>Если произведение Олдхема-то да,оно было мало >кому известно.
Олдхем выступил скорее в качестве организатора процесса, созвав "лучших умов", в этом ему надо отдать должное, а автором аранжировки стал Дэвид Уитакер:
At the time, Andrew Loog Oldham must have looked the right part for releasing this record. It was such a nod to the square culture that the Rolling Stones were attempting to wipe away that you had to figure it for a joke. Sure, there were symphonic Beatles records, but somehow that was to be expected from them. Not the Stones -- no, they were rebels. Oldham was brought up on middle-of-the-road sounds and orchestral soundtracks as a kid, though, and making this album was a dream come true for him -- one that the huge success of his charges could make happen. He was also in love with the huge sound of Phil Spector and was directly inspired by the sound of Jack Nitzche's instrumental album, The Lonely Surfer. With the help of arranger David Whitaker, Oldham made a record that paid homage to all of those influences, and 40 years later it sounds quite good. It even rocks surprisingly hard at times, thanks to the wise move of having crack session men like Nicky Hopkins, John Paul Jones, Big Jim Sullivan, and John McLaughlin provide the underpinnings.
Their grit gives the MOR orchestral strings and vocal choruses something rough to rub up against on uptempo tracks like "Satisfaction," the dramatic love songs like "Tell Me," and the moody ballads like "Play with Fire," "You Better Move On," and a very tough and powerful "Heart of Stone." Indeed, apart from a couple of breezy lounge-ready tracks like an Esquivel-ian "Time Is on My Side" and the Oldham original "Theme for a Rolling Stone" (which really should have been called "Love Theme for a Rolling Stone"), Whitaker and Oldham were actually playing for keeps, creating emotionally powerful and musically far-reaching works that sound a little corny at times but more often sock you right in the gut. And when you aren't expecting it, those are the punches that leave the most impression. Nowhere is that more evident than on "The Last Time," the song that the Verve sampled for "Bittersweet Symphony" in 1997. The Andrew Oldham Orchestra's original has all the grandeur and passion of the Verve's track, minus the trip-hop beats and trite lyrics. It's quite a surprise to modern ears that it outshines the remake, and it's an equally shocking surprise that this album is more than just a curiosity. Instead, it is a vital artifact that Stones fans and devotees of '60s pop should hear at least once. It might even become a mainstay of your hidden-treasures list. - AMG
С удивлением узнал это только позавчера. И данный случай навевает всякие интересные мысли как поводу важности инструментовки (минус все условности - кавер оказался популярней оригинала), так и того, насколько можно "оприходовать" гармонию и объявить ее "своей". Чем-то Кляйн должен же был аргументировать.
Старая история - The Verve использовали сэмпл, но песня стала слишком популярной. Правообладель Алену Кляйну добился-таки, чтобы авторство "Горько-сладкой симфонии" было полностью отдано Джэггеру-Ричардсу. Verve было лень доказывать свое право на мелодию, которая к The Last Time не имела никакого отношения. Не говоря уже о том, что великие роллингстунчеги сами использовали нечто вроде "сэмпла" от группы Staple Singers под названием "This May Be The Last Time". Плагиат на плагиате и плагиатом погоняет.
Re: Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale Автор:ExpertДата: 28.04.09 10:35:48
Сами англоговорящие в большом тупике по поводу значений и смысла текста. К тому же оригинальное стихотворение Рида длиннее в два раза исполненного текста песни.
That's fantastick
Pop music is full of such snappy malapropisms: Ringo's back-to-front phrases were known as "Ringoisms" by his fellow Beatles, and resulted in songs including A Hard Day's Night and Eight Days A Week.
