Across the alternative universe...

Yesterday evening I wandered into a pretty strange part of town. In this pretty strange part of town was a pretty strange street containing a pretty strange shop. Inside the pretty strange shop sat a pretty strange man with a pretty strange beard, wearing a pretty strange hat.

None of this seemed all that strange to me though, so I gave the man a cursory nod and began to browse through his dusty old records. Now, for a pretty strange shop he had a pretty good filing system, all alphabetised and sorted by genre: rock, pop, soul, northern soul, hip-hop, trip-hop, punk, indie, alternative...

That last one always confuses me: alternative. Alternative to what exactly?

“Alternative to everything,” said the strange man through his strange mouth. “That section contains all the music that might have been, had things been different.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what he meant. “What do you mean?” I asked him.

He just smiled a strange sort of smile and beckoned me forwards with a strange curly finger. “Check this out,” he said, unlocking a big steel trunk and producing a tatty piece of old vinyl.

“What in the name of Christ is that?” I asked.

“This record comes from a universe in which John Lennon wasn’t shot and The Beatles reformed in 1987 to make one truly awful comeback album.”

“Shit off!”

“They held out longer than their peers, but in the end the lure of the money was too great.”

The strange man refused point blank to play me the album, as he had sworn to the God of the Space Time Continuum that he would never let any other mortal from our universe hear it, lest The Beatles legend be diluted and all civilisation destroyed.

“If people lose faith in The Beatles, they lose faith in humanity itself,” he said. “But I will let you read this track-by-track review from Rolling Stone magazine if you like.”

Soundwaves
The Beatles

1. Art Beat (McCartney)
The most eagerly awaited album in rock history kicks off with this catchy but totally pointless pop throwaway about the ‘power’ of music. McCartney’s futuristic production (synths, drum machines and vocoder all feature prominently) seems an over-eager attempt to prove that The Beatles, though all firmly into their forties, are by no means old hat. Unfortunately, this approach has produced a record that sounds instantly dated and a little cheap. The repeated refrain - ‘music is art with a beat, paintings never make you tap your feet. Poems and plays are an occasional treat, but rhythm and blues is the language of the street’ - is McCartney at his most cringeworthy; desperately trying to sound cool and relevant in a world that has discarded all but the most dangerous of its rock dinosaurs. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the ill-advised four minute sax solo which was omitted from the single version at the behest of George Martin is included here in its awful entirety as McCartney repeatedly skats the words “art” and ‘beat” behind it.

2. Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher (Lennon)
Next comes the first of two savage attacks on the current Conservative government of Great Britain from John. Throughout the 80s, John has been most vocal in his criticism of the “Tories”, describing them as both “fascist” and “a big bunch of kid-strangling, money-grabbing cunts.” Perhaps it is no surprise that two of his three contributions to the first Beatles record in 17 years are little more than campaign messages to support his burgeoning political career. (John has set up his own party, The Pig Fuckers, and has already declared his ambitions to become prime minister before the decade is out.) This is basically a spoken-word number in which John reels off a vitriolic list of things that Maggie’s government has cut, or “snatched” as he puts it, from the budget. After four and a half minutes of this, he brings the song to a welcome conclusion with the line, ‘Sorry Bob, we’re all working on Maggie’s Farm now.’
It’s not an easy listen by any means but one gets the impression that this “wake up call to the establishment”, as John describes it, was never intended to be easy listening. It’s supposed to be powerful. And it would have been were it not for the ridiculously chirpy, lightweight instrumental arrangement from McCartney (featuring marimbas, sleigh bells, xylophones and a whole children’s choir) that jars horribly with the dark lyrics. Rumour has it that McCartney, ever fearful of any sort of political rhetoric in The Beatles’ music that might divide their audience, was not too comfortable with this song’s inclusion on the album. As he puts it: “you can’t have universal appeal if you keep saying things.”

