I must confess: I’ve never been to the States before. Therefore, the only facts I know about the Bay Area are probably overestimated by colourful films and pictures showing the Haight-Ashbury district during the Summer of Love, beautiful cable-cars heading the beach through steep streets filled with the children of the revolution – and a couple more that got lost in the way -, and astonishing Victorian houses that amazingly survived to the countless earthquakes. And Kerouac’s writing, explaining how you’d head West and one day you just couldn’t drive anymore because there was no more land, only the bluest of blues under the form of the Pacific Ocean.
But probably the main reason that got me thinking about a trip to San Francisco – no matter for how long the stay would be – were the songs. It seems like every single tune that talks about the city carries a little bit of the Bay’s own special magic – even if the musician has never been in San Francisco before! Singers allow the words to be sang both with their mouth, heart and soul, showing the eyes of someone who is homesick of something that he/she isn’t very sure of exactly what it is.
So it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon in THIS West Coast. Maybe it’s because the sun decided to show up, keeping our faith in Springtime. Or maybe it’s because I’m wearing a flower-patterned scarf around my head. But either way I’m pretty sure that somehow I left a tiny little bit of my heart in San Francisco. And I assure you that I’m going there to find it someday.
Scott McKenzie’s If You’re Going to San Francisco (live at Monterey Pop 1967, introduced by Mama Cass)
Otis Redding’s Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay (1968, posthumous release)
Well, maybe not that desperately after all, otherwise I’d already fallen for ultra-exclusive-import-editions with poor quality and damaged covers sold as if they had been property of The Beatles themselves. Ok, so I’m talking about 1967′s Sgt.Pepper’s album. Let me state that although it’s always been one of my favourites, it gained extra points for keeping me company – streaming on youtube – quite often while cooking or tiding up my apartment in Paris. And I re-discovered an old fascination for one of the XXth century masterpieces on how-to-do-experiment-rock-without-letting-people-know-we’re-doing-it. But allow me to explain.
It’s been a long long time since I found out that my favourite Beatles record was Revolver; I love it in every way, every single song, the line-up is perfect and the cover was designed by Klaus Voorman (who The Beatles’d met in their early years in Hamburg and would later play bass in Lennon’s album Imagine). As I have it on CD since the very beginning of my teenage years, it seemed to me that the logical thing to do before having it in vinyl was to get the other albuns first and leave Revolver in the bottom of my “to-buy” list. But everybody knows that quality Beatles vinyl albuns – the original ones – have become more and more expensive during the years, and although I intend to be very rich one day, the salary of a musician/writer/something doesn’t allow me too many extravagances. But the issue here is not how deep my wallet is, but why I want Sgt. Pepper’s so bad. First of all, I’ve always loved the cover; assemblage was always a great influence on my artistic work and I have a weekness for the “finding Wally” kind of thing. I must also add that, being Revolver my favourite album, I can see its shadow hiding behind certain parts of Sgt. Pepper’s – I like to think about it as if Revolver were the rough though solid sketches and Sgt. Pepper’s the full-coloured comic book (you know, the intelectual/popular duality of one specific philosophy). And then there are the cut-outs. Oh yeah, how I wish I’d catch one copy that still had the original poster that came with the album, the moustache, the picture card, the badges and stripes! Although The Beatles’ wish to create a concept album failed, it’s nice to see how much they wanted Sgt. Pepper’s to build a reality of its own in every person that bought it.
And the songs. As a big Lennon’s fan, I have to admit A Day in the Life and Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite have always been on my top favourites – but what truly amazed me these last re-listening period were McCartney’s tunes like Getting Better, Fixing A Hole or Lovely Rita (I don’t mention When I’m 64 for I’ve always considered it to be more a Yellow Submarine‘s type of song) for their ability to perpetuate themselves in time and suit what we now call “indie rock”, as well as Brit Pop (Getting Better‘s back vocals are outrageously Oasis).
A perfect album, one must say; we can even notice that it marked the end od Beatles’ live concerts, allowing them to have more freedom with the choice of instruments and special effects (they would NEVER have to do it in public, otherwise they would need a whole orchestra) and the beginning of an era when they started to look inside their own special musical needs – what was craving to be communicated and how, taking time, having fun, and starting 1967′s Summer of Love without noticing, for the release date was June the 1st and San Francisco was burning empathically with what the Fab Four were doing an ocean away, a cosmic wheel one would say. I’ll just suppose that, once again, The Beatles were ahead of their time.
And please, if you see the vinyl record on sale for a decent, fair price, let me know.
The Beatles’ A Day in the Life (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
