Record (Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, 1975); www.beatles.com
Download: Not currently legally available
The progression from the zesty ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ of She Loves You to the mesmeric, acid-spiked Tomorrow Never Knows took four Liverpool kids just 33 months. Drugs, Eastern mysticism and fraternisation with their freakier peers (Dylan, Stones, Byrds, Brian Wilson) have traditionally been seen as the reason; yet one shouldn’t underestimate the disorientating effects of a pop megastardom without precedent and the heady blend of fear and creative power that comes with it. Rubber Soul had been reasonably straightforward but, suddenly, instead of bashing down tightly-written songs within a few takes, The Beatles fancied new working methods. For the first session of their 1966 album, they oversaw a mad evening where engineers wrestled with six mono tape machines simultaneously, running unwieldy loops of sound effects. Thus Lennon’s ‘recite the Tibetan Book Of The Dead on LSD’ opus, The Void, took shape.
This was 20-year-old, newly promoted engineer Geoff Emerick’s first session with The Beatles. ‘The group encouraged us to break the rules,’ he recalls. ‘[They told me] that every instrument should sound unlike itself: a piano shouldn’t sound like a piano, a guitar shouldn’t sound like a guitar, hence putting things through a Leslie speaker, and so on. When we were doing the horns on Got To Get You Into My Life we tried putting the mikes right into the bells of the trombones – treating mikes like camera lenses, in a way – and that hadn’t been done before. I started moving the mike closer to the bass drum too. I was reprimanded for that, because, according to the technical staff [at Abbey Road], the air pressure from the drum would destroy the mikes! I got a special letter saying I could do it, but only on Beatles sessions.’
John encouraged radical treatments on his voice. Paul experimented with his new Brennel tape recorder, George began mastering the sitar (and was awarded his first opening album cut with the punchy Taxman) and, on Tomorrow Never Knows (as The Void was renamed), Ringo’s kit was split between two channels and fed into a limiter to achieve the famous ‘backward’ rush that propels the track. Every song came complete with some curious sonic innovation.
‘I know for a fact that, from the day Revolver came out, it changed the way everyone else made records,’ says Emerick.
‘It was a good point for us,’ agrees Paul McCartney. ‘It depends what you want from an album, but if you really look at it bluntly, most people just want good songs. There’s a lot of good songs on Revolver. In fact, they’re all good.’
The Association
And Then … Along Comes
Classy, harmony pop, and one of the most-played songs of all time.
Record label: Valiant
Produced: Curt Boettcher
Recorded: GSP Studios (aka Gary Paxton’s garage) and Columbia Studios, Hollywood; June 1966
Released: August 1966
Chart peaks: None (UK) 5 (US)
Personnel: Gary Alexander (v, g); Terry Kirkman (v, woodwind, reeds); Russ Giguere (v, g, pc); Brian Cole (v, b); Ted Bluechel (v, d); Jim Yester (v, g, k); Gary Paxton (e); Pete Romano (e). The above musicians were mainly replaced by sessionmen including Mike Deasy (g); Ben Benay (g) and Hal Blaine (d)
Track listing: Enter The Young; Your Own Love; Don’t Blame It On Me; Blistered; I’ll Be Your Man; Along Comes Mary (S); Cherish (S); Standing Still; Message Of Our Love; Round Again; Remember; Changes
Running time: 31.24
Current CD: Collectors Choice CCM06472
Further listening: Third album, Insight Out (1967), contains the classics Never My Love and Windy; Waterbeds In Trinidad! (1972) is outstanding
Further reading: www.theoriginalassociation.com
Download: Not currently legally available
If ever a group were sabotaged by their image, it was surely The Association. For on the sleeve of their classic 1966 debut, the sextet are pictured shamelessly togged out in matching three-piece suits, shirts and ties and proudly polished leather shoes. Naturally, all self-respecting rock fans dismissed them – a colossal shame, for the album is a delightful lite-psychedelic gem by one of rock’s great harmony bands, produced with dazzling wit and flair by Curt Boettcher, with finger cymbals, electronic sound effects and crazily inspired harmonies that dart insanely in and around the lead vocals.
Boettcher, who died in 1987, did not remember the band fondly. ‘They were never able to handle their own success,’ he told Zigzag. ‘It really changed them as people.’ Despite the gushing sleeve notes improbably claiming that Terry Kirkman played 23 instruments, Boettcher also revealed that the music on the album was played by sessionmen. This fact isn’t disputed, with Bluechel admitting to Goldmine that ‘all those tracks were recorded by studio musicians’. Kirkman adds: ‘We had the same guys who played for The Beach Boys’, although Alexander does assert that he played on all the sessions.
The album’s most famous track is Along Comes Mary, credited to Tandyn Almer, although Boettcher always maintained he cowrote the song. The song was rumoured to refer to marijuana, although the lyrics are impenetrable. Eight of the album’s 12 songs were written by band members, the best of which is Kirkman’s Cherish: one of the era’s most beautiful love songs and an American Number 1 single, displaying the complex and striking multi-part harmonies typical of the band. Unfortunately, its success marked the end of their relationship with Boettcher.
‘They informed me during the fourth week of Cherish being at the top that they no longer required my services and were going to produce themselves,’ recalled Boettcher bitterly. It was a catastrophic miscalculation by the band, who never sounded so enchanting again.
At the last count, Cherish had been played on US radio over four million times.
David Blue
David Blue
Unexpectedly caustic debut from former Dylan affiliate.
Record label: Elektra
Produced: Arthur Gorson
Recorded: New York; 1966
Released: August 1966
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: David Blue (v, g); Paul Harris (p, o, celeste); Harvey Brooks (b); Monte Young (g); Herbert Lovelle; Buddy Salzman (d)
Track listing: The Gasman Won’t Buy Your Love; About My Love; So Easy She Goes By; If Your Monkey Can’t Get It; Midnight Through The Morning; It Ain’t The Rain That Sweeps The Highway Clean; Arcade Love Machine; Grand Hotel; Justine; I’d Like To Know; The Street; It Tastes Like Candy
Running time: 41:57
Current CD: Not currently available
Further listening: From his eponymous debut, David Blue became bleaker and more circumspect. The eventual follow-up These 23 Days In September (1968) is well worth locating, as are Stories (1972) and Nice Baby And The Angel (1973), none of which are available on CD.
Further reading: Follow The Music: The Life And High Times Of Elektra Records in the Great Years Of American Pop Culture (Jac Holzman and Gavan Dawes, 1997); Bob Dylan (Anthony Scaduto, 1998); www.davidblue.org
Download: iTunes
Hanging around with Bob Dylan in the early ’60s can’t have done much for your confidence.