1968

Cream "Wheels of Fire"

Another first in what was to become a staple: one record made in the studio, the other 'recorded live', and the two records also released as two separate lps (which became a pointless habit when The Who's "Tommy" (a continuous story) was released as Part One and Part Two). Musicians now wanted to show off their proficiency in both the studio and playing in front of an audience. The former enabled them to be ambitious and experiment with recording techniques and additional instrumentation. The latter meant that they had to be able to play without the aid of studio gimcrackery. 

Cream were a group that prided themselves on being able to cut it live, having spent a number of years doing just that in small clubs playing jazz and blues. They also wanted to make some of the new music that was floating around London. Not psychedelic but not traditional either nor straightforward pop. A song like "Passing the Time" has a number of different sections and time shifts. A prog rock precursor in miniature. Same with "Pressed Rat and Warthog".

The original trio are augmented quite a bit on the studio side by Felix Pappalardi on several instruments such as viola and trumpet, along with Jack Bruce chucking in a liberal helping of cello all over the record. I like the extra guitars (at least three lead guitars all playing at once) that are poured over "Politician".

In another move that was soon to become a trope, "Wheels of Fire" sought to provide showcases for the individual talents of each member of the group. So, the studio record has separate compositions by Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker along with two blues numbers chosen by Eric Clapton, while the live record contains two songs that feature Clapton along with a Jack Bruce harmonica sortie and a Ginger Baker drum solo. It is almost as if groups forget that what gives them strength is collective creativity, and they imagine themselves to be solo talents which many of them are not.

Funnily enough, although Cream get credited as being one of the first album acts and as being a deep listening experience for serious rock fans, I prefer to think of them as being a singles band. All of their best material was released on singles in one form or another and the stuff that is left on the albums is actually rather mundane. I think one of the main reasons that "Disraeli Gears" and "Wheels of Fire" get rated as great lps is on account of their stunning Martin Sharp artwork. To add to the controversy, let me say that I also think the material that Bruce, Baker and Clapton recorded separately either immediately after or shortly after Cream broke up is more diverse, interesting and worthy than that of their parent group.

Why then do people rate Cream? I think it is because on songs like "White Room" and "Crossroads" they make a great noise. Few things are better than hearing Baker and Bruce have a musical argument, each trying to outdo the other, while Clapton stays out of it for the most part. "Crossroads" is, of course, Clapton's masterpiece. A simple song which is ridiculously hard to play the way he does. When they take off during the solos you feel they could play for ever and it is genuine group interplay rather than selfish showing off. Their version of "Spoonful" makes much the same point only at much greater length.  

Most critics complain that the fault with "Wheels of Fire" is that it does not contain enough good songs. That may be true but my complaint is that it does not contain enough excessive wankery. Almost every track is under 5 minutes long with only "Spoonful" and "Toad" exceeding 15 minutes. I quite like Cream when they go on and on and on and would have settled for more of this. I think their best lp is "Cream on Top" which lifts "Spoonful" and "Toad" from "Wheels of Fire" and puts them with a live version of "Politician" from one of the "Live Cream" lps plus the lovely little "Badge" with its dinky George Harrison riff in the middle. "Wheels of Fire" is too polite. It should consist of only four songs, one per side and 20 minutes long. That's what I want. It ultimately fails because this most excessive of rock groups does not get excessive enough.

Donovan "A Gift From a Flower to a Garden"

 

Following on from the first pop triple album, we have the first pop box set ("A Cid Symphony" originally came in a bag rather than a box). Two records in a box together with an envelope of 12 inserts containing song lyrics and illustrations. The two records were thematically separate, one being comprised of group accompaniment and the other being solo acoustic numbers. Additionally, the second record was presented as being comprised of compositions aimed at younger listeners. Later, the two records were released as separate lps entitled "Wear Your love Like Heaven" and "For Little Ones".

Apparently, this was an expensive package to put together with the slightly psychedelic cover art requiring a complex print process. It is another example of musicians using a double album to make a STATEMENT both in terms of length at which they expound and also in the presentation of the finished package.

