Sad News About Paul Williams (the Crawdaddy music critic)

There was hardly critical consensus about Pepper at the time. Marsh was lukewarm on it, too.

Sure, but Time magazine & the like were all over it, was all I meant.

Doesn't Marcus call the White Album stunning in Stranded?

Don't own it, but he does say that in his RS Illustrated History of Rock and Roll piece. Here's what he says on '66-'67 Beatles:

"At the time, it was obvious that Revolver, released in 1966, was better than Rubber Soul, just as it was obvious that Sgt. Pepper was better than both put together. The times carried the imperative of such a choice--though it was not really a choice at all, but rather a sort of faceless necessity. The only road, after all, was onward.

Such a choice does not seem so obvious now, and of course the necessity has faded. Revolver retains the flash its title promised but little of the soul its predecessor delivered. Compared to either, Sgt. Pepper appears playful but contrived, less a summing up of its era than a concession to it."

You need to rememberthat Marcus is always referring to the American Rubber Soul when talks about the album (it's the one pre-'68 stateside release of theirs he included in Stranded).

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-aow/column2.php

Beautiful, may well be his best early piece (next to the one about the young woman who starved herself to death on a macrobiotic diet, with a mention of anorexia nervosa, italics his---what a strange thing to glimpse in the mid-60s, it seems). Always good when he lets other people into his pad. Love that he quoted all those early responses to Pepper. and explained his own. I agree with him: they did want to turn us own to the real world, reconcile the generations, to some extent, for inst. But that's not just a conceptual thing, "I used to be Angry Young Man/Me hiding me head in the sand" leads to also the truly confessional side, which wasn't only re that trend in US x Uk poetry: "I used to be cruel to my woman I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved/Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene, I'm doing the best that I can", which puts a lot of strength into "I've got to admit things are getting better." The only one that really doesn't work at all for me is "Within You Without You", although I agree with Williams' interviewee--Anderle? Think so--about "A Day In The Life"'s production getting too self-important.

I remember being shocked in high school to read contemporary, mainstream press reviews of the Beatles catalog and discover that general consensus was it was all downhill once they entered their psych period. at least, that's what the assembled reviews in my hs library indicated.

Wow! What were the sources?

I wonder if Marcus viewed the "concession" of Sgt. Pepper as being musical or something to do with the subject matter. In either case, I'm not sure what was conceded.

dow this was like 30 years ago lol but I remember that the reviews were primarily short blurbs from non-rock-music mags, more mainstream papers/press.

er 20 years ago? fuck how old am I

At least as old as since Sgt. P taught the band to play.

here's a funny one from The Harvard Crimson ('68 - White Album review):

ON ONLY ONE of their albums have the Beatles taken a fundamental step forward to compare with their achievements on the singles. That record was Rubber Soul, which brought about the supreme liberation of rhythm-and-blues by injecting an unprecedented controlled melody into the rigid structure of thumping drums and bass. In doing so, Rubber Soul significantly dissolved this structure by making it technically and spiritually possible to fuse a lurching tune onto stuttering, free drums. This development led the Beatles directly through the half-successful numbers "Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" to its culmination in the masterpiece, "Strawberry Fields."
The Beatles does not contain the seeds of such a revolution. It is a traditional Beatle album and as such it consists of a collection of measured and highly crafted songs; therefore it is mandatory to have it around. Nevertheless, even within this limited perspective the record leaves one with a nagging sense of non-fulfillment.

"the supreme liberation of rhythm-and-blues"!!

"Never in the history of art"

"half-successful"?

Xgau:

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [Capitol, 1967]
A dozen good songs and true. Perhaps they're too precisely performed, but I'm not going to complain. A

to get back to williams, i just posted this thing over here: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/47121287935/caribbean-wind-bob-dylan-warfield-theatre which williams wrote about at length.

h'mm, another encounter with thee, Witcheh Woman. The music would prob make a dif, but reading this, I like Dylan's comments on the song better than the lyrics. How are Williams' Dylan books?

i dunno, i love that song... williams' dylan books are great if you want to get deep into specific shows/tours/periods.

Williams considered "Renaldo & Clara" the supreme artistic achievement of Dylan's career!

Cazart! Any direct quotes?

Williams considered "Renaldo & Clara" the supreme artistic achievement of Dylan's career!

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/the-improbable-birth-of-american-rock-writing/

Yet Crawdaddy! was a long way from mere teenage snark. When Paul Simon read Williams’ insightful review of Sounds of Silence in the first issue, he called him up—finally getting him on the floor phone in his freshmen dorm.

...

According to Williams’ lore, of which there’s no shortage, the young editor became a rock ‘n’ roll gadfly. In his Zeligesque history, he got turned on to weed by Brian Wilson in the psycho refuge of the Beach Boy’s living room tent. He not only made it to Woodstock, he arrived there with the Grateful Dead in the band’s limo. When you hear the rifle being locked and loaded on The Doors’ “Unknown Soldier”, that’s Paul Williams doing the locking and loading. He served as campaign manager for Timothy Leary’s brief attempt to run for Governor of California against Ronald Reagan—

his PKD book is so great

good digital versions of the Williams era of Crawdaddy here -- some great stuff
http://www.vistaservices.com/crawdaddy/
need to read his PKD book

oh! and there's this cool radio show w/ williams and producer Tom Wilson chatting in early '68. http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/69887