Cleveland
Museum of Art
January
5 & 6
Offering sophisticated analysis in an accessible format. |
Thirty-three
years after they broke up, the Beatles hold a place in popular
culture like no other band – rock, pop, classical, and everything
in between. Beyond the standards they added to the musical repertoire
and sales records that remain unbroken and enduring technical
innovations, the Beatles embody the spirit of the Sixties, an era
when old restrictions and boundaries were swept away in an
exhilarating wave of openness, experimentation and fresh ideas that
still resonate today.
What’s
been lost in the intervening years is the artifice behind the art;
that is, the breadth and depth of the Beatles’ oeuvre, the
influences that informed their music, the intelligence that shaped
it, and the enormous work that went into creating a seemingly
straightforward, three-and-a-half minute song. Which is where Scott
Freiman comes in.
A
soundtrack composer for film and television who also runs his own
recording studio, Freiman has developed a series of lectures called
“Deconstructing the Beatles” in which he takes a detailed look at
the group’s creative efforts. After talks on Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beatles (aka The White
Album) drew big crowds at the Cleveland Museum of Art last year,
Freiman was invited back for three presentations this past weekend
that focused on the band’s early years and the incredibly
productive period in 1966 and 1967 that produced Revolver and
seminal works like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “A Day in
the Life.”
For
aficionados, there is not much new in Freiman’s talks. Many books
have recounted the Beatles’ history, music and recording sessions.
What’s compelling about Freiman is the way he splices together
sound, visuals and a running patter of commentary and explanation
filtered through a geeky but accessible engineer’s sensibilities to
show how songs were created in the studio, often starting with a
simple demo. This is the best part of his presentations: rare demos
and early takes demonstrating how an idea that began with one or two
chords and a few rough lyrics on a home recorder could blossom into a
masterpiece like “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
Freiman
also does a great job of putting the music in context. He tosses off
endless references – some specific, like Bernard Herrmann’s
Psycho strings showing up in “Eleanor Rigby,” and some
speculative, like the television “Batman” theme possibly
inspiring some of the vocals in “Taxman.” He draws in many of the
Beatles’ contemporaries, like Brian Wilson, David Crosby and Mick
Jagger, and elucidates the influences of avant-garde composers like
John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi
Shankar. He sets the scene in swinging London and follows John Lennon
into the Indica bookstore, where Lennon discovers Timothy Leary’s
The Psychedelic Experience and the lines “Turn off your
mind, relax and float downstream...”
Not
surprisingly, the central figure in all this is George Martin, the
EMI producer who made many of the Beatles’ aural dreams come true.
With the help of engineer Geoff Emerick, Martin was willing to work
with the band at a time when no one else would accommodate their
demands for pushing boundaries. Slowing down or speeding up tracks,
adding tape loops, running drum or guitar solos backwards – none
of it was too weird for Martin. He could write a string octet
arrangement for “Eleanor Rigby” as skillfully as he could expand
four recording tracks to eight or even 12, or push Lennon’s voice
through a Leslie speaker to get a never-heard effect. Freiman also
did a great job recounting Martin’s use of a 40-piece classical
orchestra on “A Day in the Life,” which Martin multiplied by five
in the final mix to get that ominous, frenetic sound.
Freiman’s
attention to detail is such that even the warm-up music playing as
the crowd filters into the auditorium helps set the proper mood. For
Sunday’s “Trip Through Strawberry Fields,” the selections
included prime psychedelia like “Pictures of Matchstick Men,”
“Psychotic Reaction” and “2,000 Light Years From Home.”
Space
precludes more than this brief recap of a wealth of stories and
information – and the sheer joy of watching the promo videos for
“Strawberry Fields,” “Rain,” and other songs that changed the
course of pop music. Freiman did a brilliant job deconstructing
them. But as the capacity crowds at the museum again this year
demonstrated, their enduring appeal remains beyond mere words to
capture or explain.
For
more on Scott Freiman: http://beatleslectures.com
And
the official Beatles website: http://www.thebeatles.com
Thanks so much for the great write-up. I hope to bring more deconstructions to Cleveland in the future!
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