The hippie ethos is well present in this artifact. First, the title of the package. It is presented as something given from one to the many. It implies hippie collectivism, in that Donovan is but one flower growing amongst a multitude. This is self-deceiving on many levels. It is not a gift but a product. Donovan is not giving away his music for free but presenting it for commercial consumption. This does not make him evil but does make him no different from all other recording artists of this time. Yet Donovan is trying to make himself appear separate from the other musicians and also part of a movement (cynics may also view this as a commercial decision) - look, I am different from these other peddlers of exploitation - I am one of you. Compare this approach with that of Dylan who has always been aware of his part in a commerce-based industry and has never indicated that he thought of his work as a gift to his audience.

Second, the sleeve notes, which are a call to youth both to abandon drugs (an admirable exhortation when taking drugs to establish one's hipness was at its zenith) and to turn on to something else. Peace and love, basically. He also signs himself of as "thy humble minstrel" - ye gods! You are a pop singer, for fucks sake, not a wandering minstrel. You do Top of the Pops and interviews with teen pop magazines. You do concerts that people pay to see. You do not wander from town to town with a guitar strung across your back and a piece of straw in your mouth. You make records with Mickie Most who also produces Herman's Hermits and Lulu. Twat.

This is all so much hippie twaddle. Incidentally, there is also an accompanying short form video to this album (which appears to have been filmed, at least in part, at the Minack open air theatre in Cornwall) which features some of the songs and Donovan and others larking about in dressing up clothes.

Donovan himself is, of course, musical marmite. From Dylan copyist to babbler of pseudo-psychological bullshit, to ashram/guru following layabout, to fey wandering minstrel. His lyrics sometimes literally comprise meaningless syllables and he affects deliberate mispronunciations of words as well as speech impediments that he does not have. He tries to sound coy and unassuming and shy and abashed when in fact he has a massive ego and is hugely ambitious. His songs deal with inconsequential nonsense. He, along with Richard Branson, is the ultimate example of someone wearing hippie style to effect a capitalist outcome. He is a prat of the first order.

But, as with marmite, there is another view. Donovan once was a wandering minstrel who took his acoustic guitar with him from Scotland to wander around the South coast of England and further afield. Unlike, say, Dylan he never had to lie about working carnivals and riding for free on the trains, nor indeed did he have to change his name. He is the genuine article. His early Dylan soundalikes could be seen as the youthful musical tributes of an artist looking for his own style and sound and one which he very quickly found.

In his autobiography, Donovan claimed to have invented psychedelia and other sounds of the sixties and he was much mocked for this. The problem is that the chronology shows that Donovan was often there first. He put out an anti-war record in August 1965, he released "Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)" in October 1965 and having released this laidback groove wrote "Season of the Witch", a magnificent downer anthem. His first fully psychedelic lp was released in September 1966 (having been recorded in part as early as 1965) with full hippie accoutrements present and correct - from songs with girls names in the title to songs about mythical people and unusual instrumentation such as sitars and celestes being featured throughout as intrinsic to the sound rather than as ornamentation. He was one of the first to popularise setting songs specifically in London such as "Hampstead Incident", "Sunny Goodge Street" and "Sunny South Kensington" establishing London as a) sunny (??!!) and b) the epicentre of the soon come swinging world.

His influence is widespread. Many pop artists of the 60s copied his songwriting style. Marc Bolan took his childish, mystical schtick and turned into a career. Syd Barrett was influenced by Donovan's specificity. I think that The Incredible String Band arrived at their extraordinary music separate from and independent of Donovan but it is the case that Donovan got there first. Donovan's drawn-out, fey, specifically British enunciation was copied (along with Syd Barrett's) by first Ray Davies and then on into glam rock bands and then punk. All of British psychedelia's fascination with Alice in Wonderland and Aubrey Beardsley and William Morris etc. can be laid at Donovan's door along with that of The Beatles. He had an impact on the emerging American West Coast bands, specifically Jefferson Airplane with the whole "fly trans-love airways" thing, to the MC5's trans-love energies. There is a case that could be made that, other than The Beatles, Donovan was the single most influential artist of the late 60s (especially with Dylan effectively out of the picture).

