Arthur Lee, Brian Wilson and Walt Disney

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I was both Arthur Lee and Brian Wilson in June, and I loved the shows, but I went away with a bad taste in my mouth. Lee hasn't written a decent song in 35 years. Wilson's track record isn't much better. And unlike McCartney at the jubilee, still banging out the 1974 version of his Great Rock Achievements (Abbey Road song medley, Hey Jude, Sergeant Pepper) Brian and Arthur seem to have accepted that the critics know their best work better than they do themselves.

So they painstakingly dress up music that is 35 years old in period production sheen and they tour these records as if they are their new project, as if time has frozen. Is there something disneyfied about hearing pet sounds reproduced with an orchestra when you can just put the record on?

Or would it be more dignified for Macca to tour Eleanor Rigby, She's Leaving Home and Here There and Everywhere around the South Bank with harp players tuned in such a way as to suggest varispeeded tape?

I can't get my head round whether these shows are deserving of the praise they get, or -no matter how slick and moving and faithful they are- whether they are the very antithesis of the spirit of the records themselves?

― Ian Quain, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

OK, ha ha so I actually wasn't "both Arthur and Brian". I was AT both Arthur and Brian, which was probably a secondary experience.

my question is, would you prefer Scott Walker to play Tilt, or wheel out the orchestra and Wally Stott for "three weeks since you've gone" at the QEH?

― Ian, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This isn't your way of saying you'd rather see some stoned stumblebum drooling on stage, is it? (Not that it would matter if it was)

Also, more detail wanted re what the 'spirit of the record' actually is - in your opinion

― dave q, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

isn't there something kinda UNdisneyfied about mccartney's will to grumpily define his OWN macca-canon despite 30 years assault by almost everyone (haha though really he shoulda played NOTHING but songs by wings = punkiest gesture evah)

― mark s, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also, Lee and Wilson were all about the aural sophistication. It's not Roky Erickson or Sky Saxon we're discussing here, after all.

― dave q, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This isn't your way of saying you'd rather see some stoned stumblebum drooling on stage, is it?

you know, I think it is, actually. I think I'd rather have seen Arthur Lee churning his way through "Vindicator" or "Girl on Fire" before spitting on the audience and walking out. I would have enjoyed it if he'd played a heavy metal set. To define the spirit of Forever Changes for me: iconoclasm, ambiguity, flux. Anything but pornographic views back into a fixed past.

isn't there something kinda UNdisneyfied about mccartney's will to grumpily define his OWN macca-canon

yes, that's my point. I admire him more for it. But, of course, it was still shite. Sigh.

The Lee/ Wilson thing just seemed like a horrible glimpse of a future of rigorous re-constructions of happy studio accidents thirty years down the road. Maybe I'm just whining, though.

― Ian, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I would rather have seen Arthur sing the songs he had written in prison, for them to have been awful, and for the audience to have walked away disgusted. For Arthur to have used the opportunity to destroy his legacy and reputation: that would have been closer to the spirit of Forever Changes as I define it for myself.

― Ian Quain, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I went to one of the Brian Wilson show (as opposed to some friends who went to ALL THREE. which were all - surprise - exactly the same as the first). I came away with a very similar feeling. I'd enjoyed myself, but in spite of myself, you know? I felt as if I'd been to some big Christian meeting - like one of those Billy Graham things - and had got up and testified and had my soul saved, but only because everyone else had. And I'm not into religion, especially not group religion. Also, it was the ONLY gig (thank fuck) I've ever been to where people in the audience clapped along in time to the songs.

It was just weird.

― synaesthesiac, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe Arthur wanted to piss off people who wanted to see him play songs he wrote in prison.

― lawrence kansas, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess, for me, the spirit of Forever Changes are the songs on Forever Changes.

― lawrence kansas, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

nine years pass...

I was both Arthur Lee and Brian Wilson in June...

― ███★★★███ (PappaWheelie V), Saturday, 1 October 2011 20:42 (fourteen years ago)

Were you this guy?
http://www.theviewscreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/requiemformethuselah_439-300x220.jpg

― So. Central Mayne (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2011 22:41 (fourteen years ago)

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