As you may be aware, the tradition here in the good ol' UK is to build a band up to the skies then shoot them down in flames. This has only really been the case since the seventies but I got to wondering what it would have been like if this had been done to some of our greatest groups and their most iconic works. So here is a review of the Sergeant Pepper album that might have been done by some imaginary fiendish NME hack back in 1967. Imagine that said hack has always been in the vanguard of Beatles fawners and lickspittles since the release of Love Me Do, then read on...
REVIEW: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Tim Kennedy
Just when you were wondering where they'd gone, it seems the Beatles have reappeared with their shiny new lp. The cover is a highly colourful collage of our heroes and (presumably) their heroes. Unfortunately they seem to have dispensed with their familiar suits - and this is an indication of the changes to be found here - they are clad in multicoloured 'military' band uniforms. Help, someone call the style police!
The album opens with the sound of an orchestra tuning up, no doubt making clear that we are in for some "serious music". Can it be the group have spurned their pure pop roots?
However, "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is anything but orchestral with its plodding beat and rather strained rock guitar. The lyrics seem distinctly underwhelming - "we'd like to take you home with us" - Lennon and McCartney have fallen back on the most lame of showbiz cliches. The title song smacks of desperation - clearly the group haven't a clue what direction to take. Other midtempo, plodding half-tunes we are presented with here - "Getting Better", "Fixing Hole", are also a far cry from the sparkling pop soul gems we found on Rubber Soul.
The ensuing track "With A Little Help From My Friends" cruelly showcases drummer Ringo's feeble singing voice. The maudlin tune unveils what may be uppermost in the minds of the writers - a desperate realisation of the paucity of this material.
"Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and "A Day In the Life" are examples of two overtly childlike songs which display the band's by-now familiar irritating trick of camouflaging a song with babyish psychobabble. The lack of hooklines or indeed any proper song structure is woeful. The orchestra again pops up in the latter, but very amateurishly attempts a wobbly crescendo of sorts to emphasise some kind of mini drama concerning a car crash.
The unbearably saccharine "She's Leaving Home" is a futile exercise
- a dull story about leaving Mumsy and Daddy and isn't it sad? No! Likewise, the lightweight kiddies-trip-to-the-circus theme of "Mr Kite" is similarly unsatisfying.We have to look back to the band's decision to cease touring to find the source of the band's malaise. Without the discipline of performing live they have lost touch with their audience and have fallen prey to the ideas of bizarre oriental charlatans and human flotsam from the US West Coast. The album is so adrift artistically it's hard to see whence they will go from here. Songs about walruses or maybe more appropriately village idiots ??? What was refreshing and unusual in Revolver has become simply tiresomely fey and indulgent in Sergeant Pepper. Clearly, whatever happened to Brian Wilson has also struck down our own proud (former) premier entertainers.
Perhaps the only good song on the lp, "When I'm Sixty Four" is indicative of a direction their music could have taken, with its humourous music-hall tune and lyric, this is a song which could have come from the pen of Noel Coward.
On the other hand George Harrison's sitar n' tabla "Within You Without You" meanders interminably. "Good Morning Good Morning" has the worst chorus of any pop song I have heard, interspersed with humdrum observations which are no doubt a revelation when (if) you take the requisite chemicals. And if "Lovely Rita" the traffic warden had had any sense she'd have impounded the car and arrested the driver for another terribly weak chorus, albeit allied to a fair music hall tune.
The Beatles are going nowhere and will quickly lose even their most diehard fans if they persist with this half-baked, oddball and frankly annoying mish-mash of non-themes. To echo the sentiment in "Getting Better" - well they "can't get much worse". With the Kinks in razor sharp form these days, yesterday may well belong to the Beatles.
Oh - there are some pretty cardboard inserts which lined the budgie's cage very nicely.