"A Gift From a Flower to a Garden" was Donovan's fifth album in 3 years. That he had enough songs for a double album is tribute to his productivity and creativity during this time. He was also just 21 years of age. It feels like a classic case of an artist wanting to put out the material he had ready while it was still hot rather than wait for staggered release dates. Donovan had previous experience of this when his masterpiece lp ("Sunshine Superman") was finished in 1966 but not released in the UK until a year later, and then in corrupted form. It was the middle of the fastest moving decade for popular music. The Beatles had released "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and The Beach Boys had put out "Pet Sounds". Dylan and Zappa's double albums were over a year old. You can understand Donovan worrying that the Summer of Love was happening without him, and without him receiving the credit he felt he was due for creating its soundtrack two years earlier. He must have wanted to make a statement. So what sort of statement does he make?

The group lp focuses on a jazz influenced, swingy sound. The instrumentation is relatively sparse but made to sound full. Lots of organ work and double bass and drums played with brushes. The opening track, "Wear Your Love Like Heaven", well illustrates one of Donovan's key gifts to psychedelic music - it is a move away from the verse-chorus-verse of pop songwriting. Although both Lennon and McCartney and Brian Wilson brought new and innovative chord structures and juxtapositions into the mix, it was Donovan who seems the first to move into individual lines in songs leading to other lines without having to reach a chorus (a technique that Lennon was to perfect on pieces like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Strawberry Fields Forever"). The verse in "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" moves independently of the chorus and there is an unrelated musical segment that regularly appears in a different metre.

The songs on the first record are less ambitious in their scope and range than some of Donovan's earlier forays into psychedelia. There are references to rose carmethene and to alizarin crimson but also to Birmingham, Torquay and double eggs, chips and beans and the telly. Again, a bit of a Donovan trademark: linking the fanciful with the prosaic.

The second lp, although seemingly aimed at younger listeners, does not feature what might be termed childlike songs, certainly in comparison with his later kids lp "HMS Donovan". It sounds more like a straight folk lp featuring Donovan compositions rather than trad. arr. material, especially on the lovely "Isle of Islay". For the most part, the songs suit their unadorned settings. There are, now and then, some sound effects to make it sound like Donovan has recorded himself singing en plein air. Some slight additional instrumentation breaks out occasionally as on the calypso-flavoured "Lay of the Last Tinker" which contains the slightly strange lyrical invitation to "break cheese with me". Donovan sings all of the songs straight without any of his enunciation affectations, perhaps he sometimes over-emphasises his Scottish accent to try and sound more authentic but then again he is, like, Scottish. References to the natural world abound, from the naturalist's wife to the starry starfish and the herring shoals. Again, Donovan is master of that hippie trope that children and nature are good, ideal symbols of innocence and virtue compared with just about everything else.

Overall, it is not Donovan's best album but does maintain interest through its length and without there being any obvious inferior songs. It is an enjoyable listen.

1967

Ernie Fischbach and Charles Ewing "A Cid Symphony"

The first pop triple album, although it is pop only in the sense that it was recorded by young American musicians. This conglomeration grew out of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement aligning musicians, artists, poets and print makers. The input from the visual media is significant because overall the album is nicer to look at than it is to listen to. Each of the three records is pressed on different coloured vinyl with square labels and coloured inners in a brightly coloured bag or box with additional inserts. It is a nice memento of the early days of the Californian hippie dream of peace and love, making music and living in a tent.  

The music is played entirely on acoustic instruments such as dulcimer, guitar, harmonica, hand-held drums and bells. It is mostly instrumental with a small amount of spoken word material. Much of the album is taken up with modal improvisations on guitar and dulcimer accompanied by percussion. These are reminiscent of the version of "La Golondrina" as played in the movie "The Wild Bunch" only they never arrive at a fixed melody. There is a tonal centre to these improvisations and they never slip out of tune but the melodies never develop anywhere interesting but just circle around each other. This impression is not helped by none of the tracks having individualised names but are just numbered sequentially depending which side of the records they are on.

