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hmmm - Beatles and synths


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George bought a synth, they used it on Abbey Road.

 

His first solo album - Wonderwall Music, was released in 1968 when he was still a Beatle. It was the first solo album released by any of the Beatles.

 

I remember hearing it a long time ago. I didn't care for it then but could not tell you why now.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Wonderwall was uneven. There's some nice stuff on it, but you kind of have to get the full version and there's a lot of filler. It is stylistically inconsistent, and to my ears in a not-pleasant way. But Electronic Music was the synth album and I didn't care for it at all. It just seemed like a lot of blips and bleeps. George came from an electronics background, so it's not a surprise he was the first to experiment with synths.

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Yeah the songs they used it on were

Because (synth leads)

Maxwell"s Silver Hammer (solo near end)

She"s So Heavy (noise)

Here Comes The Sun (lead synth)

And The Monkees, The Byrd"s, Simon & Garfunkel, and many others experimented with the Moog including the Temptations and other Motown groups (the Motown studios were among the first Moog Modular owners).

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John Lennon attended a party at Micky Dolenz' house and spent hours playing with his Moog Modular. Dolenz later sold it to Bobby Sherman.
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But Electronic Music was the synth album and I didn't care for it at all. It just seemed like a lot of blips and bleeps. George came from an electronics background, so it's not a surprise he was the first to experiment with synths.

 

George didn't know his way around the Moog. It was programmed by Bernie Krause. Bernie was asked to demonstrate some sounds, and George had quietly instructed the studio engineer to record Bernie's work - without Bernie's consent or knowledge. Shortly before Electronic Music was released, George played a preview for Bernie and that's when Bernie recognized his work being passed off as George's. Bernie was less than pleased. "Assisted by Bernie Krause" was printed on the cover under George's name but covered with silver paint when released, and Bernie never received any compensation for his work. You can read about it here

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That makes it all the sadder that Bernie lost most of his stuff in the fires in Napa and Sonoma the past few years.

 

Having said that, something didn't ring true the whole way through it, and all of my misgivings were expertly addressed by a reader comment from late 2018.

 

The bottom line is that the album was cheap (on purpose), flopped, and lost a lot of money. But there's more to it than that; see the rebuttal to the article.

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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Having said that, something didn't ring true the whole way through it, and all of my misgivings were expertly addressed by a reader comment from late 2018.

 

No kidding. When you read the whole thing, wow does he have a lot of axes to grind - throwing knives at a former wife and his family as well as George Harrison - all in the same story. It kind of puts his objectivity into question.

 

I'd never heard of an album by George Harrison called Electronic Sound before, so I listened to as much of it as I could stomach on Youtube before turning it off in shock. Horrible... when you combine that with the Monkee's example above, it's amazing that popular music survived the late 1960s at all. Major artists putting out junk like that...

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...Horrible... when you combine that with the Monkee's example above, it's amazing that popular music survived the late 1960s at all. Major artists putting out junk like that...

And it was still better than about half the musical guests who perform on SNL these days.

I would like to apologize to anyone I have not yet offended. Please be patient and I will get to you shortly.
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...Horrible... when you combine that with the Monkee's example above, it's amazing that popular music survived the late 1960s at all. Major artists putting out junk like that...
Sure, but experimenting with out-there stuff is how you wound up with things like Tomorrow Never Knows and all of Electric Ladyland. Whether or not they should have been releasing their more experimental works is a matter of opinion and taste (Macca was reportedly pissed when John got Revolution 9 on the White Album after Paul had deliberately left the tape experiments he'd been doing since the mid-60s unreleased), but creating some music that just doesn't work is part of the trade-off for not having to operate within the tight constraints that all artists on major labels (I guess there was no such thing as being an "independent" artist in the 60s) had to when the Beatles started. Art isn't just a product, it's a process, and anything that gives us insight into that process is valuable (even if it's not enjoyable).

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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