Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

This year is the 40th anniversary of an album that was massively influential on today’s rock bands. Lyrically, an album that conveyed street-wise serious literary themes in straightforward, simple language. Musically, an album that draped avant-guard drones over simple rock ‘n roll. Of course I’m talking about The Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album. I’ll leave it to Lou to overstate the case:

“Let me tell you, [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band] didn’t have any effect on me. I don’t even own it. I thought it had some of the worst songs I’ve ever heard in my life on it. *Mr. Kite* — absolutely unbearable. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. I don’t see how people can even think of it seriously when you compare it to, like, The Velvet Underground’s first album. No comparison. I think that, perhaps, if people listen to it in retrospect now, they might find it a little more ridiculous, the way I did then. It was like gooey pap. It was like completely dispensable from beginning to end. It just had nothing, *nothing*. On top of that it was *cute*, you know?” [in Rolling Stone. 1987]

katy st. clair on how to recognize a good song

You pretty much know a song is great if you can add a quick “Cha-cha-cha!” to the end of it. For example, take Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely.” Wait for the extended “dumbydoowahhhh,” and then place a “cha-cha-cha!” after a beat. The trick even works on Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You,” which closes with a long, soaring “youuuuuu … cha-cha-cha!” and “God Save the Queen”: “Nooo future, nooo future, nooo future … cha-cha-cha!”

jeff tweedy on taking rock seriously

I loved that analogy of a halfwit gardener onto whom people project profound meanings. I think rock music has a similar function.