I reviewed "Abbey Road" in The New York Times in 1969. I noted that "it may be dull compared with "The Beatles" (the "White album"), yet "is much less flossy and grandiose than that effort, but is endless more satifying for just that reason."

Abbey Road by Beatles
Marked by Moderation

By Mike Jahn

The Beatles, for over five years the world's best-known rock group, have released a new album, Abbey Road," their first since last No­vember.

The appearance of a new Beatles album is usually a time of festivity among the rock audience. Record sellers are bothered for weeks before the release; articles appear in the music press speculating on what will be the latest word from the throne, and for weeks after, the under­ground and music press is filled with articles examining the new on every possible basis from astrology to zen.

The new album was released last week by Apple Records and its. American dis­tributer, Capitol Records, in time for the Christmas sales season. It isn't much of a shocker. In comparison with their two previous recordings, it is rather dull. Missing is the frivolity lat years's "The Beatles" or the attempted profundity of 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

But hiding in the comparative sobriety of " Abbey Road" is the feeling of surefootedness that the Beatles have needed in the past few years. "Abbey Road may be dull compared with "The Beatles," but it is much less overloaded with the phony ostrich-plume frills that made a large portion of that album seem unnecessary. Pop musi­cians often tend to put too much icing on the cake. The Beatles have fallen into that trap before. Thankfully, not this time.

"Abbey Road" doesn't have the luster, the spectacular fireworks or the stylistic jumble common to previous Beatle records. It is a sincere, simple and powerful collection of songs, and the music falls somewhere between the country-influencd, firm footing of "Rubber Soul" and the rolling, low-swinging "Revolution Number 1."

It is much less flossy and grandiose than the Beatles' last effort, but is endlessly more satisfying for just that reason. Throughout the al­bum the Beatles mix sweet, melodic songs featuring elab­orate, sometimes overly-slick harmony, with earthy rock songs built on a heavy blues or boogie foundation.

Two tunes, "Octopus's Garden" and "Maxwell's Sil­ver Hammer," are light sing-along's in the style of older Beatles material like "Yellow Submarine" or "When I'm 64." "Maxwell's Silver Ham­mer" maintains this whistle-along stance throughout a lyric that tells of a boy who murders his girlfriend, his teacher and, when he is brought to justice, the judge.

"Oh! Darling" is a 1950's type of rock 'n' roll song quite similar to Elvis Presley's old "One Night."

Four of five songs are quiet, harmonious and gener­ally pleasant, with the Bea­tles breaking the calm only occasionally to play some blues progression or lapse into a minute or two of hard rock. "Because" has such pretty and perfected vocal harmony that it could be ac­ceptable to the most ardent antirock tastes. This sweet­ness is not necessarily a plus. Songs like "Because" evoke visions of an album titled "The Beatles Play Mantavani," which is not consid­ered very likely.

Through all the prettiness and relatively noncontroversial nature of this album, the Beatles maintain enough grit and vigor to keep their creation rocking. And while most of the songs deal with such mundane considerations as loving, taking a long look at nature and feeling lonely, there is enough lyrical ambiguity in these songs to keep the underground and music press writers interpreting for months. The Beatles wouldn't desert their greatest fans.

I hated "the White Album," which seemed to be the boys throwing in everything they had in the can simply because they were the Beatles and could. If the world never heard "Rocky Racoon," it would be a better place.

"The White Album" did make an interesting appearance in my personal life, however. Round about the time it was released, the SoHo section of Manhattan was a place of warehouses and dark desperation. It was at least a decade away from becoming the home of the rich hip. Of the people I knew, only Michael Goldstein, Hendrix's American manager at the time, lived there. So did a curious, ony-in-the-sixties joint the name of which has eluded me for 30 years or more.

It was a large room that had a series of white pods -- each about five feet wide and suspended about that far from the floor. The pods were were attached to a central walkway like peas in a pod, if peas in a pod stuck out on both sides of the midline.

The idea was to take off all your clothes beneath a monkish white road, put them in a drawstring bag, drop it to the floor, and sit alone, cross-legged, listening to music and, I don't know, absorbing what was left of the cosmic consciousness after the Moody Blues were done with it.

I took off my clothes under a robe and sat on a pod.

In retrospect, a police raid or fire alarm would have left the critic of The New York Times standing in the middle of the street in SoHo naked under a white robe. But when you are 25 or 26 in New York City you are bulletproof.

I meditated ... well, I spent the time staring at the roomful of pod people to see if they were meditating or just smiling foolishly at the absurdity of the whole thing. Some were meditating.

I had given the DJ ... the man in the booth playing the psychedelic music ... what did you expect, Led Zeppelin? ... at levels conducive to meditation, a copy of a test pressing of "the White Album." He played it without introduction, and this was, I suppose, its premiere in New York. The "wow" reaction rivalled the "far out" reaction. After listening to most of it, I got up, put my clothes back on, and left. I took the test pressing with me and, as I recall, later gave it to my son, along with an MC5 test pressing and the rare mono mix of "Are You Experienced?"

