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Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon performing at Woodstock '94

Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Image

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How Blind Melon Lost Their Minds & Made A Masterpiece: 'Soup' Turns 25

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Blind Melon went to New Orleans to record the follow-up to their 4x Platinum debut album amid chaos, arrests and substance abuse. Singer Shannon Hoon never made it out
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
Aug 15, 2020 - 6:30 am

The opening lines of "Hello, Goodbye," which kicks off Soup, Blind Melon's ill-fated second album, serve as Shannon Hoon's warning to listeners of what's to come as the record unfolds.

"I'm entering a frame bombarded by indecision, where a man like me can easily let the day get out of control, down this far in the Quarter," he sings in mock-vaudevillian against boozy New Orleans brass. The revelry is gone as soon as the last horn fades, though, when the pummeling one-two punch of "Galaxie" and "2x4" hit. It's clear this is not the Blind Melon of the lithe, carefree smash hit "No Rain."

The story of Soup, which turns 25 this week, begins and ends in New Orleans, a city that attracts wayward artists like a beacon to its endless menu of distractions. Trent Reznor, Johnny Thunders, Alex Chilton and Marilyn Manson are just a few who lived there in the 1990s alone. And in '94, Blind Melon came, too.

"We didn't really think to ourselves, 'Hey man, New Orleans is probably the worst place for us to be,'" says guitarist Christopher Thorn. "You can party 24/7—the bars never close. You can get anything you want at any f**king time. In the moment, it felt romantic and it felt like exactly what we should be doing."

A few months removed from the debauched final leg of a two-year tour, Blind Melon regrouped in the city's Garden District, where bassist Brad Smith, drummer Glen Graham and guitarist Rogers Stevens had all recently moved. They set up in the "low-rent luxurious" guest house behind Stevens' New Orleans home to jam before moving into Kingsway, a mansion-turned-recording studio owned by producer Daniel Lanois on the edge of the French Quarter.

"We were on fire, because we had just toured our asses off for a couple years," says Thorn. "I would say the band was really at a high level, as far as our playing goes and how we were working together."

The process of writing Soup was different from the collective experience of writing their quadruple-Platinum self-titled debut in North Carolina. Now they were all writing and demoing songs on their own and brought in solid ideas ready to work. Rehearsals usually started late at night, and they tracked demos to an ADAT recorder until morning, collaborating on songs like "The Duke" and "Galaxie." Some tunes, like "St. Andrew's Fall" and "2x4," which was their opener during summer 1994 shows like Woodstock, were already fully formed.

Likewise, the transition to Kingsway with producer Andy Wallace in late 1994 started as a productive time. Hoon and Thorn moved into the house, and the band tracked together in a large dining room while Wallace mixed downstairs. New songs like the Hoon-penned "Vernie," a tribute to his grandmother, and "New Life," written when he learned his girlfriend, Lisa Sinha, was pregnant, contain some of his warmest melodies and lyrics.

Before long, though, the city's party atmosphere began to take over the sessions. Drug dealers became common fixtures, and Hoon sightings became rare. "You only got Shannon for so much time," recalls Thorn. "I don't know how Andy even just finished that record for us. You got Shannon for a few hours a day, if you're lucky." And even then, what they got wasn't always pretty.

One afternoon, Thorn came downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal and found Hoon cooking cocaine on the stove. Another time, he cut himself up with a razor blade for fun. Hoon wasn't the only one in the band overdoing it, though, as accounts in Greg Prato's oral history, "A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon," attest. The collective madness that had become commonplace at Kingsway found its way onto the record.

Thorn and co-guitarist Rogers Stevens were at their Jekyll and Hyde best, playing opposite sides of the coin and never the same parts. Smith and Graham led the whole circus of accordions, mandolins and assorted instruments through dense arrangements. On the serial killer goof "Skinned," banjo is dominant and a kazoo takes the solo. The band explored Eastern sounds and a bossanova beat on the album's most adventurous song, "Car Seat (God’s Presents)." No matter what the band threw at him, Hoon was up to the job. Musically, it all worked.

"There was definitely a feeling of all of us maybe becoming a bit unhinged," says Thorn. "All that added into a great record, and all that drama and all that craziness, it definitely gets on the tracks."