The album does feature an impressive recording of a printing press in full operation, so that is something.

The Mothers of Invention "Freak Out"

 

Released just a couple of months after "Blonde on Blonde" comes the second ever pop double album and by another great pop innovator. It is a bit of a puzzle why an established record company such as MGM would allow a relatively unknown group possessed of limited teen appeal to issue a two disc set as their debut release. Frank Zappa was to demonstrate throughout his career an exceptional ability to get things done, so presumably it was his persuasive powers that talked the company into it.

There is a sense that Zappa might have thought this was going to be his only chance to make a statement on a large label and there is an element of everything and the kitchen sink about the songs and arrangements (and also the inside cover which exists as an almost separate statement from the record). The album is a game of two halves, the first record consisting of shorter "pop" songs and the second of longer, more exploratory pieces. Frankly, the second record with its sound collages, musique concrète and general smart aleckness is all but unlistenable. It perhaps has value as a documentary record of what passed for cool in mid-60s LA, but comparison with the following year's "Lumpy Gravy" shows how quickly Zappa was to improve his organisational control over abstract and ambient material to produce a far more satisfying collage.

Unlike most debut lps, this album does not feel like a straight recording of the band's live set. A number of the songs feel like they were composed by Zappa specifically for inclusion on this record, such as "Who are the Brain Police" and "Hungry Freaks, Daddy". It is the doo-wop parody songs that feel most like numbers that have been performed live. These are also the songs that sound as if they feature the Mothers themselves playing rather than the team of session musicians that enhance many of the other songs' more outré arrangements.

I first heard this record after hearing many others sorts of music and did find it a record that is difficult to love. The arrangements are too complex, the production is unsympathetic, the vocals sound too high in the mix, its got kazoos on it, the singers sound old (compared to many groups they were old) and the songs of teen love sound creepy being sung by leery old men. The sleeve notes are supercilious and condescending and very off putting. This is a cardinal sin with Zappa. He never invites you in to his music and always wants to let you know that he is cleverer than you. This is invariably true but it is not nice to be told.

That said, "How Could I Be Such a Fool" is gorgeous and some parts of the shorter songs indicate that Zappa could have been another Brain Wilson had he wished to follow that path. "Wowee Zowee" is infectious and indicates that perhaps one should think of the Mothers' interpretations of the musical styles of the 1950s and early 60s in the same way one thinks of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's interpretations of songs from the 1920s and 30s - as affectionate reinterpretations with associated jokes ("I don't care if your dad's the heat"). One way or another, between the songs themselves, the arrangements, the performances (particularly Roy Estrada's pachucoisms), and the sleeve notes there are more ideas (both musical and lyrical) on this album than almost any other, with the probable exception of Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica". Beefheart went to school with Zappa so perhaps that is where it started.

The best track on the album ("How Could I Be Such a Fool") was released as a single coupled with the worst track ("It Can't Happen Here"). The former is a commercially attractive, memorable melody expressing conventional pop sentiments. The latter is a spoken word piece of provocation. I have the UK edition of this single and in the UK the sides were reversed putting the spoken word provocation as the A side. This seems like commercial suicide for a major record company, particularly in the mid-60s, a guarantee of no air-play. It must have been a mistake but there it is, existing.

Anyway, great cover.

 

1966

Bob Dylan "Blonde on Blonde"

 The first pop double album to be recorded and released was "Blonde on Blonde" by Bob Dylan and it is characteristic of Dylan as someone who broke with conventions. Having already released 6 lps in 5 years (two of which were released in the previous 12 months), in 1966 Dylan recorded sufficient material to be released across four sides. Having been variously a folksinger, a protest singer, a balladeer, a free associating symbolist and electric rebel, Dylan now made the move to Nashville, the home of conformity, to become a country singer.