PALE SIGNIFICANCE
The result in Procol Harum's case was a pair of verbose verses which nod to various archaisms unfamiliar to the pop charts, including The Miller (as in Chaucer's vulgar tale told by a drunkard); vestal virgins (handmaidens to a Roman goddess) and the light fandango (John Milton coined "the light fantastick" to describe dancing in 1632; the phrase became common coinage before being mangled, via the Spanish courtship waltz the fandango, into Procol Harum's "the light fandango").
For the record, and bewilderingly, Reid pooh-poohs any link between "the Miller told his tale" and The Miller's Tale; he prefers Willie Nelson's rendition, which is mangled again into "the mirror told its tale".
Miller or mirror, it's a rum brew. The combination of dense allusion and Hammond organ had already been patented by Bob Dylan, but he was no chart-topper. While A Whiter Shade Of Pale was the number one single, Sgt Pepper was the number one album - a psychedelic commercial victory for hearts and minds.
By some accounts, this is the point where pomposity set in to pop, legitimising classical motifs and impenetrable lyrics until the Year Zero of punk. But is the song as incomprehensible as they say?
Гари Брукер по поводу баховской арии, которая в то время использовалась в рекламе сигар "Гамлет":
For years, Gary, now 65, has told how he was inspired by J.S. Bach's Sleepers Awake and Air On A G String used in the Hamlet cigar advert at the time: 'I had been fascinated by that music, so I sat at the piano and tried to play it. But I got lost somewhere along the line and just carried on in my own way. It only took about half an hour.'
Интересно, что в мультфильме "Желтая подлодка" соответствующая цитата из Баха звучит как раз в том месте, где монстр затягивается сигарой.
Re: Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale Автор:ExpertДата: 27.04.09 02:57:32
As it reached number one, they were playing to packed halls around the country, giving countless interviews, trying to record an album and receiving congratulatory telegrams from Mick Jagger. Which all sounds terribly glamorous.
But it didn't last. 'Within two weeks, we got rid of our manager .. . a week later there was a split in the group's ranks . . . a couple of days after that we were all exhausted,' said Gary at the time. 'We just didn't know what hit us. We just weren't ready for it. We didn't see anything in perspective. We were at the top of a mountain of success and we couldn't hold it.'
They couldn't hold onto their money, either.
'It seemed to go into some big pot. You would never have to pay for a meal, or clothes, but we never saw the actual money. And after a year, when we turned round and said "Hang on, where is it?", it wasn't anywhere. Someone made a lot of money, but it wasn't us.'
To make things worse, there weren't even many girls. Which must have been particularly galling given that The Beatles and the Stones were fighting them off with sticks.
'Procol was never a girls' band,' insists Matthew today. 'There were very few groupies, but lots of arty types who were just into the lyrics and the weirdness and the fact that we were different.'
Sadly, not that different. Like so many other bands they were soon mired in arguments, lawsuits, departing members (including Matthew in 1969), a swallow dive in popularity and, despite churning out plenty of albums before they finally folded in 1977, never touched on the genius of their first mammoth hit.
This is something Matthew puts down to bad feelings festering within the band.
'I first asked Gary for a writing credit in 1967 and I've asked lots of times since,' he says today. '"No, a thousand times no!" was always his reaction and the whole atmosphere was totally poisoned after that - it was like going into a room with a dead body lying on the floor which no one mentions - they just step round it.
'Which is a shame, because with a positive attitude, who knows, we might have had loads more hits and really enjoyed ourselves.'
He insists it's a matter of principle, not money, and says that the reason he delayed so long in bringing his claim was that he couldn't find a lawyer who understood the issues and would do it on a no-win-no-fee basis. But he's obviously bitter about Gary's success while he's living back at home with his mother, without savings and funded by a no-win-no-fee arrangement with his solicitors.
'Gary's built a career out of taking credit for my work - or that's how it seems to me,' he claims. 'I wish I'd never met Keith and him. I wish I'd never written that tune and I wish I'd never joined the band. I wished I'd gone and done something else, because I was good and I would have succeeded if I'd been in a band who appreciated me. Instead, this eating away at me all those years crippled me. It acted as a death blow to my confidence.'
