronologically in their canon. As a peak, it was also the beginning of the end; like a surfer riding the crest of a massive cultural wave, they managed not to wipe out entirely but descend relatively gracefully. (Sadly, such was not the case for Brian Wilson.)
But more to the point, as times change and the world moves farther from the point in time that created it, the album can take on new dimensions, and new understandings can be gleaned from it. It's only from a distance that the size of a mountain can truly be appreciated, that we can see how the atmosphere and sunlight play about its peak. As we move onward in time, this perspective can only continue to change until it recedes entirely from view and only some tangible threads in the present will, for those who care to follow them, lead back to it. Here is one such thread.
Piero Scaruffi famously gave the Beatles stick for writing about a fantasy land of their own rather than about concrete people and socioeconomic realities like the Who, Stones & Kinks - not entirely true, but to the extent that it is, I agree with you completely that this is precisely the band's magic. They take you to another world entirely, and so their music never stops meaning something. It's been fashionable for a very long time now in academia and criticism to praise gritty realism over aesthetic beauty in itself, but beauty, bliss and LOVE are the realest things of all, lenses through which the most well-adjusted among us view all the gritty realities and ameliorate them. Only very few artists can express pure joy in their work (Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison), and those who pull it off deserve the highest praise of all.
As for Revolver, the author Sean Egan - who perceptively said that the Beatles wrote music so happy it almost sounded sad - once knocked its coldness, saying that for all its greatness it sounds like the band's music approximated by a computer. I've always heard that same distant coldness myself, but that's exactly why it's my favourite album ever. To me, it evokes nothing less than the impersonal majesty of outer space.
loved this. never thought until now, "I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hiiiiiide!" as a sort of source for the later weirdness of "everybody's got something to hide, 'cept for me and my monkey!" and, weirdly, my burned-CD version of Revolver did not have "Yellow Submarine" on it, somehow this never came up. never realized it was even a part of the Revolver.
this is a tour de force... some of the best music writing I've read in a long time
Agreed - riveting writing and cultural analysis, yet absent pedantry and swagger.
“Innocence and sex in complete cohabitation” is the best six-word elegy possible for this band — and maybe of 20th century music as a whole.
My one addition, since Ringo gets a bit of short shrift here — the pocket of the Beatles sound is the interplay between the three-part harmony and his indelible, Little Richard-influenced half-shuffle. Listen to any cover of an early Beatles song and the absence of the Ringo feel is the most glaring difference. “She said she said” and the groove for “Tomorrow never knows” are two *outstanding* drum performances, among his very best. And yes, sometimes being the universally beloved punster is precisely the role the cosmos needs playing.
Hear, hear. Ringo’s drumming has attracted this or that loving tribute — more infrequently, a loving analysis — on YooToob. But most in-depth writing about his contribution has been about his personality, not his drumming style, which is one of the truly great and nigh-inimitable styles.
Agreed Eric - although I absolutely think you can hear his personality *in* his playing, and that's what gives it its magic. You can't be a great player unless you're expressing some beauty of spirit that's already in you.
Good point! I just wish music writers would write about his personality *as expressed in his drumming*.
Drummers, generally speaking, simply don’t get the vivid descriptions of their drumming-as-expression-of-personality that guitarists get of their playing, that vocalists get of their singing, or arrangers get of their arranging. It baffles me because, being a drummer, not only do I recognize personalities in drumming styles, I hear music and feel textures and see colors in them.
Very well expressed! I worked with the same drummer for years and years because he took such obvious joy in what he was doing - you could see it in his face, and the exuberance 100% came out in the playing too.
Right on ! Here’s a great illustration, the Del Shannon (Ringo-less) cover of ‘From Me to You,’ recorded just a few months after the Beatles in 1963.
https://youtu.be/AeVDMFgQhxY?is=vXC44ZizRDzPHUcv
Totally competent drumming, completely uncompelling song. The difference is our man’s half-shuffle.
Also worth noting, Richie came from by far the poorest family of the four, and spent a huge chunk of his childhood in the hospital (burst appendix at 6, TB at 13), where doctors told his mum he was a goner.
And he’s still blessedly with us at 86. Consummately himself. Vive Ringo !
I hope Ringo and Paul get to read this, including the responses.
As someone who grew up with the Beatles (my dad had most of their records) and would go on to study music composition in university, I'm still surprised by what new things can be said about a work such as Revolver, which is arguably the group's greatest work in part precisely because of the era that birthed it and its place chronologically in their canon. As a peak, it was also the beginning of the end; like a surfer riding the crest of a massive cultural wave, they managed not to wipe out entirely but descend relatively gracefully. (Sadly, such was not the case for Brian Wilson.)
But more to the point, as times change and the world moves farther from the point in time that created it, the album can take on new dimensions, and new understandings can be gleaned from it. It's only from a distance that the size of a mountain can truly be appreciated, that we can see how the atmosphere and sunlight play about its peak. As we move onward in time, this perspective can only continue to change until it recedes entirely from view and only some tangible threads in the present will, for those who care to follow them, lead back to it. Here is one such thread.
Thanks, Sam, for a thoroughly enjoyable essay.
Piero Scaruffi famously gave the Beatles stick for writing about a fantasy land of their own rather than about concrete people and socioeconomic realities like the Who, Stones & Kinks - not entirely true, but to the extent that it is, I agree with you completely that this is precisely the band's magic. They take you to another world entirely, and so their music never stops meaning something. It's been fashionable for a very long time now in academia and criticism to praise gritty realism over aesthetic beauty in itself, but beauty, bliss and LOVE are the realest things of all, lenses through which the most well-adjusted among us view all the gritty realities and ameliorate them. Only very few artists can express pure joy in their work (Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison), and those who pull it off deserve the highest praise of all.
As for Revolver, the author Sean Egan - who perceptively said that the Beatles wrote music so happy it almost sounded sad - once knocked its coldness, saying that for all its greatness it sounds like the band's music approximated by a computer. I've always heard that same distant coldness myself, but that's exactly why it's my favourite album ever. To me, it evokes nothing less than the impersonal majesty of outer space.
loved this. never thought until now, "I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hiiiiiide!" as a sort of source for the later weirdness of "everybody's got something to hide, 'cept for me and my monkey!" and, weirdly, my burned-CD version of Revolver did not have "Yellow Submarine" on it, somehow this never came up. never realized it was even a part of the Revolver.
masterful