I kept hating "Rocky Raccoon," "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," "Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill," "Piggies," and a handful of others. I felt that Clapton's guitar work on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was bizarre -- that's not bending strings, that's strangling them -- and Manson was welcome to try use "Helter Skelter" to start a war. I loved "Revolution 9" -- I think that was the title. I mean the slow version, as I recall written after the Kennedy and King assassinations, in which the Beatles take back their promise, issued in the original, not to support violent revolution. And I liked "Back in the USSR," of course.

---

The Times printed my review of the White Album
on November 21, 1968 --

Beatles to Release First Album in a Year

By Mike Jahn


Tomorrow the Beatles will release their first album in a year, titled simply "The Beatles."

Copies of the album, one of their most unusual although not one of their best, will be delivered to most New York City record stores tomorrow according to Capitol Records, the distributor.

The album, on the Apple label, has received heavy play on several local FM stations for the last week. It consists of 30 songs on two records, including one long electronic-and-taped-noise composition.

In it the Beatles sample from most every phase popular mu­sic has gone through in the last 40 years, and imitate many of its heroes.

There is Chuck Berry and Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and Robert Goulet, Bill Haley and Montovani. Everywhere there are traces of the Beach Boys, but mostly there lingers the Beatles of 1965.

The album has nothing new and very little that is even recent. The main sound is pre-"Rubber Soul." In the year before their "Rubber Soul" album was released in 1965, there was little but the Chuck Berry era, that long stretch where almost everything done by the Beatles seamed liked bleached Memphis. (Mr. Berry is a black singer and guitarist, who set the style for much rock music in the late 1950's.)

In "The Beatles" the group takes this old, basic rock sound and sees how many different superstructures are compatible. There are blues, country, easy listening, folk and 1955-to-1962 rock. There are a number of electronic distortions, and there are many put-ons.

Many songs are either so corny or sung in such a way that it is hard to tell whether they are being serious. In most cases, they seem not to be. In an act of lyrical overstatement, they sing "Have You Seen the Bigger Piggies in Their Starched White Shirts?" And it doesn't matter if the words -- "Now it's time to say 'good night, good night, sleep tight' -- are sung as a put-on, they still are painful to hear.

It is a light record. The music is light, clean and crisp. The lyrics are light. Usually they are happy but often they are lacking in substance, rather like potato chips.

This new album sounds spectacular at first, but the fascination quickly fades. Where the best American groups -- Jefferson Airplane and Blood, Sweat and Tears are two of them -- produce substantial music that can be lived with, the Beatles tend to produce spectacular but thin music that is best saved for special occasions.

The Beatles, though they might not have intended it, have in essence produced hip Muzak, a soundtrack for head shops, parties and discotheques.

"The Beatles" is a continuation of the Beatles mystique, or maybe an attempt to ride on its coattails. The Beatles mystique was bolstered in mid-1967 when "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released and hailed by the underground and music press as the rock album of the decade.

It has been a year and a half since that album was re­leased. And one wonders how much the praise heaped upon "Sgt. Pepper's" was deserved.

Once they were crowned as geniuses, there developed the self-fulfilling expectation of genius that the Beatles now enjoy, a factor that probably will help make this new album a million seller.

"Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was good, and maybe it was the best rock album of the decade. But it wasn't as good as its press. The new album is not nearly as good as "Sgt. Pepper's."

The new album has no "A Day in the Life." Considering non-"Sgt. Pepper's" material, the new album has nothing to compare with "Strawberry Fields" and not even a passable "Penny Lane."

It is hard and exciting in parts ("Back in the U.S.S.R.") and funny in others ("Why Don't We Do It in the Road?) -- but only in parts.

It [lacks] the originality of "Music From Big Pink," by the Band, and the all-over excitement of "Cheap Thrills," by Big Brother and the Holding Company. It doesn't have the emotion of the Doors or the musical expertise of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield. And by many measure of pure rock power, Blood. Sweat and Tears is far better.

The pod place shortly went out of business. Come to think of it, the word "business" is problematic in the context of 1968 or 1969. The mere idea of making money in certain countercultural 'hoods in those days was considered by some to be counter-revolutionary. Remember that line in The Big Chill where Jeff Goldblum refers to the end of the 60s as "when property was a crime?"

Then SoHo became the land of art galleries and hip rich, preceding Tribeca in that regard. (SoHo did not, however, become very attractive, like the Village. Putting art galleries and overpriced restaurants in ugly old warehouse buildings still leaves you with ugly old warehouse buildings.) Manson made plans to use "Helter Skelter" to try to start a war. A photographer who once worked for me, Linda Eastman, made good on her promise to move to London and marry a Beatle. John ran off with Yoko, leading, among other things, to the absolute pits of Beatles music, "The Ballad of John and Yoko." A pregnant nine months after "Helter Skelter" and the rest of the White Album hit America, Manson struck.

Around that period, Beatles aide Derek Taylor began calling me from airports to report on how "the lads" were doing. Better, I hoped.

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