With hindsight there seems an inevitability to all of Dylan's moves during the sixties. We can look back and see the trajectory he was on. But it must have seemed far from logical at the time. Dylan was at the height of his pop fame. He was having hit singles and hit lps. His audience was adulatory, poring over his lyrics, seeking enlightenment and deeper meaning, even when he was issuing semi-improvised works like much of "Highway 61 Revisited". Having done his electric shock lp stuffed with amped-up blues riffs and symbolist lyrics, Dylan was determined to find a different sound. He had a song called "Visions of Johanna" that seemed to require a new treatment. He had been performing the song in concert just accompanied by his acoustic guitar but a key lyric, namely "the country music station plays soft", is suggestive of the new sound he was looking for. Dylan himself described it as a "thin, wild, mercury sound". But I think of it more as a country music station playing soft.

Having had a go at recording some songs in New York with his by now usual cast of musicians, Dylan decided it was not working and on the recommendation of his new producer, Bob Johnston, decided to try recording in Nashville with session musicians who played on the prevalent country hits. This must have seemed quite a move. The foremost avant-garde pop artist of the day wanting to record with the most conservative, paid by the note, you hum it we'll play it recidivists. But Dylan could hear precision in their playing and a willingness to create instant arrangements as well as a sensitivity to the demands of the song. On the finished album, the musicians play with sympathy, they are used to accompanying singers and accentuating the vocals. They emphasise and reflect the rhythmic flow of Dylan's lyrics and underscore how heavily Dylan relies on rhythm in constructing his lyrics, the beat and flow of a line means more to him than the actual meaning of the words or images that are conjured. These might or might not mean something under later analysis but this does not interest Dylan. I think that this is something that literary analysis of Dylan's lyrics miss. The first purpose and meaning of the lyrics for Dylan is their rhythm, all else is secondary if it even registers at all. If meaning was everything then Dylan would take care to preserve the meaning of the lyrics in his live performance. Instead, he experiments and varies both the rhythm and the melody in his performances, searching for a new meaning, a new truth. Their meaning is not fixed therefore but can only be determined through performance.  

And yet the songs seem rooted in meaning. The titles remain elliptical such as "Temporarily like Achilles" or "Obviously Five Believers" but the emotions they convey and the situations portrayed are real enough. The melodies are enticing and this may be Dylan's prettiest recorded work. Occasionally, the playing is transcendent such as Paul Griffin's piano work on "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" or the precise guitar work on "Fourth Time Around". If I have one complaint (actually, I have two but we will come to "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" in a minute) it is that the bass parts are sluggish and lack variance. "Visions of Johanna" suffers particularly from this.

"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" is the one song that sticks out from the others on the record which is why it comes first, so as not to disturb the flow. This and the final song are probably the two I could live without. The final song is "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" and this stretches out for some 12 minutes which in truth it does not merit. Melodically simple, it acquires some limited power through repetition but the tap tap tapping of the high-hat becomes wearisome quickly. There are no dynamics to the song. Once you hear the story of how the musicians thought the song was going to end before Dylan started on yet another verse it becomes impossible to listen to without picturing said musicians grimacing to themselves and wondering how much more there was to say. The song has no lyrical development either, being a list of things that Dylan's lover has ("With your mercury mouth in the missionary times, and your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes" etc). The chorus is particularly bad. "The sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes" is inelegant to the point of losing meaning and "my warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums" has no meaning to begin with. In the song "Sara" on his "Desire" album, Dylan describes how he stayed up for days in the Chelsea Hotel writing "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" for his then lover. It is undoubtedly sincere and heartfelt but demonstrates how love can let you get carried away as Dylan loses his internal editor in his willingness to outpour. How ironic that the song that celebrates formative love is such a weak effort while the song that marks the end of the relationship ("Sara") is so utterly heartbreaking.

