(Doctor, doctor) I’m in bed (Doctor, doctor) achin’ head (Doctor, doctor) gold is lead (Doctor, doctor) choke on bread (Doctor, doctor) underfed (Doctor, doctor) gold is lead (Doctor, doctor) Jesus bled (Doctor, doctor) pain is red (Doctor, doctor) dark doom Gruel ghoul, greasy spoon Used spool, June bloom Music seems to help the pain Seems to motivate the brain Doctor, kindly tell your wife that I’m alive Flowers thrive, realize Realize, realize
Doesn’t gold is lead, sound a lot like God is Dead? I mean, Pink Floyd was there with the Beatles in ’67 in the studio, this is the one song on Piper not written by Syd Barrett, Roger Waters wrote this.
…Also high on that list would be Roger Waters. What do you suppose it means that 5:01AM The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking contains a verse dedicated to Yoko Ono, and not in a very flattering manner?
An angel on a Harley
Pulls across to greet a fellow rolling stone
Puts his bike up on it’s stand
Leans back and then extends
A scarred and greasy hand…he said
How ya doin bro?…where ya been?…where ya goin’?
Then he takes your hand
In some strange Californian handshake
And breaks the bone
Have a nice day
A housewife from Encino
Whose husband’s on the golf course
With his book of rules
Breaks and makes a ‘U’ and idles back
To take a second look at you
You flex your rod
Fish takes the hook
Sweet vodka and tobacco in her breath
Another number in your little black book
These are the pros and cons of hitchhiking
These are the pros and cons of hitchhiking Oh babe, I must be dreaming
I’m standing on the leading edge
The Eastern seaboard spread before my eyes
“Jump” says Yoko Ono
“I’m too scared and too good looking” I cried
“Go on”, she says
“Why don’t you give it a try?
Why prolong the agony all men must die”
Do you remember Dick Tracy?
Do you remember Shane?
And mother wants you
Could you see him selling tickets
Where the buzzard circles over
Shane
The body on the plain
Did you understand the music Yoko
Or was it all in vain?
Shane
The bitch said something mystical “Herro”
So I stepped back on the kerb again
These are the pros and cons of hitchhiking
These are the pros and cons of hitchhiking
Oh babe, I must be dreaming again
These are the pros and cons of hitchhiking
There aren’t really very elaborate theories on the overall narrative of Pros and Cons, other than a dream about infidelity. Doesn’t it seem that Yoko here is tempting someone toward infidelity? Which of course, actually took place with John. Then, after referencing Shane (and mother wants you, referencing temptation towards infidelity again) Roger Waters makes an extremely compelling allusion.
Could you see him selling tickets
Where the buzzard circles over
Hmmm…sort of like this?
Seems like he’s sort of implying a punishment for infidelity, which maybe someone understood upfront and his new partner said go ahead (all men must die). In the song, the bitch said something mystical (a japanese hello) and so the character changes his mind about hitchhiking, meaning infidelity. Just riffing here…
Then he asks Yoko if she understood the music, possibly alluding to a message in John’s songs that she may or may not have understood.
There actually is one concrete instance of this exact scenario in a Beatles song; a Beatles video actually.
In the Blue Jay Way segment of Magical Mystery Tour, John sits in a black car (brunette) with a white (blonde) car opposite. On the blonde side (his first wife Cynthia) is a message stating Thank You Very, with a cup. I always saw this in the biblical sense of if this is my cup I’ll learn to drink it. Which kind of fits with doing the right thing after knocking up your girlfriend.
The dark (Yoko) side which is the car John is sitting in, has a message saying 2 wives and kid to support, which is what eventually took place. Interestingly, this visual came quite a few months before John actually took up with Yoko, as far as anyone is aware (but a year after they first met).
It seems as if Roger Waters is saying more than what he’s ever come out and said in this song (and yes I know about the drummer/dream explanation, but there’s probably a good reason he thought that dream would fit in the album.)
By the way, Waters’ band during the recording of Pros and Cons and the subsequent tour, was called the Bleeding Hearts Band.