Gary, meanwhile, insists the first he knew about Fisher's 'claim' was in 2005 and finds it mind-boggling that anyone could have waited 38 years (and reunited with Gary and Keith for occasional comeback gigs between 2001 and 2004) and sat back as Gary cashed goodness only knows how many royalty cheques before mentioning it.
In fact, while Gary admits that it isn't even his favourite Procol song ('I've always much preferred one called A Salty Dog - it's much better'), he's so furious right now that he's threatened to have his name removed from the writing credits if his opponent wins joint credit and a slice of the royalties.
'I just don't think I could enjoy it any more. It's always been a thing of beauty and love and mystery and emotion and now it's cash and royalties and jealousy. Suddenly it's dirty.'
Oh dear. It turns out that the only thing they can agree on is how incredibly proud they are of its 'most played' status nearly half a century on.
Whoever's telling the truth - and both are so convincing it's easy to feel a bit sorry for the poor old Law Lords who have to unravel it all today - it's a right old mess. Like Lennon and McCartney all over again, but somehow sadder, because A Whiter Shade Of Pale is so loved and so lovely and so fabulously, ridiculously, flamboyantly incomprehensible.
And because, whoever did write it, they never came close to writing anything as good again.
Re: Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale Автор:ExpertДата: 27.04.09 02:56:07
Whatever, since 2005, the pair have rattled through nearly 1million in legal costs and have slogged it out in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and, today, are back in the House of Lords for a final ruling on who's entitled to what. The Law Lords will also set some guidelines for how long a person can wait before bringing any case to court. Matthew Fisher waited 38 years.
Today it's hard to see what they ever had in common. Matthew, 63, has retrained as a computer programmer, wears huge, gold-framed bifocal glasses and lives with his mum Betty, 93 ('she's amazing, she still goes swimming every week') and sister Judith in their very shabby family home in Croydon - all peeling paint, tired lino and faded 1950s decor.
Gary, meanwhile, has snowy-white hair, is a keen fly fisherman, hangs out with Eric Clapton (he taught Eric how to fish), has played with Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Phil Collins, still tours with a reformed Procol Harum and lives with Francoise, his Swiss wife of 40 years (they were married to the strains of A Whiter Shade Of Pale in July 1968) on a 16th-century private estate near Guildford. Keith Reid
Relations are far from cordial. Or, as Matthew put it this week: 'They really couldn't be worse. When Gary and I last bumped into each other, he looked like he'd just seen a vampire bat.'
It all started so promisingly. The 1960s, innocent days full of hopes and dreams, rehearsals in the dingy basement of a Methodist church hall in South London on a piano so out of tune it was in the wrong key. All (bar Keith) were living cosily at home with their parents and, in Matthew's case, his granny too, who'd very generously chipped in to help buy his precious Hammond organ.
'There was quite an organ thing going on back then and I didn't look cool enough to play the guitar - you needed to look good and be a great mover and sing vocal harmonies and I was more into classical music. I'd done a couple of terms at the Guildhall School of Music and played with Screaming Lord Sutch, so I put an ad in Melody Maker offering myself as an organist.'
Which Gary and Keith spotted. After a quick audition in the Fisher family's front room, Matthew joined the band along with lead guitarist Ray Royer, bass guitarist Dave Knights and Bobby Harrison on the drums. If you believe Matthew's side of the story, he also started tinkering with the song that was going to put them in the record books.
'It didn't really have a tune, so I was trying to do something that sounded nice, that people would go: "Ooh, that's a nice tune." I didn't want to do anything too adventurous, too avant garde. It was a strange mix of baroque and rock, and we all thought it was really good.'
Sadly, Decca Records, the company which was putting it out, didn't feel quite the same way.
'They said it was too slow, too dreary, too long (we'd already chopped out two verses), incomprehensible and wasn't their idea of a nice, happy, summer record,' says Fisher.
