The Beatles – Page 5 – { feuilleton }

Lyrical Substance Deliberated

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds from Yellow Submarine (1968).

The advent of spring invariably gets me listening to favourite psychedelic songs, and this year has been no exception. Earlier this week I was idly wondering how many songs there are that follow the Beatles’ lead in telegraphing their drug metaphors by using the initials L-S-D in their titles. Wikipedia’s page for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1967) relates John Lennon’s oft-repeated claim that the initialism in the title was a coincidence, and the song itself is really a bit of Lewis Carroll-like whimsy. This might be credible if works of art only ever carried one meaning but they don’t, of course, and the song is both a piece of Lewis Carroll-like whimsy as well as being a pretty obvious paean to the drug experience: “Climb in the back with your head in the clouds / And you’re gone”. Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit (1967) was similarly ambivalent with mushrooms/pills replacing acid.

Among the many things birthed by the enormous success of the Sgt Pepper album, a small flurry of songs or instrumentals have imitated Lennon’s initialism for their titles. The ones that came immediately to mind are detailed below, and they make a curious group. If anyone knows of any others—there must be others…—then please leave a comment.

Burning Of The Midnight Lamp/The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice (Aug, 1967).

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s B-side not only alludes to LSD but also to STP. The song itself doesn’t go very far before collapsing into freakout mode.

The Trip (1967).

Not a song but included here for that “Lovely Sort of Death” tag. Written by Jack Nicholson! With Dennis Hopper as the acid dealer! See the trailer here, then watch the whole film here.

Lost Soul In Disillusion (November, 1967).

Hard to imagine anyone in London would have heard this in 1967. The Power of Beckett were a Montreal garage group who only released two singles. Lost Soul In Disillusion turned up years later on compilation albums.

Continue reading “Lyrical Substance Deliberated”

Aubrey in LIFE

Turned out for a big night at the opera like Beardsley’s Wagnerites, girls wear bare-backed blacks by Trigère. Coiffed heads are by Hugh Harrison and Halston of Bergdorf Goodman’s; Halston also made the pouf-skirted dress. (Photo session by Milton Green & Joe Eula.)

Being determined to catalogue every last piece of Beardsley trivia from the 1960s, I’m compelled to note this post which I’d missed at Sweet Jane’s Pop Boutique a couple of years ago. An earlier post here showed one of the photos from a LIFE fashion feature using Aubrey’s drawings but the Sweet Jane post has scans of all the photos, plus accompanying text. This was published in February 1967, a few months after the summer exhibition at the V&A in London which introduced Beardsley’s work to a new generation, an exhibition which set in motion a wave of popular interest in his work.

I’m intrigued by the way the colour of the women’s bodies emerges from the drawings given the date when the magazine appeared. I’ve long seen 1966 as a very black-and-white year in graphic and aesthetic terms, whereas 1967 is obviously full-colour; the difference between the sleeves of the Beatles’ (Beardsley-derived) Revolver and Sgt Pepper albums are only two of the more prominent examples. These fashion photos could be regarded as being caught mid-way between the shift from one state to another. There are more shots of the Wagnerites above on this page. Thanks to Ian for drawing my attention to the Sweet Jane post.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive

Burroughs at 100

Something from 1994 I found in an old sketchbook. Ink on paper.

Happy birthday, Bill. To celebrate the Burroughs centenary I could have put together several very different mixes of Burroughs-related music—there’s been a lot of it, and he was blessed with some excellent collaborators—but in the end decided on a version of something I’ve been messing with on and off for about twenty years.