The album's darkest moment is the Hoon-authored "Mouthful of Cavities,” a chilling confessional of drug abuse and paranoia, sung as a duet with singer Jena Kraus. It's unclear whether Hoon is singing about himself or to himself. But perhaps tellingly, the opening lines, "Mouthful of cavities, and your soul's a bowl of jokes," originally read, "Head full of cavities, and my soul's a bowl of jokes."

"I think we all got used to talking to Shannon off the edge," Thorn says. "He would do too much cocaine and start talking about his childhood and things like that. He told me he had a black heart one night, and I was like, 'Dude, what is going on with you? You don't. What do you mean?’ He got really out there and started to really slip. I just didn't have the tools [to help], other than trying to be a friend."

The lyrics to the upbeat closing track, "Lemonade," read like a play-by-play of Hoon’s time in the city. He admits that "this far down South I have no self control," and seems to nod to his arrest for punching a police officer as well as his razor-blade episode in other lines. In a morbid twist, locals Kermit Ruffins and the Rebirth Brass Band bring the album to a close with a second-line funeral march.

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The original 'Soup' packaging
Photo courtesy of Christopher Thorn 

On August 15, 1995, Soup dropped on an alt-rock scene that had already welcomed hit records from contemporaries like The Smashing Pumpkins, Primus and Red Hot Chili Peppers. But even in the anything-goes realm of mid-'90s rock, Soup sunk on delivery.

MTV buried the videos for "Galaxie" and "Toes Across the Floor." Radio was unimpressed, too. "Galaxie" briefly reached No. 8 on the same Billboard Modern Rock chart "No Rain" topped two years earlier during its Billboard Hot 100 run, when it peaked at No. 20. "Toes Across the Floor" didn’t chart at all.

Then came the biggest blow—a scathing review by Rolling Stone and a paltry one-and-a-half-star rating. Writer Ted Drozdowski decried Soup’s lack of riffs or "hippie positivity," derided Hoon’s vocals as out of his range and predicted their impending irrelevance.

"It f**king devastated us," says Thorn. "We thought we made this amazing record, and we thought everyone was going to be super proud of us for not trying to repeat 'No Rain' again. We thought we had made Exile on Main Street. Then the review comes out and someone says, 'Hey, what you made, that you were so proud of, is absolute shit.'"

Photographer Danny Clinch was on tour with them when they found out about the review. "You couldn't respond like you could today through Twitter or Instagram or your own voice," he says. "You had Rolling Stone magazine. People looked at it to see if it was a good record or not."

Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote a letter to Hoon three days after the "obscene little review" came out to encourage him to stay the course and follow his instincts. He pointed out that in the '90s, "Rolling Stone reviews don’t sell records. Videos do."

But unfortunately for Blind Melon, lightning didn’t strike twice in that department, either. Instead of giving MTV the happy-go-lucky bee girl dancing in a lush meadow, they produced two remarkably bad videos—the first, for "Galaxie," was dark and simply 180 degrees from "No Rain," while the clip for "Toes Across the Floor" was awkward and sterile. Both tried to be conceptual but were literal to a fault. In the latter, the actor actually scrapes his toes across the floor at one point.

"They both sucked," says Stevens. "We had a couple of terrible experiences with directors, but with the 'Galaxie' video, that experience came from an uninterested, outside third party—namely [LSD advocate] Timothy Leary, who showed up looking for crack, basically. We were there with a huge warehouse rented and a crew of like 50 people. It's costing, I don't know, 50 grand a day or something ridiculous." Hoon ended up punching a guy on the set and then disappeared until the next day.

To make matters worse, their record label, Capitol Records, had undergone a shakeup and the new leadership wasn’t invested in supporting Blind Melon through their difficult-second-record phase. Once the deck began to stack against the band, they pulled support.

In a clip from the 2020 documentary All I Can Say, compiled from Hoon's own home videotapes, he doesn’t mince words. "A lot of people are offended 'cause they believed in what MTV portrayed us to be all about. No one’s gonna know what I’m about from one video and a bee girl and a cute little story."

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Photo courtesy of Christopher Thorn

By all accounts, Blind Melon was focused when they began their U.S. tour behind Soup. The September 27, 1995 performance at The Metro in Chicago, captured on the Live At The Metro (2005) DVD, is especially strong. Hoon was sober and connecting with audiences, and the band was tight. Spirits were even higher by the time they reached the West Coast, when Sinha and their newborn daughter, Nico Blue, joined them for a week.

