Posted on 02/19/2016 7:08:50 PM PST by Mariner
The Beatles’ kaleidoscopic opus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band arrived in 1967, the “Summer of Loveâ€, the season of psychedelia and LSD, free love and hippy idealism. That all faded into 1968, a year of violence and dread. The Vietnam War raged with no end in sight, civil rights protests and vicious backlashes roiled across America, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the hippie enclave at Haight-Ashbury descended into a quagmire of hard drugs and crime, protesters and police skirmished at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Czechoslovakia was invaded, numerous countries around the world were held in the stone fist of brutal dictatorships, protests in Northern Ireland erupted in violence… the world was wrought with chaos and fear.
The time for the mystical fantasies of Sgt. Pepper had passed. Something more elemental was required. It’s no coincidence that the Rolling Stones released their dark classic Beggar’s Banquet in 1968, with its incendiary cornerstone tracks “Sympathy for the Devil†and “Street Fighting Manâ€. The darkness was in the air.
So what next for the Beatles? Their longtime manager and restraining influence, Brian Epstein, was dead of a drug overdose. The band’s Magical Mystery Tour TV special was savaged by critics and became the group’s first significant failure. The stakes were high for pop music’s biggest band, who suddenly found themselves cut adrift in a very different world. Their solution was the Anti-Pepper… simply called The Beatles but promptly dubbed the White Album for its stark white cover. Where Sgt. Pepper was all vibrant colors and imagery, the White Album couldn’t be more different—raw, often unrefined, frequently veiled in shadow.
(Excerpt) Read more at popmatters.com ...
And they had so many of them. Some musicians are revered because they had maybe five hits or so in their careers. The Beatles must have had over 50 songs on the charts and numerous top ten hits. They had quality AND quantity.
Good Morning Viet Nam!
Let It Be was an attempt to get them to record as a group again.
I remember how disappointed I was with Let It Be when it came out. The Long and Winding Road also gives me hives.
Revolver and Rubber Soul. Can’t stand the White Album.
Yes it was great. Thanks. I have Geoff Emerick’s book and it was a great read.
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