3. Pic-A-Nic Basket (McCartney)
The third and (we can but hope) final part in the series that began with ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ on the White Album and continued with ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ on Abbey Road, in which McCartney attempts to write the most irritating song ever written. This sickening tale of a trip to the beach with his wife Linda is so twee and saccharine that it makes you want to stick pins in your eyes. Indeed, you can almost hear George’s disdain for the song in the delivery of his backing vocals in which he is forced to repeat the lyric: ‘strawberry jam, bread, cheese and ham,’ ad infinitum. Though the song is technically short at 2:12, by the time it finally fades away into blissful silence you feel as though it has been going on for weeks, perhaps even years.
Note: According to George, this song took over 4000 agonising takes to perfect, with McCartney constantly complaining that it wasn’t “bouncing” enough.

4. Zen Barlow (Harrison)

Apparently, some time during the magical summer of 1986, George Harrison’s never-ending quest for spiritual fulfillment took him to L.A. There, he met famous jazz musician, Herbie Hancock, and the two, united by their mutual fondness of Buddhism, struck up a strong friendship and began to jam together in a series of secret but electrifying gigs around the city. It was during one of these gigs that Hancock introduced George to a strange new instrument he’d discovered and began tinkering with the year before: the keytar. George was said to be immediately blown away, not just by the look of the thing, but by the incredible, mind-bending sounds it could produce and immediately decided that his guitars, sitars and pianos were yesterday’s news. The next day he bought a keytar and, according to McCartney, he hasn’t put it down since. This unlistenable instrumental (the title is a nod to George’s other great love, Coronation Street [a British soap opera], and the man he describes as “his guru”, Ken Barlow) is basically just keytar and nothing else.


John: “We wanted to play on it but he insisted that the keytar could do everything. Apparently it’s got a drum machine built in or something.”
George: “I just really wanted to showcase the power of this incredible thing. I wanted to be able to say to people: you know all those crazy, far out sounds on Zen Barlow? Well, that’s just me and my keytar.”

When asked about this song in a recent interview for Butter My Arse magazine, Ringo quipped that George's trusty old Gibson guitar spent the whole session “gently weeping” in the corner.

5. Together, Forever (McCartney)

After the ponderous ‘Art Beat’ and the hateful ‘Pic-A-Nic Basket’, finally a bit of the old McCartney magic. Ok, so the lyrics are a bit cheesy, the strings tickle the puke reflex a little and there’s enough reverb on the vocal to make it sound as though it’s being sung in the Grand Canyon, but all in all ‘Together, Forever’ is magnificent. Pitched somewhere in between ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ and ‘The Long and Winding Road’, this is the kind of melody that only McCartney can write. His heartfelt promise to his wife Linda that they will be ‘together, forever’ sounds genuinely sincere and the emotion with which he delivers the final lines: ‘if death should ever take you, I’ll take my life. Never could go on with another wife,’ leaves the listener in no doubt that he really means it.

6. Pattie Got The Clap (Harrison)

No prizes for guessing what this one’s about, ay? It seems that even though it happened well over ten years ago, George still maintains a healthy amount of bitterness about his wife Pattie leaving him and shacking up with his old mate Eric Clapton. Though the contrast with McCartney’s previous song about his wife could scarcely be greater, this mid-tempo, Pogues-like rocker also makes for a very good listen with George’s chirpy, pub singalong vocal delivery assuring the listener that the lyric is more humorous than nasty:

“Georgie fell head first into her trap, Eric slipped in like a cat through a flap.
He lost that grin when I gave him a slap, and Pattie? Pattie got the Clap.”

It should also be pointed out that this is the first time we hear Ringo on the whole album. “It’s not the first time George Martin’s replaced me with a drum machine,” he laughed (this being a sly reference to the time he was replaced by Andy White on their first record ‘Love Me Do’). Happily, he, like the rest of the group, is on fine form here. It just goes to show that for all the sophisticated production techniques and studio trickery, The Beatles are still at their best when they’re playing live (though the keytar solo in the middle is just plain weird).

7. Beautiful Boys (Lennon)

With the album suddenly hitting its stride, John too steps up his game with this delightful ballad. As the title suggests, it’s more or less a sequel to the original ‘Beautiful Boy’ written by John to “set the record straight” after Cynthia had told him how upset Julian was when John sang: ‘beautiful, beautiful, beautiful darling Sean’ at the end of ‘Beautiful Boy’.
“Up until then he’d thought the song was about him,” she said. “I remember he cried for weeks and eventually asked me: aren’t I beautiful, Mum?”
So John finally acknowledges his firstborn’s existence in song with this heartfelt little ditty in which he reminds both of his “beautiful boys” how much he loves them. Nice.

