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Running on momentum from yesterday’s session, The Beatles knocked out another new song today: “All Together Now,” which Paul wrote for the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album. It’s a slight but not charmless piece with a nursery-rhyme quality. The Beatles Bible says that “Lennon contributed the ‘Sail the ship, chop the tree’ middle section”; John himself said “I put a few lines in it somewhere, probably.”
Meanwhile, UK-based Track Records — a new label owned by Who managers Lambert and Stamp — released the debut album by a little band called the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was entitled Are You Experienced and it sank like a stone, never to be heard again.
No, not in this universe…in this one we are still listening to Are You Experienced 50 years later, and still being floored by it. This is equivalent to someone in 1967 listening to pop music from 1917 — which was not really possible at that time, but you take my point.
Why is it that we just can’t seem to shake the music of the Sixties? When I was younger I resisted; for a long time I only wanted to listen to what was brand-new right then. But then I slowly got drawn in…first it was the Beatles and the Stones…then the Velvets and Jimi…and now I even like the Doors. What the hell?
I guess there was just something special about those few years. Many better historians than myself have tried to pin it down, and there will be more and more hype as we approach the 50th anniversaries of Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love, so let’s not belabor the point. Class is dismissed for today; your homework is to listen to Are You Experienced in the original UK running order:
Side One:
- Foxy Lady
- Manic Depression
- Red House
- Can You See Me
- Love or Confusion
- I Don’t Live Today
Side Two:
- May This Be Love
- Fire
- Third Stone from the Sun
- Remember
- Are You Experienced?