DOUBLE ALBUMS

Introduction

I want to consider double albums, by which I mean four sides of vinyl presented as a single collection. I want to focus on studio recordings and not live albums, as I consider these to be less interesting. Some doubles, such as Cream's "Wheels of Fire" or Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma" comprise one live album and one studio. I will cover these as they represent an artist seeking to reflect both the live and studio side of their art. I will not cover double album compilations or greatest hits style packages as these reflect the whole of an artist's oeuvre. I will discuss the albums by year of release and as near chronologically as possible. I am only going to discuss those albums that I have a copy of.

Double albums or two disc sets represent the ambition of an artist or artists. An artist or group stretching their material out to fill four sides of vinyl. Space to breathe and experiment. Following the lead of the likes of Bob Dylan and The Beatles, musicians began to see themselves as artists capable of creating works of greater substance than a quick 45. Double albums could tell an extended story or featuring single tracks of up to 20 minutes in length or collect everything recorded in a single session or in a short run of sessions, or compile live and studio recordings to present a multi-faceted picture of the artistes. There is a case for claiming that the arrival of double albums spelt the end of pop music as light and fun and turned former pop musicians into aspiring jazzers, full of expression and ambition not always within their means.

 

 

Not all artists felt they had a double album in them. Some expected perpetrators who never actually released contemporaneous (as opposed to posthumous) studio double albums include King Crimson (1969 - 1974 edition), Jethro Tull ("Living in the Past" although a double is a compilation). Van Der Graaf Generator (1969 - 1972 and 1975 - 1978 editions), Gong, Henry Cow, Camel, Gentle Giant, Roy Harper, The Beach Boys, Roxy Music, the Velvet Underground, Bob Marley. And plenty felt they had sufficient material to merit a double, not always realistically as we shall see.

I have always liked double albums ever since I held a copy of The Who's "Tommy" in my hands, savouring the weight, the heft, carrying the band's full expression across four sides. I like the size and scale of them. If you like an artist then what can be better than two sides of vinyl? Why, four sides, of course.

Some lps last as little as 12 minutes a side. Short, sharp songs, verses and chorus and an instrumental break. Maybe a middle eight for the more musically accomplished. Double albums could last up to 70 minutes and beyond. Plenty of air to fill with sound and ambition. Hard to imagine Jerry Lee Lewis saying in 1960 that he wants his new lp to be a double even if he had enough material to fill one (he did).

The economics of the recording industry probably dictated as much. Recording time costs money. Time spent in the studio reduced the amount of time that could be spent playing live and earning hard cash. Record companies chasing after teenagers' pocket money saw singles as the money spinner. Albums were for old folks. Inevitably it took Bob Dylan to change that view.

Number 9
14 January 1978
The Sex Pistols reflect on the human race

Pop music and the Holocaust

At the end of the day, you have to admit that the ability of pop music to address the enormity and singularity of the Holocaust is somewhat limited. Thankfully, very few pop musicians have felt the need to address the Holocaust in song. Dylan's "With God on our Side" references the Germans murdering six million "in the ovens they fried". This is an unusually direct image for Dylan, is historically inaccurate in that not all the victims were cremated and is only there to provide a rhyme for "side". A weak verse in a weak song. Captain Beefheart's "Dachau Blues" is a slightly better reflection on the seismic event; "those poor jews...one mad man six million lose". "Zyklon B Zombie" by Throbbing Gristle is suitably grisly. There are few others worthy of note. The Sex Pistols' contribution is called "Belsen Was a Gas".

It may perhaps be expected that Sid Vicious would not produce a sensitive reflection on this terrible event. And he doesn't. Vicious wrote the music and probably the title for The Sex Pistols song "Belsen Was a Gas" while Johnny Rotten probably contributed the lyrics. The song most likely started as a joke, being a piss poor pun on the German's method of execution combined with the hippy expression for things being really great. See, for instance, Marc Bolan's song "Life's a Gas" from 1971 which may have provided the direct inspiration for Vicious' "joke".

