{"id":2581,"date":"2012-05-30T09:50:43","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T13:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=2581"},"modified":"2012-07-15T19:54:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T23:54:50","slug":"when-the-world-stopped-to-listen-by-john-w-whitehead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/when-the-world-stopped-to-listen-by-john-w-whitehead\/","title":{"rendered":"When the World Stopped to Listen by John W. Whitehead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI declare that the Beatles are mutants, prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species.\u201d\u2014Dr. Timothy Leary<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/em> recently announced its top 500 pop music albums of all time. Perched at the top of the heap is the Beatles\u2019 legendary Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em>. Unleashed on the world 45 years ago on June 1, 1967, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em>, as Rolling Stone<\/em> heralds, \u201cis the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, sanguinity, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To the Beatles, weary of the endless mayhem of concerts and Beatlemania, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em> was a declaration of change, both culturally and personally. \u201cWe were fed up with being Beatles,\u201d Paul McCartney would later say. \u201cWe were not boys, we were men\u2026 artists rather than performers.\u201d[2]<\/a> Retreating into the Abbey Road studios, the Beatles focused their efforts on creating a concept album that would showcase their artistry and vision, while serving as a substitute for touring\u2014a way to embark on a virtual tour with the album as the medium. Seven hundred recording hours later, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em> was born in all its psychedelic glory, the Beatles\u2019 most audacious and inspired leap into the avant-garde: their self-presentation as fictional characters. Sgt. Pepper<\/em> transformed rock music from a musical diversion for young people into an art form\u2014one that remains revered to this day.<\/p>\n

Although the album begins as a light farce, it moves to a sobering awakening. The songs are somewhat bizarre and sometimes ghoulish, but, at heart, Sgt. Pepper <\/em>was a spiritual experience for an increasingly materialistic world. George Harrison\u2019s \u201cWithin You, Without You,\u201d the centerpiece of the album, is a warning not to get lost in materialism or we will lose our souls:<\/p>\n

We were talking
\nAbout the love we all could share
\nWhen we find it
\nTo try our best to hold it there
\nWith our love, with our love
\nWe could save the world
\nIf they only knew.<\/p>\n

We were talking
\nAbout the love that’s gone so cold
\nAnd the people who gain the world
\nAnd lose their soul
\nThey don’t know, they can’t see
\nAre you one of them.<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s final song, John Lennon\u2019s \u201cA Day in the Life,\u201d points to the horrors of existence if humanity does not abstain from its destructive tendencies. In fact, \u201cA Day in the Life\u201d sets the other songs on the album and the Beatles\u2019 career in perspective. A collection of vignettes that are somewhat tragic, the song is punctuated with the phrase \u201cI\u2019d love to turn you on\u201d\u2014either a reference to drugs or the need to tune in to the Beatles\u2019 message. No doubt drugs were an intended reference in \u201cA Day in the Life.\u201d As author Mark Hertsgaard writes, \u201cIndeed John and at least one other Beatle were tripping\u2014or flying, as John put it\u2014during the photo session for the Sgt. Pepper<\/em> album cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Beatles underscored the verses of that final song with a dark, tumultuous orchestra crescendo. McCartney had wanted to include an instrumental passage with the avant-garde feel of musician John Cage and others, a spiraling ascent of sound, beginning with all instruments, each climbing to the highest in their own time. Lennon wanted the song to end with \u201ca sound like the end of the world.\u201d Thus, the Beatles simultaneously struck an E-major chord on three grand pianos, drawing the sound as long as possible with electronic enhancement. The effect of the crashing E-major chord, followed by some 53 seconds of gradually dwindling reverberation, brings to mind nothing so much as the eerily spreading hush of the mushroom cloud-visions of nuclear holocaust.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The cover art for Sgt. Pepper<\/em>, now one of the best-known works of pop art, was as mind-blowing as the album\u2019s contents. Created by Peter Blake, the album cover represented the first fusion of pop art and pop music. Distorting the line between fantasy and reality, Blake placed the Beatles, who were dressed in Victorian band uniforms, among notable historical figures and artists past and present\u2014some of whom were handpicked by the Beatles\u2014including George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allen Poe, Aldous Huxley, Lenny Bruce, Mae West and Bob Dylan. In this way, art romanticizes celebrity. The cover, an homage to the Beatles\u2019 late live stage career, with the figures arranged in a funereal pose as if attending a graveside memorial, was also a harbinger of the earthshaking changes to come, for both the Beatles, young people of their day, and the world at large.<\/p>\n

