Extract: The Beatles – White Album: Rock Classics Paperback

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Thought you might like to read a short extract from this exciting new book on the Beatles. Everything about and surrounding the Beatles double album. The whole story. This tells everything in depth.

The greatest album ever recorded?

Extract: The Beatles – White Album: Rock Classics Paperback

   1967 had been the year of great change. Psychedelia had swept through with the Pink Floyd’s piper, Hendrix’s experience, Traffic’s fantasy and Cream’s gears. Acid rock had stormed in from the West Coast. Bringing the strange days of the Doors, Captain Beefheart dropping out, Zappa freaking out, the Byrds being notorious, Love forever changing, Country Joe and the Fish applying electric music for the mind, and Jefferson Airplane taking off.

   The music had evolved. In the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll had been viscerally subversive; in the 1960s that had taken on a more sophisticated cerebral direction. Whereas rock ‘n’ roll had been music to madly jive to, psychedelia was music to get stoned with, to lose yourself in its intensity and nuance, to dance expressively, listen intently with friends or sit with headphones on and absorb the sounds and words. An album had to be pawed over, concentrated on and sucked dry of all that it contained. The cover and liner notes were studied and analysed, the lyric sheet searched for meaning and the music internalised through repeated listening. Albums were sacred.

The Beatles – White Album: Rock Classics: Goodwin, Opher: 9781789523331: Amazon.com: Books

Beatles White Album – Classic albums – excerpt

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Introduction

1968 and the winds of change were gathering pace. The first tsunami of psychedelia had swamped the scene, saturating everything in its acid-drenched glow. Everything was bright colours, kaftans, afghan waist coats, scarves and swirling paisley. A great surge of euphoria, optimism and possibility was rampant. Experimentation was in. The youth of the day were rising up to overthrow the conservative values of their parents, displacing the grey conformity and class structure with an anti-establishment defiance and radical outlook. This was the sixties revolution. It shot straight out of the feedback drenched music and poetic lyrics into art, fashion, design, film, magazines and philosophy. Hedonism was in. All things were possible. The war and rationing were a fading memory. I lost count of the number of times one of the ‘older generation’ disapprovingly told me that he’d fought a war for the likes of us. Not that we cared. War was a product of the old ways. This was the new age. We had different values. We were doing it differently. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Keeping it real.

   The Beatles had already ridden the crest of that psychedelic tsunami with their majestic Sgt Peppers Lonely Heartsclub Band. Now was the time for the follow-up.

   Ethnic was in. Hitch-hiking was the mode. The whole world opened up. The hippie trail brought back the Moroccan incense, Indian fabrics and new rhythms, new instruments. Everything exploded.

   This was the time of equality and freedom. Careers were discarded. Long-hairs had formed a new culture. Instant recognition. Adopted slang from the world of Jazz where the black musicians had begun calling themselves ‘Man’ in response to the whites disparagingly calling them ‘Boy’. This was the time of openness and sharing – joints, food, a floor to sleep on, all to the background of ‘our’ music. This was the time of the album, of what the media called ‘Adult Orientated Rock’. Except that it wasn’t adult orientated at all; it was aimed at us, youth; it expressed our values and feelings.

The Classic Album Series – The Beatles White Album

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The idea behind the classic album series is to take an in-depth look at a particularly important rock album. To look into all the factors that went into it, how it was made, the things that influenced it and a full inspection of the cover, tracks and production.

Sonicbond press allowed me to choose which albums I wanted to do. I chose Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home and The Beatles White Album.

Two immensely important, pivotal albums that I knew a lot about. I’ve lived with them most of my life. Albums I had great fun researching. Even though I thought I knew them inside out I still managed to dig up a wealth of interesting information.

The BEATLES WHITE ALBUM book is out tomorrow!

The Beatles: White Album – Rock Classics: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523331: Books

Three Days until the BEATLES!!

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The greatest album of all time! The book that tells you all about it!

Three days to go!

Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home

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Introduction

I can confidently state that Bringing It All Back Home is, without a doubt, one of the most important albums in the entire history of rock music. I will explain why.

   Not only was it ground-breaking in the way that it fused elements of blues, folk, rock and poetry, but it was also incredibly influential on the sound and writing of the major acts of the time. Without Bob Dylan and the album Bringing It All Back Home, there would not have been the impetus for bands such as The Beatles, The Stones or The Beach Boys to later construct hugely influential albums, or, at least, they would not have been as experimental and adventurous. Neither would we have had the incredible bodies of work by major singer-songwriters like Neil Young, Roy Harper or Bruce Springsteen. The sixties underground scene would not have happened without its explosion of styles, from psychedelic and heavy metal to prog rock, country and blues, its anti-war and civil rights protest and complex poetic songs. This album changed the face of rock music. ‘Artists from the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen have cited Bob Dylan as one of the most important influences on their music making and songwriting, noting that Dylan helped them see the possibilities of a different kind of lyric writing that was more intimate, personal, and autobiographical than what they found in early Rock and Roll songs.’ Stephanie Mooneyhan

   Paul McCartney said: ‘I’ll never be able to write like Dylan. He thinks of these fantastic word combinations. It doesn’t matter if you get lost in one of his compositions, you can get hung up on just two words – the man is a poet.’

   The album came out at a crucial point in time. This was 1965, the midpoint of the sixties, a turning point, and Bob Dylan was the fulcrum on which rock music turned. Before Bringing It All Back Home, we had rock, R&B and blues-based beat music (as with The Beatles and The Stones) and, lyrically, more sophisticated folk music. After Bringing It All Back Home, we had a new world of possibilities. The album opened up a theatre of opportunity by melding together the two distinctly different genres, and, in the process, creating an entirely unique style of music, a different way of songwriting and a different structure to popular music. With new sounds, new ideas, and a new attitude, nothing would ever be the same.

   The new, polka-dotted, shade-wearing, long, curly-haired, skinny-trousered, booted pop star, with a white strat hanging around his neck, cut a mean figure. Just like James Dean or Marlon Brando, he oozed charisma – confident, articulate and uncompromising. Rock music had a new rebel, and this time, he had a cause.    This wasn’t just a new sound; it was a new genre, a new style, a new vibe and a new culture.