Then, after their show in Los Angeles (heard on the 2005 live album Live at the Palace), Hoon fell off the wagon. The band hooked up with old friends at their hotel, and kept the party going on the bus the next day as his girlfriend and daughter flew back home and Blind Melon rolled to the next stop. When they reached Houston a week later, he was high when he took the stage. Thorn and his bandmates were livid.

"I went to bed early, as in, I didn't stay up all night doing blow with him," says Thorn. "I was just disgusted with him, and he could tell I was mad. He would do little things to try to make it up to you without really saying anything. I remember he gave me this [Andy] Warhol book, because he knew I loved art. He's like, 'Hey man, you want to check out my Andy Warhol book?' I was like, 'Yeah, thanks man.' I was pissed."

The bus arrived in New Orleans the morning on October 21 just like any other day. Thorn remembers seeing Hoon in the hotel elevator as they went to their rooms. Nothing seemed off to him. When Hoon got to his room, he began recording on his video camera, a scene shown in All I Can Say. Alternately pacing the floor and stretching out on the bed, Hoon arranges a plane ticket to go home to his new family. His last words in documentary, from the same conversation, are simply tragic: "I, like, really need to get off that f**king bus."

Just a few hours later, Hoon was found dead from a cocaine overdose on the band's tour bus. The surviving members of Blind Melon were left to sort out his life and death, as well as his legacy.

"I regret not really looking at those lyrics at that time and going, 'Hey man, are you okay?'" says Thorn. "We were all caught up in it. I wasn't in a position to go, 'Hey man, are you okay? You seem like you're drifting.' He could say the same thing about me or somebody else in the band. We should have said, 'Shannon's f**ked up and we're coming home right now. Everyone's going to deal with it. All you managers and record companies are not going to make any money.'"

Stevens has similar recollections about the period. "The shows that did get played just before Soup came out and after it came out, most of them were really good. There was some nonsense going on here and there. It wasn't like a rager. We had been through many periods that were way worse. It certainly didn't feel like we were approaching some sort of impending doom, at least to me. I thought that many other times. Maybe when it didn't happen, I just became desensitized, and I shouldn't have."

Soup went on to earn a GRAMMY nomination for Best Recording Packaging – Boxed at the 38th annual GRAMMY Awards in 1995. The album, which pictured Wallace eating soup in a New York City diner on the cover, was packaged to look like a greasy-spoon menu. The album's songs were the "specials," and the foldout included the CD and bonuses such as an "After Show Only" backstage pass.

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The full 'Soup' packaging, styled to look like a greasy-spoon menu.
Photo courtesy of Christopher Thorn

"I think it was the first time, and maybe even one of the few times, that I worked with a food stylist," says Clinch, who was hired to shoot the cover. "We propped it out. They didn't have exactly everything we wanted, so we got our own coffee mugs, silverware, stuff to make it look as authentic as we wanted it to."

Meanwhile, Soup has quietly become a dark-horse favorite of the alt-rock era among fans and critics.

"You listen to that record, it was so adventurous and so timeless," says Clinch. "In my opinion, it doesn't feel like a '90s grunge record at all."

Stevens agrees. "We had a different reference point than our peers. We just approached it from, I feel like, a purer point, where there wasn't a litmus test of things that you were okay with or not that got you in this club. There was a lot of that going on that I felt was ridiculous.

"I did feel at the time that Soup was special," Stevens adds. "I also felt it was unfinished business. That will haunt me until the end of my days. I'll never get over that because aside from my family, the thing that really matters to me, really, is making great records."

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Artwork for For The Record episode on The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers'

The Rolling Stones in 1972

 

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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For The Record: Inside The Wild Ride Behind The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50

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'Sticky Fingers,' the Rolling Stones' chart-topping 1971 album, is an essential and dangerous rock and roll project that marked a rebirth for the iconic band
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
May 16, 2021 - 3:58 pm

The succession of high-profile drug busts and tragedies that shadowed the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s came to a head with the 1971 release of the band's 11th U.S. album, Sticky Fingers.

Recorded amid the disastrous Altamont concert aftermath and between famously debauched concert tours of the U.S. and Europe, Sticky Fingers is every bit as raw as the band's lives were at the time. The smoky barroom swagger of "Sway," the twitchy riffs and raspy vocals of "Bitch," and the grooving yet grimy "Brown Sugar" reflect just how wild the rock and roll ride had become for the band.