One of the main aims of the original punks was to epater les hippies. The punks were angry that the hippy dream of the sixties had failed to deliver a world of bohemian excitement, adventure and venues that stayed open after 10.30. Throwing nihilism and negativity in the face of peace and love, the more spiteful and childish the punks could be, the better they liked it. Celebrating the nazis was as spiteful and childish as it could get. So, Siouxsie and the Banshees wore swastika armbands and sang "too many jews for my liking". Adam and the Ants sang about "Deutscher Girls". "Nazi Baby" sang The Vibrators. The Damned took their name from Visconti's film about the nazis. Warsaw (later Joy Division and then New Order, both nazi inspired names) said "you all forgot Rudolf Hess" and used nazi iconography on their first record. The Ramones in "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World" declared they were a nazi schatze (sweetheart). Admittedly some of this was satirical in intent but it is also the case that many punk groups chose not to go down this route of cheap shock tactics.

Rotten lyrics

By 1978, most, if not all, of the punk groups had abandoned nazi references. The Sex Pistols appear to have introduced "Belsen Was a Gas" into their set list for their December 1977 British tour and retained it for their January 1978 US tour after other punks had abandoned such outrage. By this time, the Pistols' notoriety was established but perhaps they felt under pressure to continue being outrageous. Or perhaps Rotten was looking for a deeper meaning than mere outrage prompted by the lyrics.

After a simplistic expression of some elements of nazi offences ("in the open graves where the jews all lay") combined with an attempt to convey holiday camp style references ("wrote their postcards to those held dear"), it is the repeated refrain of "be a man, kill someone, be a man, kill yourself" that I think provides the song's ultimate meaning for Rotten and the justification for continuing to listen to otherwise puerile offence.

Winterland

 

The best performed and best recorded version of "Belsen Was a Gas" is that from the Winterland Ballroom on 14 January 1978. This was the final concert of The Sex Pistols 1978 US tour and their last concert as a group until 1996. It seems likely that Rotten knew he would be leaving the group and his performance during the concert seems to indicate as much. Perhaps this knowledge fired up his performance, seeking to emulate the last stand of Iggy and the Stooges as captured on the "Metallic KO" audio verite. Or perhaps he was inspired by playing at the Winterland Ballroom.

Winterland, yesterday

The Winterland Ballroom was a large venue in San Francisco famous for hosting concerts by almost all leading rock groups of the 1970s and particularly associated with American hippy groups coming out of the 1960s such as Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead. With their shows of excessive length incorporating drawn-out instrumental noodling, these sort of groups were most hated by the punks.

 

The Pistols US tour was directly targeted at the cities, venues and audiences most likely to be made up of fans of US 1970s rock in an act of deliberate provocation. Rather than play in the supposedly more cosmopolitan northern cities such as New York and Detroit (the very cities whose music had been so inspirational to the punks), the Pistols played in places like Baton Rouge, Dallas, Memphis and San Francisco (ironically mirroring their UK concerts where they often played in places like Cromer and Penzance rather than many big cities). 

Example of Pistols' US tour incongruity

As the tour progressed, the Pistols' "interaction" with their audience became steadily more antagonistic, as captured in Lech Kowalski's film "D.O.A.". At some venues, the group were almost face to face with the crowd resulting in physical assaults by the audience on the group and vice versa. At the larger Winterland venue, the band were relatively safe from punches, although plenty of objects were thrown at them. As a consequence, on a purely musical level, they were able to give their best performance of the tour.

The music

"Belsen Was a Gas" is a simple song with a three chord verse creating tension by starting with a perfect fifth (B) followed by a perfect fourth (A) then a minor sixth (C) before resolving into the root chord (E assuming one is playing it in E) and alternating with the fourth (A). This alternation will form the chorus and the chorus doubles as a repeated refrain to bring the song to a close. It is also what provides spring to the song.

