Dubdobmoptop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/70658547/sinker-on-beatles - it strikes me that I made a mistake extracting this (excellent) analysis of the Beatles' success and putting it on Tumblr, where you can't do post cuts, instead of here, where you can.

(The original context for the discussion is here.)

Comments

Palling Around With Terrorists

[koganbot]

To the extent there was a pall - and you shouldn't take this for granted, but you can certainly make a case, e.g. by going from the generally energetic and pleasingly eruptive Monterey Pop and then watching how things get ever more desperate and deluded in Woodstock and Gimme Shelter, or listening to the difference between Jefferson Airplane's optimistic After Bathing At Baxter's out early in '68 and their ferocious and bitter Crown Of Creation later that year (though also note that Grace (dear Grace) manages to be ferocious and bitter on Baxter's too) - the pall was going to happen anyway whether the Beatles breakup was ugly or not or if the Beatles stayed together. As I said, I didn't particularly notice the Beatles' breakup, and when I was going though my own pall starting in late summer 1970 I was making sense of it by listening to Airplane records and old Dylan records (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde). Which means the Beatles' good vibes - which were hardly the only thing or even necessarily the main thing going on with the Beatles, though those vibes did tend to be an official thing going on with them on such stuff as "All You Need Is Love" (whereas "Not A Second Time" and "You Can't Do That" and "You Really Got A Hold On Me" and "It's Only Love" and "Girl" and "Run For Your Life" and "A Day In The Life" and I'll get tired if I type them all weren't collectively titled "All You Need Is Hate" but were a complex and tormented evocation of what Lennon's love pieties were pretending to rescue him from, which doesn't mean to say that the good vibes were nonexistent) - were hardly the only element in the composite that glued together the counter culture.