The Revolver Flashback

I am going to walk the edge again. That thin edge between recapturing the magic and euphoria of past discovery and the other side, waxing nostalgic and whining about the present and dooming the future.

My context is limited, yet not so much. A friend of mine whose age I envy, just a few years older (definitely wiser), Corinne, would have the truly proper context...and she does...which is why I envy her. I just missed it. I was only six years old when what I believe an apex was crossed. I really didn't discover it until my teens several years later when finally I was mature enough to reason and be able to compare and contrast experiences from a younger age. Still, because I was so young, I've had to fill in the blanks, using other people's experiences as well as historical artifacts...recreating a context I never truly lived in a mature, conscious sense. I make these presumptions in true humility, especially because Corinne could read this and completely laugh at my assumptions. Yet I feel somewhat confident in my generalities I am about to make and the context I am about to try and recreate.

The one and only thing I have going for me may in fact be the accidental coincidence that I am the age I am and just missed it. I was close enough to it, to have a general sense of the atmosphere...still too young to comprehend it...yet, because of that I also possess an outsider's point of view, like "millennials" would have viewing the same period of time. So, like others in my age group, I combine the "sense" of the age with an objective view of the age, trying desperately to balance both. This is partly what I mean about walking that narrow, razor's edge.

I also have an obsessive-compulsive, knowledge of The Beatles, a life-long journey that may or may not help me to find the right context of what I am about to conclude. Yet, if one were to bring to the table a bias (which we all do), I can think of none better than a "Beatles-centric" myopia as I try and find the point on the cultural map where we now exist.

I love all music and, I dare say I have a rudimentary layman's understanding and appreciation of musical history. I fall under the spell of a fugue by JS Bach as easily as an early "bop" performance of Miles Davis, or a blues riff from Robert Johnson. Listening to a "Canon" is as enjoyable as a folk-rock performance for me as I seek to immerse myself in the context within the period of the particular performance.

If someone cornered me and asked me for my opinion of the greatest musical compilation of performances and their impact on mass culture, I would have to conclude this is it.

"Revolver" awakens a part of the human soul that had only been stirred the previous few years. The synergy shared between the four musicians in this group, their counterparts in other groups and most important, their fans, the mostly "mid-teen" girls who lead all of us on a pathway closed off for seeming eons came together, truly unconsciously in fourteen songs, culminating in an exaltation; a John Lennon masterpiece that could only be understood by hearing the previous songs while experiencing the world as it existed in the early fall of 1966.

I honestly truly believe a revelation like this was so truly profound that we have only
sought to replay it in various forms for generations now and with each attempt, rather than recreating the orgasmic magic of that awakening, we have only paralyzed ourselves, running in tired worn out circles until now, we begin to realize no music, and in fact no real artistry has come close to breaking through and elevating our spirit, en mass as it was forty eight years ago.

Mass spiritual awakening in fact, seems to me, much more common in previous generations, ironically even during periods of dogmatic ritual...maybe even in spite of it, as was the case in the fifties; a time of "Conformist" grey flannel suits, religious
"obedience" and yet profound reaction ala Kerouac and Dean.

It seems these generations took it for granted that we frolicked underneath the dogma, allowing it to exist while we played under its nose. To me, it seems that 1966 was the year we consciously recognized the true meaning of our frolicking existence which was a resistance and, more importantly, the year we realized the frivolity and coming fragility of the "grown-up" culture. We awakened to the fact that maybe it could truly be toppled and maybe it wasn't the rigid cultural structure we all believed it to be.

It is no coincidence how inflammatory John Lennon's very true sentiment that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, rocked the world on both sides. It clearly was a caesura and it underscored the underlying terror of the dominant establishment
knowing the gig was up and truly exposed it as a mere aspiration rather than an absolute.

It seems to me an experience beyond comprehension to have lived as a child in the rigid morality of the fifties, feared nuclear annihilation, dreamed of the amazing adventures
of exploring space, being seventeen or eighteen years old, ingesting a hit of acid on an October Saturday afternoon in 1966, having witnessed the Beatles final concert in August and the ramifications of Lennon's quip while hearing for the first time, "Tomorrow Never Knows"

It is my truly humble opinion that moment in time, experienced by so many souls almost at once, changed the world as it had never changed before and can never be changed again. A door was opened.

And now, again in my humble opinion, we exist in 2014 having tried to close that door, or pretend it closed, and reopen it tens of thousands of times now trying desperately to relive a moment that has etched itself as a permanent meme in every generation of children since then, only to become more fraudulent each time.

So we watch manufactured musicians on entertainment television shows and fall victim to mass marketed formulaic music and we wander like nomads now, rather than find
new doors to open. I shudder to think how long it shall be until we find and blaze a new path like this again.

I don't know if I in fact just now fell off that razor's edge as I make that last statement.
All I know is I listen to this album everytime with the fresh ears of a teenager in October, 1966...or as close as I can. I may be as guilty as everyone in trying so desperately to reopen that door...yet, like taking hits of acid, I am hooked and relish the experience!