Screw the great albums...
Great albums are often great for fairly obvious reasons. Who can honestly question Sgt Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon or a Night at the Opera? Does anyone need me to explain why these albums stand head and shoulders above so many others? I doubt it, so I'm not going to waste anyone's time with it. What I don't think is obvious is that, in a certain sense, the albums that led up to these are just as great if not greater. These are the albums where the bands really stretched. They had all the energy and excitement of experimentation. There was no pressure for perfection, just the endless possibilities that spread out before them.
While Sgt Peppers set a new standard for rock, it was the refined culmination of new ground that the Beatles broke on Revolver. While "Taxman" or even "Tomorrow Never Knows" aren't as polished as "Sgt Peppers" or "Within You Without You," they are fresh and new and eye-opening in a way that nothing on Sgt Peppers is. True, Revolver doesn't have anything quite on par with "A Day in the Life," but Sgt Peppers never approaches the unadulterated joy of "Good Day Sunshine" and never rocks like "Got to Get You Into My Life." Revolver is not a perfect album. It's an album of becoming, an album of creative spirit. Sgt Peppers is just the fruit of Revolver's labors.
Dark Side is clearly Pink Floyd's masterpiece, but its (near) perfection required patience and calculation that also limits it. The crisp syncopations of "Time" or the ethereal atmosphere of "Us and Them" could not be achieved without incredible attention to detail. Meddle on the other hand, is an album bursting at the seams with the energy of wild experiementation. "One of These Days" and "Echoes" are manic rides teetering on the edge of insanity. Even the more inocuous tracks like "Fearless" and "San Tropez" have a powerful emotional current. Meddle is the id to Dark Side's superego. It flies off the handle where Dark Side ponders. Without any knock on Dark Side, it simply lacks the freedom of Meddle.
Likewise, all of Queen's experiements (especially with classical music and opera) come together on a Night at the Opera. It's most evident in "Bohemian Rhapsody," but the whole albums is a polished and cohesive mix of the rather broad musical landscape upon which Queen draws. They switch almost effortlessly from hard rock to soul to folk-rock to cabaret back to rock to opera etc, sometimes even within the same song. The same genre-jumping occurs on the earlier albums, but the transitions are sometimes rough. On Opera, they pull it off seemlessly, but in smoothing things out, they never quite break out the way they do on "Stone Cold Crazy" or "Father to Son" (from Sheer Heart Attack and Queen II, respectively). Even the cabaret stuff on Opera is a bit subdued compared to the free and fun "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" from Sheer Heart Attack. Like Sgt Peppers' "A Day in the Life," Opera's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is unparalelled on Queen's earlier records, but while it has no match in sheer theatrics, it is often equalled and perhaps even exceeded in sheer rock.
This makes me think that perhaps there are no perfect albums in rock. The freedom and abandon that fits so well with rock both musically and philosophically (philosophy of rock, good one, huh?) doesn't play nicely with the care and precision that's required to perfect an album from songwriting through production. Maybe that's what makes these bands so great; they could pull off both reckless experimentation and cool perfection (or near perfection). And maybe that's what makes rock great; like all of us, it's never quite perfect.
While Sgt Peppers set a new standard for rock, it was the refined culmination of new ground that the Beatles broke on Revolver. While "Taxman" or even "Tomorrow Never Knows" aren't as polished as "Sgt Peppers" or "Within You Without You," they are fresh and new and eye-opening in a way that nothing on Sgt Peppers is. True, Revolver doesn't have anything quite on par with "A Day in the Life," but Sgt Peppers never approaches the unadulterated joy of "Good Day Sunshine" and never rocks like "Got to Get You Into My Life." Revolver is not a perfect album. It's an album of becoming, an album of creative spirit. Sgt Peppers is just the fruit of Revolver's labors.
Dark Side is clearly Pink Floyd's masterpiece, but its (near) perfection required patience and calculation that also limits it. The crisp syncopations of "Time" or the ethereal atmosphere of "Us and Them" could not be achieved without incredible attention to detail. Meddle on the other hand, is an album bursting at the seams with the energy of wild experiementation. "One of These Days" and "Echoes" are manic rides teetering on the edge of insanity. Even the more inocuous tracks like "Fearless" and "San Tropez" have a powerful emotional current. Meddle is the id to Dark Side's superego. It flies off the handle where Dark Side ponders. Without any knock on Dark Side, it simply lacks the freedom of Meddle.
Likewise, all of Queen's experiements (especially with classical music and opera) come together on a Night at the Opera. It's most evident in "Bohemian Rhapsody," but the whole albums is a polished and cohesive mix of the rather broad musical landscape upon which Queen draws. They switch almost effortlessly from hard rock to soul to folk-rock to cabaret back to rock to opera etc, sometimes even within the same song. The same genre-jumping occurs on the earlier albums, but the transitions are sometimes rough. On Opera, they pull it off seemlessly, but in smoothing things out, they never quite break out the way they do on "Stone Cold Crazy" or "Father to Son" (from Sheer Heart Attack and Queen II, respectively). Even the cabaret stuff on Opera is a bit subdued compared to the free and fun "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" from Sheer Heart Attack. Like Sgt Peppers' "A Day in the Life," Opera's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is unparalelled on Queen's earlier records, but while it has no match in sheer theatrics, it is often equalled and perhaps even exceeded in sheer rock.
This makes me think that perhaps there are no perfect albums in rock. The freedom and abandon that fits so well with rock both musically and philosophically (philosophy of rock, good one, huh?) doesn't play nicely with the care and precision that's required to perfect an album from songwriting through production. Maybe that's what makes these bands so great; they could pull off both reckless experimentation and cool perfection (or near perfection). And maybe that's what makes rock great; like all of us, it's never quite perfect.
posted by bob_vinyl at 11:59 PM
3 Comments:
Agreed - there are probably no "perfect" albums in Rock history. However, and I think this is the point you made - sometimes it is the imperfections in a work that make it "perfect."
KH
AWESOME commentary, very well-thought and designed. Having been a late Beatles bloomer, I can see everything about what you're saying, though Sgt. Peppers is my favorite album of theirs, it's the previous bodies of work that led to its culmination of perfection. I told you outside of this forum that the songs on Hard Day's Night made me want to bawl out of the blue one day for no particular reason, other than the pure joy they exude, as well as the joy those songs and The Beatles gave the world when they were released, a world that NEEDED them.
AWESOME commentary, very well-thought and designed. Having been a late Beatles bloomer, I can see everything about what you're saying, though Sgt. Peppers is my favorite album of theirs, it's the previous bodies of work that led to its culmination of perfection. I told you outside of this forum that the songs on Hard Day's Night made me want to bawl out of the blue one day for no particular reason, other than the pure joy they exude, as well as the joy those songs and The Beatles gave the world when they were released, a world that NEEDED them.
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