I Blew My Mind Out in a Car

You don't know how lucky you are, boy.

I've got a couple of tweets about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and one about The White Album. ABSOLUTELY, we should dig into them. If you are asking if these tweets might, possibly, say more about me than the music, I would respond: so hang me. I love the Beatles so much that literally every psychological hingepoint is in play here. As Dr. Symes tells Ray Midge in Dog Of The South: "there's every chance of trouble."

I tweeted about Sergeant Pepper’s:

As I recall, this was not a wildly popular tweet, and some folks were eager to remind me that the album is quite winsome, and that I am not old enough to remember what happened and should stick to sports. Or something!

Anyway, I stand by this tweet. I will attest in a personal way that Sergeant Pepper’s makes ME sad. Coming off of Revolver, vibrating at a frequency of genius which has few analogues. Shocked in nervous and unpleasant ways about the perilous feeling of touring America after an offhand remark about Christ our lord, amen. Wanting to be, in the height of the glory of being the coolest people that ever lived — someone else. It makes me sad.

Also, “She’s Leaving Home” makes me sad too.

Sergeant Pepper’s was so weirdly buttoned up in its own way, it made sense that it gave way to The White Album. Surprisingly, my favorite Beatles record, and also the one on which I dislike the most songs. It’s thirty songs! Their great aesthetic advance was in realizing not everything needed to be optimized to George Martin-specifications in order to be a releasable track. Even as John, Paul and George tracked largely separately, they’d never again conjure such a specific vibe. Sandinista and Tusk stand in honor. 

Obviously, many classic rock enthusiasts were caught in my web, shrieking a collective rejoinder that, “counterpoint: there are no bad songs.” And I know that every one of them listen to “Wild Honey Pie” and “Ob-La-Di” with the same attention they give to every other song. I don't know and I don’t wish to discuss.

Revolver was the harrowing prologue. Sergeant Pepper was the windup and the pitch. Maybe The White Album cleared the bases, or maybe the kaleidoscope just shattered further. Half of what I say is meaningless. Picture yourself in a boat on a river. I know what it’s like to be dead.

Now, about Let It Be. 

I recently drove from DC to Nashville in a single day — not to brag that I possess that kind of endurance — to be on a panel at Americana Fest regarding the liner notes I wrote for the amazing recent Bob Dylan and The Band’s The 1974 Live Recordings. I mean, the panel wasn’t all about the liner notes, but that’s why I was there. It was a good talk at Third Man’s Blue Room.

When I arrived, there was a Muscle Shoals panel just breaking up. I was backstage and in walked Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn. Confused and beside myself, I obviously started to cry, but became composed before anyone could notice. I’ve met heroes, but this was different somehow owing to the energy of my connection to their astonishing work. I’m not always gun shy when it comes to icons. I introduced myself to Ratso Sloman and Peter Holsapple on first recognition, and both became treasured friends. This kind of thing was not on offer with Penn and Oldham from my perception. Anyway, it was rarified air and I was happy to breathe it. 

DC to Nashville was supposed to be nine hours, although that number remained a confusing moving target since Nashville seems to exist in a strange and alien time zone that neither my phone or laptop were ever able to fully solve. I’ve been back for two weeks and I still don’t know what time it is. I resolved in that period to listen to every Beatles record in a row, as they were chronologized by Apple Music. I don’t want to get into UK versus US versions or stray singles — this is something I genuinely don’t miss about Twitter — but that’s what I did. It took me, roughly, seven hours to get from Please Please Me to Abbey Road. I was still two, three or twelve hours from my destination. It was time for Let It Be. Time to finish the job.

I won’t trouble you with how that story ends, but we are coming up on three years of the latest iteration of this most quizzical of end games, which I wrote about for Pitchfork when it was released.

Good to get together and talk some Fab Four tonight. What else to say? DC-area folks with a pep in their step might want to join me, Ann Powers, Lauren Onkey, Jenny Gathright and Gayle Wald at the Corcoran as we discuss NPR Music’s amazing new book How Women Made Music, at 7 PM on 10/8.

Be there if you can. Regardless, turn off your mind, relax and float down stream.

Love,

Elizabeth