"Classic Album Sundays"

Slightly off the original topic, but I'm pretty excited for the Beatles channel debuting on Sirius XM next week.

 

"Between The Buttons" was in a way the Stones distillation of "Rubber Soul."

Satanic Majesties, of course, was full fledged fanboi groveling; the Stones kneeling at the feet of their masters.

 

You using the term 'fanboi' on a thread about the Beatles is pretty funny.

Much the way the Beatles kneeled at the feet of Brian Wilson after 'Pet Sounds' and released their lesser interpretation.

'Sgt. Pepper's' is a good album. I'm not really trying to slag it.
Beyond the costuming, they never made any real attempt to make it a concept record.
There was a time, in my early teens, when I thought it was the best Beatles record, because I'd been programmed to think it was.
As my horizons broadened and my record collection grew, I learned differently rather quickly.

 

The thing about Sgt. Pepper's is that while it wasn't as good as Revolver or Rubber Soul, it marked the first time that grown-ups in the media (I was 17) treated rock music of any kind as serious rather than as one of those crazy teenage fads that could be easily dismissed as unimportant. The movie "Hard Day's Night" got great reviews back in 1964, but not because of the music. That was an irrelevance to the critics.

 

KSHE in St Louis used to do this on Sunday nights when I was in high school. I'd set the cassette and record all sorts of albums.

Doors.
Cars.
Billy Idol. (Never said they were all classics)
Eagles.

 

Brian Wilson himself has been quoted many times to the effect that "Pet Sounds," and to some extent the aborted "Smile," were his attempts to keep up with the Beatles -- attempts which in his own mind weren't quite successful.

There's no doubt whatsoever that "Satanic Majesties" was the Stones' markedly inferior, yet entertaining, attempt to mimic Sgt. Pepper.

 

Was anything in his mind successful?

 

Yes, and it's on the record that 'Sgt. Pepper's' was an attempt to match 'Pet Sounds.'
The point is influence and competition among peers is an ongoing thing.
When one band does it, you say they were aping their betters.
When another band does it, you say they were paying homage to and reinterpreting their influencers.

 

Brian went crazy in many ways, and there's some doubt as to how far back he's made it from "crazy," but in most of the interviews I've seen in which he actually discusses the music, he seems to have a pretty solid grasp on it.

Basically he thinks "Pet Sounds," and definitely "Smile," never really came out the way he wanted them.

For that matter, John Lennon, in interviews days before his death in 1980, said he was never happy with the way "Strawberry Fields" came out.

 

Well taken point. Music's like any other field. There will always be competition, and competition makes talented people do better.

 

Perhaps most groundbreaking of all, Velvet Underground & Nico.

 

Also Surrealistic Pillow.