Karma Police

Sgt Pepper musical concept was the linking of songs or often directly into each other and use of a a reprise. I think it hurts the album in the age of the CD because it was meant to be as one long single. The second side of Abbey Road is that way also. I think Revolver and Rubber Soul are better albums. I really like the chord progression on "Here There and Everywhere" a great underrated song. Or the altered scales of "Think For Yourself". The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and the Byrds Younger Than Yesterday are great albums IMO with no songs over four minutes and no direct linking.

I think they were way ahead of people like the Stones and their blues based peers. They recorded the proto-techno "Tomorrow Never Knows" April of 1966 and look what was in pop music afterwards. You really want to appreciate how far ahead of their time the Beatles were in Pop Music? Play some of the other stuff that was being released in, say, late 1966. When you've heard Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" (Billboard #2 June 25, 1966), The Happenings' "See You In September" (#4 Sept. 10 1966), Johnny Rivers' "Poor Side of Town" (#3 Nov. 5, 1966), The New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral" (#1 Dec. 3 1966), and countless others a few times, and then you listen to, say, "Strawberry Fields Forever" (recorded in late '66, released February 13, 1967), you realize you're dealing with a group in another talent-dimension altogether.

And Guitar Slim. But both were doing it, I supose you could say, manually - you know, like really just playing the instrument. MG As was Lenny Breau, but he was - as I mentioned in my original post - actually fashioning solos out of controlled feedback. It wasn't an "effect." The reason I mentioned him in response to the question whether jazz players were using feedback, tape loops, backwards tape, etc. before The Beatles or other "rock" was for that very reason. It was an architectonic use of feedback. Are there particular recordings of Watson or Slim that you would suggest to hear what they were doing? I have to admit that I'm not very familiar with their playing. Some of Breau's now very hard to find early RCAs utilize what I'm talking about as I recall, and I have a cassette tape somewhere that a guitarist friend gave me years ago - a private recording - that has an amazing drone-based, quasi-Indian thing that would blow your mind; the entire solo is feedback. If you go to You Tube you can hear Johnny Guitar Watson "Space Guitar". I don't hear any controlled feedback on that song like I hear at the start of "I Feel Fine". I can tell you one thing this predates Chuck Berry and Elvis as rock and roll and it sounds like this guy influenced Eric Clapton and Hendrix. This guy is uderrated and I never heard of him.

I like jazz music a lot of progressive rock is influenced by jazz music. The thing is I like to know was Jazz musicians experimenting things like backward tape, tape loops, feedback and Indian Music, before it got to rock music? I know Coltrane was influenced by Indian music. Did he use actual instrumentation? He actually predates all rockers using Indian influences. Miles Davis was influenced by Modal Music. Where I give George Harrison credit he used the classical style in instrumentation, rhythm and style. One interesting quote from Stockhausen. Stockhausen he once referred to John Lennon as "the most important mediator between popular and serious music" of the 20th century. I think he must have meant popular music but that must have pissed off McCartney who actually was the one who was studying Stockhausen first.

The Beatles are considered by many the first Power-Pop band a variant of hard rock- Unusual chord progressions strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs. Instrumental solos are usually kept to a minimum, and blues elements are largely downplayed. Recordings tend to display production values that lean toward compression and a forceful drum beat. Examples are "She Loves You" a "Hard Days Night" The early Who sound is also considered Power Pop in which they took the 12 string sound as done by by the Beatles and the Byrds to a harder level. You hardly hear long guitar solos by the Who. Examples "I Can't Explain" and the "Kids Are Alright". The Kinks were the proto garage and hard rock band with tracks like "You Really Got Me". They softened their sound by 1966 and became very pop "Sunny Afternoon" and "Waterloo Sunset"

k thnx bai ...and brought a strong strain of English music hall tradition. .....and had a producer who knew about other styles of music. George Martin was more than just a schooled musician. He was every bit the creative genius that the Beatles themselves were. Part of his genius was his ability to know when to get out of the way and let the Beatles be the Beatles. Very few rock producers of the era when the Beatles were first signed would have been able to do that, which is why it is significant that Martin had almost no experience producing rock music when the Beatles became his project. And it started right away. Martin initially tried to act like the typical major lable rock and roll producer by telling the Beatles who they could and could not have playing on their recordings (he immediately vetoed Pete Best and initially opposed Best's replacement, Ringo, in favor of session drummer Andy White) and what sorts of songs to record (he initially vetoed "Please Please Me" in favor of the professionally written "How Do You Do It"). But in both cases, he actually listened to the concerns of the band and eventually let them have their way. This set the stage for a much more collaborative relationship between producer and artist than otherwise might have existed. It created an environment where Martin COULD suggest more elaborate arrangements or more sophisticated voicings than the Beatles themselves might have come up with and where they were glad to listen and take his advice. He also clearly proved to be a marvelous teacher, because the Beatles quickly picked up on Martin's ideas and were soon working with him as equals, even though none of them were trained as Martin was. To me, the Beatles were the perfect storm of talent, opportunity, good luck, and the right creative environment. I firmly believe that had they been signed to Decca, for example, they would have had a completely different career. Probably a much shorter one, and nowhere nearly as influential as the career they had under Martin's tutilage. George Martin gets a lot of credit. The Beatles though wrote the chord progressions, lyrics and many of the ideas like backward tape collages, Indian Music, Mellotron, feedback, musique concrete and tape loops came from the Beatles themselves. I think George Martin gets real credit for helping and making suggestions but all good producers should do that. His classical influence certainly influenced McCartney to go in that direction.

I know in jazz musically things are different and much more complicated but compared to the Rolling Stones or 50's Rock and Roll. The Beatles differed even when they did blues music. The old blues masters were content to create entire songs out of multiple repetitions. As songwriters in the Tin Pan Alley/Brill Building mold, Lennon and McCartney weren't comfortable with that degree of formal repetition--at least they weren't in 1964. When they started incorporating the 12-bar blues pattern into their songwriting--so they ended up creating something more complex.. In the verses they'd follow the 12-bar, 3-chord blues pattern, but in the bridge they'd use a chord pattern more appropriate to a pop ballad (incorporating minor ii, iii, and/or vi chords). The result was a kind of blues/pop hybrid. I agree about the Beatles when it comes to Hard Rock. The Beatles had a huge influence on the start of Progressive Rock, Power Pop and Folk Rock. Songs like "Rain", "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "I'm Only Sleeping" have been huge influence on Indie Music. I think their influence on Modern Music towers over Elvis or the Rolling Stones right now in 2008.

I have to admit the Beatles though I do like a lot just sound different than their mentors. They sound modal "Things We Said Today" though without the obvious blues influence. Some of their rhythms on "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" for example includes a Balkan rhythm and a polyrhythm in different sections. Were they influenced by jazz? Day in the Life", "I am the Walrus", "Within You, Without You", "Strawberry Fields"... not really blues tunes, They were able to draw from diverse sources, like Indian classical music (Within You uses a raga-like form that contains both major and minor thirds in different octaves, kind of a combination of mixolydian and dorian modalities). Lennon used forms similar to Tibetan chants. McCartney and Lennon were both versed in the same types of cadential cycles that had evolved from Dixieland and Tin Pan Alley, the pop music of the previous era (and also a primary underpinning for jazz). IOW, while most other bands of that era were still working within simple I-IV-vi-V frameworks, the Beatles had assimilated musical forms, languages and rhythms from around the world. They built their own unique musical sounds, and wrote some of the most widely recorded music in history.