Seven Souls Resouled by Feuilleton on Mixcloud

Bill Laswell’s associations with William Burroughs go back to Laurie Anderson’s Mister Heartbreak (1984) album which Laswell played bass on and co-produced. Burroughs had a guest spot on the last track, Sharkey’s Night, and that session may have led to the 1989 album by Laswell’s Material project, Seven Souls, a seven-track album based around Burroughs’s readings of passages from The Western Lands. This has always been my favourite of all the albums which set Burroughs texts to music, not least because Laswell has always surrounded himself with exceptional musicians. I liked this album so much I used to try padding it out on cassette tape with other Laswell productions, many of which feature the same musicians, and even similar riffs and instrument sounds. I could never settle on a definitive mix, however, and even the one presented here doesn’t feel absolutely right although it works far better than all previous versions. Matters aren’t helped by there being much extraneous material (so to speak): Seven Souls was reissued in 1997 with remix tracks, and there’s also a related EP, The Road To The Western Lands, with further remixes. Then there are the many tracks which match the Seven Souls sound, not least on the 1994 Material album, Hallucination Engine, which also features a Burroughs reading. Laswell’s solo albums, and much of his Axiom label, is infected by Burroughs-like titles; for a while Axiom even promoted its world- and genre-spanning ethos with the slogan “Nothing is true; everything is permitted”. The Beatles may have put Burroughs’s face on the cover of the Sgt Pepper album but Bill Laswell has done far more to spread the virus of the man’s work. Below there’s a guide to the tracks followed by another visit to the Wild Boys.

William S. Burroughs – Word Falling, Photo Falling (1960s)
One of the numerous tape recordings from the 1960s which are like audio equivalents of the books Burroughs was writing at the time. This one is from Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981).

Material – Ineffect (1989)
The first track from Seven Souls.

Ginger Baker – Dust to Dust (1986)
Bill Laswell produced two Ginger Baker solo albums, Horses and Trees (1986), from which this track is taken, and Middle Passage (1990). Both feature Laswell’s core group of Material musicians including Nicky Skopelitis, Bernie Worrell and Aiyb Dieng. Baker was a member of a later incarnation of Material, and appears on the Live In Japan (1993) album.

Material – Seven Souls (1989)
The second track from Seven Souls.

Material – Ruins (Submutation Dub by Bill Laswell) (1994)
From Material’s other masterwork, the mighty Hallucination Engine.

Material – Soul Killer (1989)
The third track from Seven Souls.

Ginger Baker – Under Black Skies (1990)
From Baker’s Middle Passage album.

Material – The Western Lands (1989)
The fourth track from Seven Souls.

Mandingo – Lanmbasy Dub (Kora in Hell Mix by Bill Laswell) (1993)
A slight deviation from the Seven Souls tracklist. The first four Burroughs tracks were followed by two very different pieces: Deliver, featuring the voice of Gambian musician and kora player Foday Musa Suso, and Equation which combined a rock riff with Rammellzee’s vocals. Foday Musa Suso is another floating member of Material who also released an album, New World Power (1990) on Laswell’s Axiom label under the name Mandingo. This track is an extended remix of the first track from New World Power.

Bill Laswell (with William S. Burroughs, Techno Animal, Iggy Pop) – The Western Lands (1999)
Hashisheen : The End Of Law is one of many one-off Laswell projects, this one featuring a collection of readings about Hassan i Sabbah set to music. Burroughs appears briefly two years after his death reading what may have been a Seven Souls outtake. Iggy Pop then reads a piece from The Western Lands.

Material feat. Rammellzee & phonosycographDISK – No Guts No Galaxy (1999)
In place of Equation from Seven Souls there’s this rap number from Material’s Intonarumori album.

Bill Laswell – Flash Of Panic [Pipes Of Pan / Up Above The World / Under Black Skies / Out Of The Ether] (1994)
Part of a track from the Axiom Ambient album which blends some of Laswell’s recording of the pan pipes at Jajouka with strings from a Jonas Hellborg album, and Omar Faruk Tekbilek’s ney from Under Black Skies.

Material – Soul Killer (Remote Control Mix by Terre Thaemlitz) (1997)
The reissue of Seven Souls featured three remixes of which this has always been my favourite. Terre Thaemlitz subjects Burroughs’s voice to some granular distortion then cuts-up his words.

Material – The End of Words (1989)
The seventh and final track from Seven Souls.