8. Persephone (Harrison)

Another keytar-driven rocker from George about a mysterious ‘devil woman, Queen of the underworld,’ who ‘tore out his heart and ripped it apart’ and left him for an equally mysterious ‘man with slow hands.’

9. Back Where We Once Belonged (McCartney)

This is obviously a not-so-subtle callback to the line ‘get back to where you once belonged’ on ‘Get Back’ and once again illustrates just how much McCartney is in love with his own myth. According to many reports, the shadow of Let It Be hung over the recording of this track with John repeatedly bickering with Linda McCartney - who just sat in the corner staring at him for the whole session - and calling her “the new Yoko” and George storming out after McCartney refused to allow him to play keytar on the track, insisting that it was to be honest rock & roll or nothing. George said, “I’ll take the nothing option then,” and wasn’t seen again for two days. Eventually though, the song did get finished, and it’s not a bad number all in all, even if it does feel a tad contrived. (George Martin himself described it as ‘Beatles by numbers’.)

“I don’t like going backwards,” said John, talking of the lyric. “The problem is he always wants to get back and I always want to go forward. Maybe one day we’ll meet in the middle.”

10. The Wheels On The Bus (trad. arr McCartney)

About three quarters of the way through listening to this record I was struck by a thought that ran all the way up and down my spine and chilled me to the bones: Ringo hasn't sung one yet.

Don't panic, I told myself. Maybe there won't be a Ringo number.

Don't be ridiculous, man! There's always a Ringo number. There always has been and there always will be. A Ringo number on a Beatles’ record is as certain as death and taxes.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy! No sooner had I conceived of it than it was happening... and it was even more awful than I could ever have imagined. Quite what malfunction occurred in McCartney’s brain to make him think the world was ready for a “disco-funk remix of ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ to get everyone dancing” (his words, not mine) is unknown, but that the others were unable (or unwilling) to talk him out of it says everything you need to know about their mindsets by this time.

“We just wanted it to be over,” said George, reflecting on the final few days of recording.

My sentiments exactly. This “epic” clocks in at a staggering 11 minutes and 26 seconds, the final 6 minutes of which are little more than a chaotic, anything-goes jam during which John shouts, among other things, ‘all you need is gloves!’ over and over again.

“That was great fun to record,” smiles Ringo. “The jam actually went on for over four hours but they decided to cut it down to 12 minutes for the album. It’s a shame because some of our best stuff got left on the cutting room floor. I was all in favour of putting the whole thing out as a historic four-disc single but it wasn’t to be.”

11. 1984 (Lennon)

Fortunately, the record doesn’t end with ‘The Wheels On The Bus’. Instead we get John’s third (and best) composition, ‘1984’. Now, if Soundwaves contains a masterpiece then this is surely it. Built around an eerie descending chord progression (think the verses of ‘Cry Baby Cry’ but somehow heavier and more oppressive), this paints equally as terrifying a picture of the future as the book that inspired it.

“I wanted to scare people,” said John. “I wanted to show them what could happen if we stopped paying attention.”

Once again, McCartney was said to be unhappy with the political message, preferring to end the album with his less controversial ‘Polka Dot Princess’ but John would not be denied.

McCartney: “I don’t like the idea of alienating the majority of the country; and whichever way you look at it the majority of the country voted for them.”

John’s riposte? “I couldn't think of any people I’d rather alienate.”

The funny thing is, if anything’s going to alienate the loyal Beatles’ fanbase it will be McCartney’s pandering, not John’s preaching.

VERDICT 2/5

I put down the review and looked at the strange old man, who was now occupying himself with a strange late sixties Buddy Holly album called Peggy Sue’s Psychedelic Boogaloo and an equally strange Velvet Underground album with an apple on the cover.

“None of that actually happened, did it?” I asked him.

“This isn’t about what is and what was,” he said, mysteriously. “But of what could have been.”