The song begins with a squeal of feedback as Steve Jones turns his guitar up and a crack on the snare drum before the whole group crash into the music. Vicious' bass playing is both present and relatively in tune and in time (a rarity) and there is a disciplined intensity to the playing ("disciplined intensity" might be a good descriptor for Steve Jones and Paul Cook's playing throughout The Sex Pistols' live career). Jones does stray from the correct chords quite often but the dissonance this creates actually adds to the tension and the violence of the performance. One of the verses is played muted allowing the focus to be on Rotten venting his spleen. Jones allows himself occasional flourishes early on but as the song races to its conclusion he concentrates on his chord work. Because of Vicious' unpredictable bass playing, it is Paul Cook's job to keep the band in time, something he excels at, steering the group to a sudden finish.

The recording

The recording from Winterland crackles with electricity. The notes ring out and the space is filled with sound. It is a two minute assault with silence at the beginning and end. The crowd noise that follows is there to prove that this actually happened, in front of an audience. It is crucial to the recording as otherwise the band are just attacking a mirror or an empty room. This assault has a target and the target is the audience.

 

Johnny Rotten vs the human race

There are three verses (actually only two sets of lyrics as Rotten repeats the first verse as the third). Rotten mangles the lyrics which begin to make no sense. Following the first "be a man" lyric, he resorts to a demented laugh which he pursues throughout the verse becoming more deranged as it goes on before repeating "be a man". His tone of delivery is mocking and sarcastic. He sings the title of the song before casting his eyes out over the audience, steadying himself, and then delivers the coup de grace.

Here in the belly of the beast, the origin and HQ of the despised hippies, those sixties idealists who failed to deliver on any of their promises, this is Rotten's chance to give the metaphorical V-sign. In the home of peace and love, singing his silly song about the nazis and the jews, offending refined sensibilities and taste, mocking the sorts of laidback dudes that listened to The Band and The Eagles, letting off a stink bomb in class, the Greatest Living Englishman raises his game and elects to go after a bigger and broader target. Culturally and historically aware, Rotten understands that the crimes of the nazis, while specific to them, are also resonant of humanity's wider inhumanity. The Catholic within him looks at failed promises, disappointed hope, cruelty, lack of empathy, neglect, opposition, contempt, fear, hatred, dehumanisation and ultimately genocide and concludes that the judgment is death, and self-annihilation the solution. The generations that failed him at school, that delivered a lack of opportunities and hope, the hippies that did not deliver a better world, the monsters that seek to exterminate an entire race. Into the dustbin of history with them.

This scared and confused young boy articulates his frustration in a refrain of beautiful, improvised economy and directness. Other recordings show Rotten varying the order in which his commands are given, and diverting into asides such as "join our army" and "a real man", suggesting that this is not a strict written order but a variety of things he shouts depending on each performance. At Winterland, as his group is coming to an end and while thousands are listening, Rotten nails it perfectly and succinctly.

What response is appropriate in the face of the Holocaust? None? Any? Who knows. Certainly we are each accountable for our own reaction to this watershed event. For his part, Rotten demands the apocalypse, delivering nothing less than the end of the self.

                        "Be a man

                        Kill someone
                        Kill yourself
                        Be a man
                        Be someone
                        Kill someone
                        Be a man                  
                        Kill yourself"

The arrogance of the 70s Me Generation, the assertion that I exist, pay attention to me. The self-actualisation inherent in doing your own thing. Masculine vanity exhibiting itself in violence. Do you think you are a real man? Check out those nazis. They knew how to get things done. Think you are a real man? Prove it by the ultimate act. Kill someone. Want to go one better than that? Be a man, kill yourself.

The End

So extreme, so final is this song and performance that recorded music should have ended here. In fact, even the Pistols concert did not end at this point, continuing for another 8 songs. One wonders how they felt they had to keep going after they achieved perfection. But of course, they did not have the opportunity to listen back to the recording. Because what recordings, and great recordings in particular, give us is that capturing of a moment that can be relived and repeated and the emotions experienced anew again (if you can repeat a new experience). Whether it happened in an upstairs room in 1927 or in front of thousands in 1978, the recordings preserve the spirit, the atmosphere, the intent and the skill of the participants.

I have written about 9 recordings in this sequence. There is space for a tenth. What would you put there?

Hear Rotten vs the World here