Continue reading “Burroughs at 100”

Design as virus 18: Sound Effects

BBC Sound Effects No 1 (1969). Design by Roy Curtis-Bramwell.

I used to own this album, the first in a series of sound effects collections from the BBC tape library intended for use by musicians, theatre technicians and anyone else who might need a recording of a thunderstorm, fire alarm or creaking door. Going through my diminished stock of vinyl recently reminded me that I got rid of my rather battered copy some time ago. Now that we can sample any sound we come across these library albums are a lot less useful than they were in the analogue era. One result of their ubiquity was that some of the sounds became distractingly familiar; I still can’t listen to Hawkwind’s Warrior on the Edge of Time album without recognising all the cues (wind, seagulls, etc) borrowed from this collection.

Sound Affects (1980) by The Jam. Design by Bill Smith with The Jam. Photography by Martyn Goddard & Andrew Rosen.

And speaking of borrowings, the cover design has proved as durable as the sounds. The Jam purloined the grid design and the title for their fourth album in 1980, although the florid typeface of the original was evidently too circusy for the group’s Mod sensibilities. The music inside also tips into pastiche, this being the album featuring Start!, Paul Weller’s plundering of The Beatles’ Taxman.

Good Vibrations (2013). Design by Julian House.

Roy Curtis-Bramwell’s grid of photos and drawings was reworked recently by retro-master Julian House in one of a number of poster designs for Good Vibrations, a BBC feature film. House’s designs for the Ghost Box CDs also feature a similar grid arrangement of enigmatic details in their booklet artwork. I hadn’t considered until now that the Ghost Box details may have their origin in the Sound Effects covers.

Detail from the sleeve of Seven Songs (1982) by 23 Skidoo. Design by Neville Brody.

All of which had me trying to think of other examples of this idea. The only one that came to mind was the row of seven symbols on Neville Brody’s sleeve for the first 23 Skidoo album. Brody said these don’t necessarily relate to the seven tracks on the album although it’s possible to view them that way. (The running dog appeared later on Brody’s design for the Throbbing Gristle album box.) As usual, if you know of any further examples then please leave a comment.

There’s more about the BBC albums (and pictures of the rest of the series) here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

The Fool album covers

The Fool (1968).

Many people know the work of design collective The Fool even if they couldn’t tell you the name or the names of any of the individuals involved. The accelerated career trajectory of Dutch artists Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma took them from a hippie enclave on the isle of Ibiza in 1966, to London and work for The Beatles throughout 1967 thanks to their distinctive brand of rainbow-hued psychedelia. Marijke Koger says the name The Fool was chosen after they met Crowley-obsessed blues singer Graham Bond who introduced them to the Tarot deck. Barry Finch and Josje Leeger later joined Koger and Posthuma. For The Beatles the group created the short-lived mural for the Apple boutique in Baker Street (removed after complaints), the decoration on John Lennon’s piano, and the inner sleeve for the Sgt Pepper album. The gatefold interior of the album was going to incorporate a Fool painting but Robert Fraser apparently persuaded the band to replace this with a group photo. The Fool themselves (and their decor) appear in the Beatles-produced feature film, Wonderwall (1968).

Proposed interior for the Sgt Pepper album (1967).

Given all this sudden visibility it’s surprising they weren’t more in demand for album cover designs although they were also busy producing florid outfits for other groups. The Beatles clothes on the All You Need is Love broadcast are Fool creations. Of the album covers, the one for The Incredible String Band is probably the most well-known. This small collection reminds me I still haven’t heard Evolution by The Hollies. The work on that cover led to a collaboration with Graham Nash on an album by The Fool (and session musicians) in 1968. The collective split up in 1969 with Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma relocating to California.

• Marijke Koger-Dunham’s site
• Simon Posthuma’s site

Sgt Pepper inner sleeve.

The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion (1967) by The Incredible String Band.

Evolution (1967) by The Hollies. Clothes and design by The Fool, photo by Karl Ferris.

Picknick (1967) by Boudewijn De Groot.

Move (1968) by The Move.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Through the Wonderwall