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ShareLike many others of my generation, I too am a sucker for rock nostalgia. When young rockettes and others of a more recent vintage air their knowledge of 70s music, I am quick to point out that I was very much there when those albums were released and danced to them. It immediately dates me, but it is worth the satisfaction to see the reverential gaze that creeps in.
Frankly, I am getting a bit tired of this ageing rocker thing. It immediately imposes a generation's burden on to us, and makes us appear hopelessly out of date and wallowing in the past. Besides, I am not even sure that memory hasn't coloured our view of old times, and turned us into fogeys going on and on about the good old days. Thanks to this warped vision, we celebrate each bit of rock trivia and look upon it as a major social comment. We have all become pop anthropologists and sociologists.
I thought of this when an e-mail arrived telling me that June 1 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. This is the one with the Fab Four standing among several well known faces, from Karl Marx to Marlon Brando, from Paramhansa Yogananda to Sigmund Freud. It is an extremely evocative and iconic cover that has spawned many a copy and spoof.
The album was a breakthrough, technically and musically, and has some unforgettable numbers -- With a little help from my friends, When I'm sixty four and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the last being a song that has been a constant source of debate among fans of the Beatles (did the title suggest LSD, and so on.) There is little doubt that it is a seminal album (with some duds too), and contains songs that have given millions of people enormous joy for decades and across generations. How many records can you say that about?
But of course, in the tradition of popular culture studies, we cannot let an album be an album; we must turn it into a symbol of something bigger. And if we are in a more philosophical mood, we must also draw conclusions about the larger issues of life out of it.
Here is an excerpt from a recent article, on the album: "In cultural terms, the 1960s began with the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy and ended with President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band neatly divided the turbulent decade." The rest of the piece goes in this vein, looking at the turbulent 1960s when American society was changing.
Sure, America, and for that matter the whole world was changing in important ways in the 1960s and early 1970s; there was a spirit of rebellion in the air, conformism was giving way to questioning and youngsters were out on the streets, challenging authority. Naturally, the music was infected with that spirit. But was it music which set off the fire? That's a bit of a stretch, as an argument.
In America at least the spectacle of body bags coming back from Vietnam had shaken up an entire nation, and parents were worried about sending their children to a far-off country to almost certain death. The Cold War, with the spectre of nuclear annihilation, scared the rest of the world. The music of that period is inevitably associated with those times and we look back with our fond gaze and imagine all of it as one big whole. The truth may sometime be more prosaic.
This brings me to that other trait of attributing deep, philosophical meanings to the songs of the Beatles and others. Pink Floyd, of course, is the ultimate resource for those looking for the meaning of life (especially engineering students living in hostels), but you can rarely listen to a Beatles song without someone trying to deconstruct each line. Such is the mythology of the band -- and Sgt Pepper is the most hallowed of them all -- that suggesting otherwise brands you as a philistine.
To all those who still feel that the music is sacred, try this: many of the songs by the Beatles, and other bands, are now being used in commercials. With a little help from my friends was on the soundtrack of an ad for computers, while Revolution was used by Nike. John Lennon's Love was the music for an ad for baby shampoo. Of course, the money was made by Michael Jackson, who owns the rights for all Beatles songs, but who is to say they wouldn't have done the same?
In case someone thinks this is a rant against the Beatles or music from that era, I can only say that I enjoyed the music then, and I enjoy listening to it now. It has associations, and the comfort of nostalgia. But it's just music, and I am not about to start planning my life around the nostrums allegedly hidden in the songs. And for the record, Ringo Starr has said that he is not a fan of Sgt Pepper's; but then, what would he know?
Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net