A drug bust in 1967 that ensnared Mick Jagger and Keith Richards was a prelude to the years that followed. Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool two years later, less than a month after the Stones fired him for excessive drug use, which had led to dwindling involvement with the group; he barely showed up to sessions for Let It Bleed, the band's 10th U.S. album, which was released in the months following his death.

Eager for a fresh start and desperate for cash, the Stones played a now-legendary concert at Hyde Park in London and hit the U.S. for their first tour in two years during the latter half of 1969. Chaos followed the band, culminating in a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in the hills between Livermore and Tracy, California. Billed as a sort of West Coast Woodstock, with a lineup featuring Jefferson Airplane, Santana and the Grateful Dead, the concert instead punctuated the end of the hippie peace-and-love era.

Clashes between members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, which was hired as concert security at the event, and audience members created an atmosphere so charged, the Grateful Dead chose not to perform, even though they had helped organize the event. One biker assaulted Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin while others took aim at concertgoers like Meredith Hunter, who was stabbed to death in front of the stage during the Stones' performance.

The tragedy followed the triumph of the first recording sessions for Sticky Fingers, which had begun four days earlier at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Florence, Alabama.

Inside The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50

Opened earlier that year by a group of session musicians known as the Swampers, who had backed Aretha Franklin on "Respect," the studio was hungry for its first hit. With the Rolling Stones, they got two: "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses," the album's two singles, were tracked at Muscle Shoals, alongside a faithful cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move," between December 2-4.

"Brown Sugar" has the distinction of being one of the most controversial songs to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked in May 1971. Musically, the song is a Stones master class that builds on a signature Richards guitar riff. By the time Bobby Keys blows his climactic saxophone solo, the guitars are playing off each other, percussion and piano are clanging away underneath, and Jagger is howling his head off.

The song's lyrics, however, are another matter. Although Marsha Hunt, a British actress of African descent, with whom Jagger fathered a child in 1970, is credited as the muse behind "Brown Sugar," the song is rife with allusions and outright explicit references to slavery, sex and drugs that were indefensible even half a century ago. In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger called the lyrics "a mishmash" that combines "all the nasty subjects in one go." He appears to have cooled on his lyrical concept over the years, though; in the same interview, he said he "never would write that song now."

At the other end of the spectrum, the country-tinged "Wild Horses" and the album-closing ballad "Moonlight Mile" show a more introspective Jagger, wistful and longing on the former and road-weary on the latter. Acoustic guitars provide the foundation for both songs, as well as "Dead Flowers" and "Sister Morphine," while tremulous guitars and ascending horns accent the otherwise sparse, pleading soul of "I Got the Blues."

Read: Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': For The Record

Sticky Fingers also marked several key personnel changes in the Rolling Stones universe. The ouster and subsequent death of Brian Jones led them to hire guitarist Mick Taylor, of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, who refueled the band's energy.

Taylor stepped into the role fully on Sticky Fingers, providing nuances like the chiming harmonics on "Wild Horses" and setting the jam-band template with his extended guitar solo on the seven-minute "Can You Hear Me Knocking" over a single-chord vamp. He played all the guitars on "Moonlight Mile" after an increasingly unreliable Richards failed to show up to sessions at Stargroves, Jagger's English countryside home, and often nodded off while high on heroin when he did. Taylor would have to step up more in the coming years as his bandmate's habit grew.

The end of the group's relationship with record label executive Allen Klein and his ABKCO label also gave lift to the band and began the modern era of the Rolling Stones. Sticky Fingers was the first album released on Rolling Stones Records, which debuted the iconic lips-and-tongue logo, designed by John Pasche.

Despite landing right in the middle of what many fans consider their golden era—the four-album run from 1968-1972 that also included Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St.—Sticky Fingers marked a rebirth for the Rolling Stones; the album's legacy and impact would continue to evolve in the decades to come.

Sticky Fingers reentered the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 in 2015 following a massive reissue campaign. The Deluxe reissue includes alternate takes, such as "Brown Sugar" recorded with Eric Clapton on guitar and an extended version of "Bitch," alongside live tracks recorded in 1971. The Super Deluxe reissue adds a bonus 13-song live recording from a gig at the University of Leeds that same year.

And while the band members' personal habits veered further off the rails in the Exile on Main St. period and throughout the '70s, "the Rolling Stones" as a corporation grew into a recording, touring, promotion, and merchandising machine. By the end of the decade, the Rolling Stones were a stadium act—and they haven't turned back since.