Roger Waters asks Yoko Ono in no uncertain terms why she let her husband get killed in Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, released on Walpurgis (April 30th)
Then on December 8th, 4 years to the day after John Lennon was killed, Vince Neil crashes his Pantera and kills 24 year old Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley.
Now we’re in 1966. Anton LaVey starts the Church of Satan in 1966 and declares this year “Year One”. June 1st after all is in fact 6/66 and quite eerily is exactly 922 days after the assassination of JFK.
Dylan probably christened the era, but 1966 would probably be considered Year One of the sixties also; components of it had been building for quite awhile but this was the year that those ideals started to reach mainstream America.
For some reason, 1966 always comes across to me as sort of the equivalent of the discussion God and Satan had about Job in the Bible, you almost get the feeling that Lennon’s Beatles vs. Jesus comments sort of foreshadow this entire era.
On July 29th, Bob Dylan has his motorcycle accident at Woodstock NY and decides to take the rest of the sixties off, at least from touring; he focuses on his basement tapes and studio work instead.
3 days later, Datebook publishes the John Lennon interview in which he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
I don’t think that Lennon is much more than a pawn because of it, he certainly meant it to be more of an indictment on people’s relative values at the time rather than his own; but he certainly brought the subject to a head very quickly and this is also when the “mysteries” in the Beatles music really started, mainly through John.
In the last post, I debated whether “Paul” could have represented something other than McCartney.
However there’s another possibility. Wouldn’t “Paul is dead” be the ultimate false flag, if there were certain messages really intended to be about John?
I don’t mean a false flag intended by the Beatles; I’m referring more to the possibility that they meant to do one thing by planting “Paul” clues in their songs and Satan intended something different; to hide the fact that there were also other clues that he had “tempted” the Beatles to write that really referred to the fate of John, not Paul.
It would keep everyone occupied on the clues, but trying to apply all of the Faces in Toast to the wrong person. It’s the sort of misdirection that has people believe that Paul died on 11/9/66 when in actuality it is the date that John met Yoko, to show one example. (Although if McCartney really had died, he would have been 24 at the time).
The Walrus was John; the Walrus was Paul; the Walrus was John, to show another.
So, regardless we have a genius who was certainly “built” through childhood hurt that loves to put mystery into everything the Beatles do, starting mainly from 1966 forward.
Me, as well as thousands of others, pour through everything the Beatles did looking for hidden meanings in everything. What do we hope to find? Well I defined what I’m looking for, many looked for “Paul is Dead” clues and others just like the riddles in general.
And the ironic thing about it is, there is plenty there to suggest that something was really being planted, someone really wanted to communicate something to us; and yet I almost get the feeling that the search for Beatles riddles became its own vehicle to destruction.
And yet, it seems impossible to believe that the “psychosis” is just a series of coincidences. But in misinterpreting the meanings, the search for the riddles attached actually served to fuel evil itself.
Even after Lennon’s apology (you guys have taken this totally out of context and I’m sorry you did that, and also that I said what I said, allowing you to…), groups are still sponsoring rallies to burn Beatle records; radio station KLUE (yes, it actually reads clue) in Texas organizes one such burning on August 13th.
On August 14th, still in protest mode, their broadcast tower gets struck by lightning, putting the program director in the hospital and knocking the station off the air indefinitely.
No other clues are forthcoming as to just Whose bolt it was…
While Dylan and the Beatles still command most of the popular attention, a group of musicians that has been convening in the hills of Los Angeles is spearheading a movement in the United States against a Vietnam War that is now growing beyond anyone’s level of comfort.
While the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and the Mamas and the Papas have carved a well-deserved place for themselves early in the sixties movement, others such as Frank Zappa are just arriving in the global Pop Culture scene in 1966 although having already been very prominent in the Laurel Canyon scene prior to 1966.
Admiral George Morrison’s son Jim, with a birthday of December 8th, is part of that group; his band The Doors are the house band at a fledgling LA club called the Whisky-A-Go-Go when it opens in 1966 although Jim is initially very shy and stands mostly with his back to the crowd.
But after watching unrelated artist Van Morrison perform in June, Morrison undergoes a startling stage transformation over the course of the summer of ’66 and adopts what he later terms his Lizard King persona.