The events leading up to 1967 laid the groundwork for a social revolution powered by young people. With the young ripe for rebellion, drugs invading the country and altering people\u2019s consciousness, and the drums of war providing a constant backbeat, it was only a matter of time before flower power and peace became the mantra of the Sixties\u2019 generation. In turn, the playfulness of those years led to the hippie movement and, ultimately, to an abdication of adulthood. There was a sense that there was no need to grow up anymore. But, as author Mary Gordon notes, \u201cthe flower child\u2019s sense of well being gradually disintegrated as Vietnam became more central to consciousness.\u201d University students and academics began believing that the Vietnam War was a direct result of the greed and lies of old men in suits and uniforms. The government\u2014the \u201cEstablishment\u201d that John Lennon would later refer to as \u201cthe monster\u201d\u2014had withheld the real story in order to do its dirty work.<\/p>\n

All of these cultural streams converged in Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em>, which was hailed as a major cultural event upon its release, simultaneously mirroring the angst of its age while offering a solution to the social and political upheavals of the day. The solution offered by the Beatles was a return to spirituality and love for our fellow human beings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the soundtrack to summer, and winter for that matter,\u201d notes author Barry Miles. \u201cYou could not get away from it.\u201d Indeed, young and old alike approached Sgt. Pepper<\/em> with a religious awe. The LSD evangelist Timothy Leary, after listening to the album, reputedly said in a mystical voice, \u201cMy work is finished. Now, it\u2019s out.\u201d Leary actually believed he could hear the voice of God in the music of the Beatles.<\/p>\n

David Crosby of the popular rock band the Byrds brought a tape of the Sgt. Pepper<\/em> album to the band\u2019s hotel room and \u201cplayed it all night in the lobby with a hundred young fans listening quietly on the stairs, as if rapt by a spiritual experience.\u201d Paul Kantner of the acid rock band Jefferson Airplane said, \u201cSomething enveloped the whole world at that time and it just exploded into a renaissance.\u201d And as musicologist Tim Riley observed: \u201cThe closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt. Pepper <\/em>album was released. For a brief while the irreparable fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, at least in the minds of the young.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Summer of Love followed in the wake of Sgt. Pepper\u2019s <\/em>release. Optimism filled the air, the almost tangible hope that peace would eventually prevail and the destructiveness of humanity would end. Armed with \u201cflower power,\u201d young people took to the streets and demonstrated en masse<\/em> against the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

By 1968, however, the radiance of that golden age had already started to fade. Student rebels around the world adopted more militant tactics. Flower power was replaced by raised fists. Cultural heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were brutally assassinated. The Beatles too were disbanding. They were not gods, after all, and the love that once united them grew cold. By the end of 1968, it was clear that the Beatles were not going to save the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the music of the Beatles remains with us still, a poignant reminder that we all have a part to play in bringing about a world dedicated to peace and love. Yet the lesson\u2014that evil does not have to triumph and that good can prevail if only we can step beyond our self-interest\u2014is one that we each must learn in our own time and in our own way. In the words of George Harrison:<\/p>\n

When you\u2019ve seen beyond yourself
\nThen you may find
\nPeace of mind is waiting there
\nAnd the time will come
\nWhen you see we’re all one
\nAnd life flows on within you and without you.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

—-<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201c500 Greatest Albums of All Time,\u201d Rolling Stone<\/em>, http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/lists\/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-19691231\/sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-the-beatles-19691231.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/a> \u201c500 Greatest Albums of All Time,\u201d Rolling Stone<\/em>, http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/lists\/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-19691231\/sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-the-beatles-19691231.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

Page-top Artwork \u00a9 2012 Joshua Whitehead<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI declare that the Beatles are mutants, prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species.\u201d\u2014Dr. Timothy Leary Rolling Stone recently announced its top 500 pop music albums of all time. Perched at the top of the heap is the Beatles\u2019 legendary Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,214],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2858,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}