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Artwork for For The Record episode on Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Stadium Arcadium'

Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007

 

Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty Images

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For The Record: Inside Red Hot Chili Peppers' Masterpiece: 'Stadium Arcadium' At 15

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Released in 2006, 'Stadium Arcadium,' Red Hot Chili Peppers' four-time GRAMMY-winning masterpiece, is an ambitious project from one of the most daring rock bands of their generation.
Jordan Blum
GRAMMYs
May 9, 2021 - 10:07 am

By the mid-2000s, Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP) were deservedly enjoying the most commercially and creatively successful period of their 20-year career. After all, they'd triumphed over their tumultuous and tragic early years—which, however, musically venerated and influential, included multiple lineup changes and bouts with drug abuse—to achieve massive artistic and mainstream prosperity via Californication (1999) and By the Way (2002).

Admittedly, not all fans were pleased with the group substituting some of their beloved, raucous playing and risqué subject matter with more accessible approaches; yet, it's hard to deny that both albums were significant for their high quality and myriad industry accolades as well as for how they embodied the band's mostly shared sense of healing and growth. (This was particularly true for guitarist/backing vocalist John Frusciante, who'd conquered his heroin addiction and rejoined the group with newfound confidence and ingenuity in 1998).

Feeling immensely prolific and capable, the Chili Peppers, following the two-year tour for By the Way, reteamed with Rick Rubin, who produced their previous four albums, in September 2004 to embark on their most ambitious and diverse project thus far: Stadium Arcadium.

Recorded at The Mansion in Los Angeles, where the group also laid down Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991, Stadium Arcadium, a 28-song double album, incorporated virtually every style the quartet had ever done. Naturally, that flexibility and inventiveness led to some of the most extensive songwriting and captivating arrangements they'd ever made. As a result, Stadium Arcadium is best viewed as an incredibly rewarding and varied tribute to the group's history.

Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Stadium Arcadium' At 15

Of course, double albums had been a popular music tradition for decades: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (1966), Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), 2Pac's All Eyez On Me (1996)—the list goes on. It was almost inevitable that the Chili Peppers would issue one, too. (In fact, they'd intended to release Stadium Arcadium as a trilogy, dropping six months apart, before deciding to put out everything at once, the band told NME in 2006.)

In his July 2006 interview with Total Guitar, Frusciante revealed they had no reservations about attempting such a feat, either: "We don't just make music … for our own pleasure; we make music for our audience. We write 28 songs that we think are top-notch, that's what we want to give to the public … We're putting out what we believe is worthy." To his credit, every track on Stadium Arcadium earns its place and contributes to the greater whole.

It's also worth noting that making Stadium Arcadium was more congenial and collaborative than By the Way, due mostly to the repaired relationship between Frusciante and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Due to his melodic prowess and characteristically adaptable methods, Frusciante was often seen as the heart of the Chili Pepper's sound around this time. That was especially evident on By the Way, on which he desired to move further away from the edginess of the band's past and toward the harmonious arrangements of groups like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and his own fruitful solo discography. Consequently, Flea, who wanted to emphasize their prior funk and punk elements, felt somewhat uninvolved and unappreciated to the point that he contemplated quitting after the band finished their By the Way World Tour; the two worked out their differences by the time Stadium Arcadium got underway.

Speaking to Kerrang! in May 2006, Frusciante admitted, "It's more of a band now. I don't force my ideas on people as much as I did." Flea concurs, clarifying that creating Stadium Arcadium was a healthily democratic and communal process. In a 2007 chat with MTV News, vocalist Anthony Kiedis noted, "There was very little tension, very little anxiety, [and] very little weirdness going on … everyone felt more comfortable than ever bringing in their ideas."

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Those creative peaks and compromises undoubtedly make Stadium Arcadium such an all-encompassing victory. In fact, it became the Chili Pepper's first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and earned them four GRAMMY Awards at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007: Best Rock Album, Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, and Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, the latter two for album opener "Dani California." (Producer Rick Rubin would also win the GRAMMY for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical that night.)

Fifteen years later, Stadium Arcadium endures as one of the quartet's most representative and striving projects. Divided into two parts—the engaging "Jupiter" and the comparatively esoteric "Mars"—it logically continues the contemporary rock templates and earworm songwriting of By the Way and Californication. Specifically, the ironically sunny elegy "Dani California," which centers on the same character from the title tracks off the aforementioned predecessors, is undeniably catchy and tightly composed, while "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "Stadium Arcadium" are lovingly poppy and symphonic. Later, the acoustic guitar strums and radiant harmonies of "Slow Cheetah," "Desecration Smile" and "Hey" border on folk rock, whereas "So Much I" is peak alternative rock smoothness.