By August, Morrison and The Doors are signed to a recording contract when Morrison decides without anyone else’s knowledge to improvise an Oedipus section into a standing song of theirs called The End during a performance at the Whisky.
The resulting performance as portrayed here by Val Kilmer both got the Doors fired from the Whisky on the spot and was transferred to vinyl within a few days; the Doors went from an unpolished but very unique band to one of the sixties most haunting acts within the span of a couple of weeks.
Producer Paul Rothchild said this about the recording session of The End:
“The most awe-inspiring thing I have ever witnessed in a studio.” For the recording, the studio was completely darkened except for the lights on the recording console and a single candle burning next to Jim. “I was totally overwhelmed. Normally, the producer sits there just listening for all the things that are right and anything about to go wrong, but for this take I was completely sucked up into it, absolutely an audience.”
“We were about six minutes into it when I turned to Bruce and said ‘Do you understand what’s happening here? This is one of the most important moments in recorded rock ‘n’ roll.’ It was a magic moment. Jim was doing The End, doing it for all time, and I was pulled off, right on down his road. He said come with me and I did. And it was almost a shock when the song was over – it felt like, yes, it’s the end, that’s the end, that’s the statement, it cannot go any further. When they were done, I felt emotionally washed. I had goose bumps from head to foot. For one of the very first times in rock ‘n’ roll history, sheer drama had taken place on tape…Bruce was also completely sucked into it. His head was on the console, and he was just absolutely immersed in the take – he became part of the audience, too. So the muse did visit the studio that night, and all of us were audience. The machines knew what to do, I guess.
It was magic.”
“Magic” sounds rather cliche’ until you consider that the world went from Bobby Vinton and Blue Velvet to this, in 2 1/2 years. To be more precise, from the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan to the Doors signing with Elektra was again, 922 days.
The Wizard of Oz is released. The book contains 24 chapters and the final one closes with Dorothy returning home to tell her aunt about the wonderful land of Oz that she has just returned from.
Finnegans Wake is also released by James Joyce and foreshadows virtually everything, including properties of the Nuclear bomb which have yet to be invented. “John for a John, led it be” being the most prescient line.
Pearl Harbor. It’s interesting in the context of this topic that although we all know December 7th as the date of the Pearl Harbor bombing, the United States declared War on December 8th 1941.
December 8th will resurface a number of times in this article.
This may be the key to the entire experience, when you ask yourself the question as to why a supernatural conspiracy would be taking place through Politics and Rock and Roll?
The United States enters the War on Great Britain’s side and there is no real question that FDR’s “righteous might” applies to the allies in World War 2; the two countries are allied against pure evil, even as described by Nazi officers after the war.
However after the War is over, it is these same two countries that will be the subject of a stealth attack to blur the distinction between good and evil for future generations; aided by a Japanese artist and a lost young man traveling from Hawaii…
Thomas Mann writes Doctor Faustus and explores in detail the combination of mental illness, physical illness and a “Deal with the Devil” that has been made for a 24 year span with a demon to provide Composing Genius. After his 24 years are up, he is now physically and mentally ill and the final 10 years of his life becomes an allegory for Nazi Germany and the Third Reich.
Exactly 20 years after this manuscript is completed, The Beatles finish writing Sgt. Pepper and the song opens with a cryptic reference to Sgt. Pepper having “taught the band to play” exactly 20 years ago.
I think of 1965 as sort of the “bridge”, with innocence on one side and “the sixties” on the other.
On August 28th 1963, the march on Washington saw Martin Luther King give his I have a dream speech. On August 28th 1964, the Beatles met Bob Dylan and tried cannabis for the first time.
On August 28th 1965, 24 year old Bob Dylan plugged in his guitars at the Forest Hills Music Festival, after debuting his electric band a few weeks earlier at Newport.
On this night, he switched in the middle of his set, ironically enough. But just before going electric, he premiered the song Desolation Row.
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You belong to Me I Believe”
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Now Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get outa here if you don’t know”
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
They be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on ?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke ?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Dont send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
The Beatles then met Dylan in the middle by releasing Rubber Soul.