And that might have been that, if it hadn't been for DJ Tony Hall, who stumbled upon it one night when he was sharing a smoke with record producer Denny Cordell. 'Tony was blown away. He pulled a few strings and got it played on one of the pirate ships - Radio London. He announced it hadn't been released and said: "We'd like to know what you think of it, so if you like it, ring us up and tell us." '
And that was that. The switchboards were jammed for hours. Decca rushed it out on the Deram label. Everyone ran to buy it and fan clubs popped up overnight.
In just a few days, it had sold half a million copies, was six weeks at Number One in the UK hit parade and overnight the band went from unknowns to instant celebrities - performing on Top Of The Pops, rubbing shoulders with the Rolling Stones and Small Faces and playing the Speakeasy Club just off Carnaby Street.
That night, Jimi Hendrix jumped up on stage and Paul McCartney was in the audience on his first date with Linda.
'I'd toured in a previous band called the Paramounts, so it wasn't so new for me, but it all happened so quickly that we were on Top Of The Pops before we'd had time to buy any new clothes,' says Gary. 'And it could be a bit unnerving and quite mob-like.'
Re: Британцы определили лучшую музыку для отхода в мир иной: AC/DC и Фрэнк Синатра Автор:ExpertДата: 27.04.09 02:35:51
Кстати, вспомнил, рассказ такой существует: какие-то друзья, очень любили в детстве Пинк Флойд, потом стали новыми русскими, один из них умирает и на его похороны другие приглашают Пинк Флойд. Кажется, играли они в этом рассказе "Wish You Were Here". Точно не помню. Давно он мне попадался, вроде в б-ке Мошкова. Может, кто название и автора подскажет.
Re: 47-летняя шотландка готовится повторить успех Битлз Автор:ExpertДата: 25.04.09 01:50:40
В ру.нете написали, что деффка издали и не только похожа на мужыка, но вокальными талантами своими заткнет абс.большинство "звезд" отечественных. Вывод: все относительно, каждому времени и месту - своих битлазов: людей имеющих к музыке таланты и способности. а не наоборот.
Re: 47-летняя шотландка готовится повторить успех Битлз Автор:ExpertДата: 22.04.09 13:24:10
Инди-дуэт, в общем-то не забывший про то, откуда у рок-н-ролла ноги растут. Заглавная весчь словно подсовремененные Troggs, сошедшие с икон 60-ых годов.
Re: Британцы определили лучшую музыку для отхода в мир иной: AC/DC и Фрэнк Синатра Автор:ExpertДата: 21.04.09 17:52:47
>Так чья же она всё-таки есть -Фрэнка Синатры(как >я считал) или Shirley Bassey?!
Фрэнк поет ее для умирающих мальчиков, Ширли Бася - девочек. Русский аналог - "Мои года - мое богатство" Рекомендуется петь после 40 в качестве самоэпитафии. Со слезою в голосе. Единственный кто от этого воздержался - постебавшийся Сид Вишес, изменивший текст в пользу всяких "писек", "педиков" и пр. панковского добра..
Re: Британцы определили лучшую музыку для отхода в мир иной: AC/DC и Фрэнк Синатра Автор:ExpertДата: 21.04.09 16:26:23
Вот интересно: в РФ такой опрос провести. В опросе определенное соединение муз.эрудиции и чувство юмора. И без особых сомнений наверное можно предсказать однозначный выбор в сторону Шопена. То и другое у нас - редкое явление. Ну уж AC/DC мало кто закажет. С другой стороны пафос песен Пугачевой, Кобзона не будет оставлен без внимания. Пугачевская поздняя надрывная лирика - чтобы присутствующим уж совсем плохо стало - для женщин, партейно-корпоративный Кобзон - для серьезных мужчин - "Мгоновенья", "превратились в белых журавлей...". Это вам не Топ Гир..