Of course, the real brilliance of Stadium Arcadium is how it peppers (no pun intended) more modern flavors with comprehensive doses of wide-ranging nostalgia. In particular, tracks like "She's Only 18," "Animal Bar" and "Turn It Again" harken back to the heavier funk and metal motifs found on earlier RHCP albums such as Mother's Milk (1989) and One Hot Minute (1995). Similarly, songs like "Charlie," "Hump de Bump," "Warlocks" and "Readymade" recall the frisky funkiness of Freaky Styley (1985) and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987) via playful horns, resourceful percussion and Flea's trademark slap bass vigorousness. RHCP even recapture a bit of their early rap rock sound, a genre they helped define on albums like Blood Sugar Sex Magik, on "So Much I" and "Storm in a Teacup," among other tunes.

Although Kiedis, Flea, and drummer Chad Smith excel throughout the album's two-hour runtime, it's perhaps Frusciante who shows the most range and advancement throughout Stadium Arcadium. From start to finish, he implements some truly exploratory vocal and guitar techniques, retaining his recent minimalism while tapping into a newfound appreciation for double-tracked recording and the flashiness of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and the Mars Volta's Omar Rodríguez-López, the latter of whom he'd collaborate with throughout the decade. "We Believe" finds Frusciante employing angelic backing harmonies, quirky psychedelic licks and echoey progressive rock weirdness. His supplemental singing is also sublime on "Torture Me," "Stadium Arcadium" and "She Looks to Me." Meanwhile, he flexes his improvisational soloing skills on "Strip My Mind," "Wet Sand," "Hey" and closer "Death of a Martian" to conjure the emotional heft and fuzzy theatrics of Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have long been one of the most daring and diverse bands of their generation; each album and phase has its unique touch and deserves its own audience. Even so, Stadium Arcadium, an all-encompassing magnum opus, offers just about everything one could possibly want from a Chili Peppers record—and then some. It sees the quartet expanding upon their stylistic past while commemorating their newly restored bond; all the while, Stadium Arcadium amplifies the idiosyncratic essentialness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as both a collective force and individually distinctive musicians.

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John Lennon in 1970

John Lennon in 1970

 

Photo: Chris Walter/WireImage

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Now That I Showed You What I Been Through: 50 Years Of 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'

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After The Beatles' split and before 'Imagine,' Lennon recorded a jarring audio confessional that remains indelible in 2020
Ana Leorne
GRAMMYs
Dec 29, 2020 - 4:25 pm

John Lennon asked The Beatles for a "divorce," and he got his wish. After the group's breakup in 1970, quarreling and competition were the norm between himself, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. In Lennon's case, this tension added to a slightly tainted reputation derived from the public's disappointment upon The Beatles' end, his unpopular marriage to Yoko Ono and an artistic dispersion. The latter resulted from an ongoing quest to find his spot in a world he'd grown frustrated with yet to which he desperately wanted to belong. As evidenced by his songs and remarks, Lennon's efforts to find himself often left him feeling empty, and he regularly lacked unconditional trust or engagement.

Standing in the way of this self-discovery process was an inability to resolve past traumas, which was one of the main reasons why Lennon decided to undergo Arthur Janov's primal scream program. He had the apparent goal of finally dealing with childhood wounds related to his mother's death and feelings of rejection linked to his father's absence. But the treatment also addressed the recent pain of losing his other family—the one Lennon had shared a life with for the past decade. In short, how could he go forward when he didn't know which way he was facing?

Lennon channeled all this into his debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which turns 50 this month. (December 2020 also marks the 40th anniversary of his murder.) Released as a companion to Ono's concurrent solo debut, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon's album was therapy in its purest form: raw and self-referential. This intimacy was also apparent in the recording process: Apart from Lennon and Ono, the latter of whom is credited on the album sleeve for contributing "wind," the only other musicians were Starr and bassist Klaus Voormann, along with former Beatles roadie Mal Evans (for "tea and sympathy"), pianist Billy Preston and Phil Spector, who played piano on "Love" and "God," respectively.