And in the background, a number of young musicians, who are mostly the children of military officers, oddly start gathering from all over the country in a community in Los Angeles named Laurel Canyon.
The “13” foreshadowing (one and one and one is three) in the Sgt. Pepper drum. Of course, most people believe it’s 11/9 and signifies Paul’s death. I happen to believe that interpretation to be a classic Paul false flag and the Come Together line signifies it’s real meaning.
For 3 years, a revolution has been building. 1966 saw people starting to believe that they actually could change the world.
And then right in the middle of it, first Bob Dylan went underground and then almost immediately afterwards, the Beatles did too.
From their last concert in August of ’66 they had more or less disappeared from the music scene. Everyone had Revolver to keep themselves occupied late in ’66 but it was becoming clear from the occasional Beatles sightings that Beatlemania was dead.
The mop-tops were gone, and mustaches were on each of them now. And no one really knew what their plans were, heading into 1967.
There was a movement threatening to explode in 1967; peace and love and protest were not just ideas blowing in the wind anymore, the youth of 1967 were serious about changing the world and maybe the Beatles would be left in the wake of the coming revolution.
But in February, they released a single and everyone stopped for 5 minutes to listen…and what they heard was-
Let me take you down, cuz I’m going to…
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys pulled off the road to listen; he knew before the song was finished that he could not match what he had just listened to. And in Pet Sounds, he had just finished what ranks today in Rolling Stone as the second greatest LP of all-time. (The entire top 5 come from the 1965 to 1967 era)
The song was almost sickening, like a trustworthy friend trying to talk you into something terrifying and exhilarating. Lennon was beckoning for you to go somewhere, but you weren’t sure exactly where that somewhere was.
The effect of Strawberry Fields Forever was that the Beatles were becoming something new and dangerous; it was no longer about the sixties leaving the Beatles in the dust as the precursor to the revolution; now the question had suddenly become where were the Beatles going to take everyone?
For all of the fanfare that accompanied Sgt. Pepper by the time it was released on June 1st, it was Strawberry Fields that most point to as the moment they knew they were part of something special; something the world had never seen.
The kids were going to take over.
That isn’t to say the Beatles were alone, but the band that could have been left behind was clearly now leading everyone else again.
And then came Sgt. Pepper.
June 1st, 1967 might be the apex of Pop Culture; to this day it is probably still the top of the mountain in musical history.
…and really, the album musically might be overrated.
But it’s importance can’t be overstated. Sgt. Pepper released and stunned everyone. The color, the printed lyrics, the artwork.
And the first “concept album” in history, at least the first one that everyone heard; all of the rules went out the window with Sgt. Pepper, a study in contrasts and mystery and mysticism and real life people with real life problems.
June 1st, 1967 was when the sixties became a revolution. The Beatles didn’t cause it with Sgt. Pepper, and in fact a year later John Lennon quite famously stayed on the fence with the Out/In lyrics of the song Revolution; but what they did was empower it, they both normalized the counter-culture and made it something special at the same time. The “kids” were still looking for something, and took Sgt. Pepper as their license.
The LP starts with the Beatles “death” and re-introduction as this new band, and closes with a reprise of the same song, a send off from the Sgt. Pepper band that has been with you for all of these years, although no one really quite understands just what that means.
But then afterward, as the applause for Sgt. Pepper on the record fades, there’s a final song; on the album but in some unexplained way outside of the Sgt. Pepper show which has just completed.
Song number 13.
A Day in the Life might be the greatest song in rock history in my mind, and there isn’t much question in many people’s minds that I’d love to turn you on is quite possibly the most stunning moment on a rock LP; given that the Beatles did just that to an entire generation from the moment it was first heard.
(What isn’t heard as often is the audible counting of bars from 1 to 24 immediately following as the crescendo starts to build, ending with the alarm clock before Paul’s verse starts)
…and this isn’t said to diminish a period that absolutely drips with mood and passion; but there is a clear agenda in Sgt. Pepper.
It’s agenda was the permission to be turned on that a generation wanted, that a good portion of the youth of America still needed to really break away, one they would obviously not get from the establishment.
In the case of the Beatles, they wanted to make an album that set them apart and helped change the landscape of pop culture and the entire sixties generation.
They succeeded magnificently. The summer of love started when Sgt. Pepper hit stores. Some of the greatest artists we’ve ever heard; Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Stones, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and on and on, all took their rightful place on the rock horizon over the summer of ’67 and yet all did so on a level somehow below the “magical” plateau that the Beatles had now achieved.
And although the Sgt. Pepper album as a whole was considered the experience, there was certainly plenty of room on the mountain for Monterey and the San Francisco scene to ignite; as well as other seminal classics such as Light My Fire to climb to the top of the charts and further help the mainstream become exposed to the counter-culture.
Jim Morrison “forgetting” to change the lyric get much higher to get much better as Ed Sullivan’s staff had instructed him, by the end of the song you can actually hear Sullivan screaming “stop” in the background.
When you look back at rock history, one would expect to see something of an evolution; a growing complexity in music through the years.
You wouldn’t expect that the most complex and electrifying music ever created came in 1967 and then was never equaled or possibly even rivaled in the 43 years since.
Really.
When you hear A Day in the Life, Light My Fire, White Rabbit, Eight Miles High or Nights in White Satin, you hear magic, for lack of a better word.
The production has improved since 1967, but did the music itself ever rise beyond this?
The open question was, just what had the Beatles turned everyone on to?
I’ve spent umpteen hours looking for what I believed to be a logical answer to “It was twenty years ago Today, that Sgt. Pepper taught the Band to play”. I found an answer in Doctor Faustus, a manuscript that did in fact coincide with the completion of the Sgt. Pepper song, that actually makes me think I could have gotten it right.
Did I? Well that’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?
Actually, the biggest problem isn’t in having a pastime that traces back through significant events, it’s in using the search to justify something that inherently doesn’t make any sense; or worse, to justify actions that are morally wrong.
So, this isn’t really about trying to lump any obscure connection into a basic premise; Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd are two mental illness casualties of the sixties that it might be unfair to put into the context of this article.
Barrett, who’s schizophrenia as well as his legendary drug usage is quite well documented, was a flame that burned out so quickly that it’s hard to view his sad story and apply it to this one.
However, he was the author of Pink Floyd’s initial LP, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (a story about Pan that fits this premise quite well in fact) and contained in the LP also is the song Chapter 24 with it’s haunting lyrics taken from the I Ching about a movement being accomplished in 6 stages and the 7th bringing return, being accomplished during the month of the winter solstice (December).
In addition to possibly foreshadowing the bigger picture, Barrett’s breakdown in 1967 culminated in David Gilmour being brought in to replace Barrett for live shows by December of ’67. (The most eerie and possibly telling story about Barrett also having more than just illness to contend with was when the band decided in 1975 to do a song about Barrett; Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and inexplicably Barrett, who no one in the band had seen in 7 years, happens to walk into the studio during the recording of the song, sit down and brush his teeth. They didn’t even recognize him for almost an hour… so yeah, maybe he actually is a part of this too.)
So, when we look at the weekend of December 8th, 1967; there obviously is something pretty remarkable about those couple of days. The Stones release the first outright Satanic themed album ever in Their Satanic Majesties Request on December 8th; the Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour on the same date, Jim Morrison has his 24th birthday as well as his New Haven arrest and 24 year old Sharon Tate appears in her greatest role in Eye of the Devil (also called 13) which opens in the US that weekend also. (Otis Redding also recorded “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” on the 8th and tragically died 2 days later, although again I have a tough time fitting that event into the context of this article.)
December 8th, 1967 is the start of our 13 year journey towards December 8th, 1980 when John Lennon is killed.
The “clues” aren’t quite as blatant at this point as we’d prefer for a demonic conspiracy; we’d rather see a 7 foot winged creature with glowing red eyes stalk a town beginning about when Paul supposedly died and ending exactly 13 months later in December of ’67 with a large bridge collapsing and dozens of people perishing; that is the sort of drama we require to see what we are dealing with.
Actually, that happened too, but we’ll come back to that…
Cool 