When a cycle doesn't end fast enough, there's often a tendency to accelerate it, and Lennon was a man on a mission. The previous year, Lennon had been creatively disengaged from the Let It Be sessions and generally disapproving of the approach McCartney and producer George Martin wanted for Abbey Road, as he attempted to destroy the entity he helped create. This self-sabotaging process, which coincided with his dangerous affair with heroin, often translated into a deafening silence that Beatles scholar Stephanie Piotrowski describes in her Ph.D. dissertation as "part of Lennon's agenda to break The Beatles' myth."

But silence wasn't his sole strategy. It progressively became apparent throughout his solo career—culminating with his GRAMMY-winning final album with Ono, Double Fantasy (1980)—that Ono was his new partner-in-crime in McCartney's stead. For anyone unable to take a hint, in September 1969, he privately told the other three Beatles he was leaving the group. Their financial manager, Allen Klein, asked them to keep this development a secret for as long as possible, fearing the news would undermine sales of the forthcoming album, Let It Be (1970), which was taking forever to mix and master. 

Read: History Of: Walk To London's Famed Abbey Road Studios With The Beatles

Lennon's apparent hurry to break free makes it odd that Plastic Ono Band only came out in December 1970, rendering him the last Beatle to release a proper debut album. (This, of course, if we don't count three previous experimental albums with Ono: Two Virgins, in 1968, and Life With The Lions and Wedding Album, both in 1969. And don't forget the hastily put-together Live Peace In Toronto 1969, which partly consisted of early rock covers and featured Ono, guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Voormann and drummer Alan White.)

Spector was supposed to be producing, but he was missing in action when the sessions began, leading Lennon to publish a full-page ad in Billboard saying, "Phil! John is ready this weekend." His relative absence ended up being a blessing in disguise: Spector's trademark "Wall of Sound" style probably wouldn't have suited the album's ethos. Lennon and Ono's minimalist approach matched the content better, allowing the emotional outpouring to sound adequately barer. 

Revolving around themes of healing, surrender and replacement, Plastic Ono Band is a prime example of Lennon's songwriting particularities. These include his remarkable ability to craft instant hooks, focus on the lyrical element and rely on subjectivity in storytelling, which contrasted with McCartney's general preference for third-person points of view. 

Always with a way with words, Lennon refrained from complicating his message, choosing direct statements ("Hold On," "Look At Me") over the elusive metaphors and cryptic references he often returned to during The Beatles' later years. This aspect made the album vaguely echo his mid-'60s confessional period that produced "Help!" and "In My Life," transpiring as a matured reflection of what it felt like to feel lost in the eye of the hurricane.

For all its sincerity and the psychological commitment that it symbolized to Lennon,

the album encountered a mixed reception at best; it was also quickly eclipsed by the release of Imagine nine months later, in 1971. Similar to what had happened with McCartney's self-titled debut, some critics accused John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band of being a product of self-preoccupation and void egotism. This harsh perception mostly came from the absurdly high expectations following The Beatles' breakup. 

"This is the album of a man of black bile," Geoffrey Cannon declared in a 1970 review for The Guardian. "Lennon's album makes a deep impression, if more on him than us … This is declamation, not music. It's not about freedom and love, but madness and pain."

Read: The Beatles Take Aim With 1966's 'Revolver': For The Record 

Even though Imagine eventually became Lennon's indisputable legacy—the title track was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 1999, seven years after Lennon's posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award—Plastic Ono Band was still properly cherished. Fans embraced its relatability. It's easier to identify with one's idol opening up about their problems of love and loss than hearing them discuss overly abstract concepts, the renunciatory "God" and tender "Love" being exceptions.

But it also helped that the album didn't become as heavy an institution as Imagine did. Less over(ab)used by pop culture and more grounded in both content and form, Plastic Ono Band felt more human and accessible, despite coming from the myth-ridden colossus called John Lennon.

In September 1980, three months before his death, Lennon gave an extensive interview to David Sheff for Playboy magazine. Sheff asked what Ono had done for him. "She showed me the possibility of the alternative," Lennon replied. "'You don't have to do this.' 'I don't? Really? But-but-but-but-but...'" Although he was referring to his temporary retirement from music to dedicate himself to being a house husband fully, one could see Plastic Ono Band as the dénouement of a similar epiphany 10 years prior. It kick-started a new life Lennon knew would be radically different from everything he had previously experienced.

In addition to representing a threshold moment for Lennon, the album underwent a mutation with regard to its critical reception. Over the decades, Plastic Ono Band received praise that was anything but a given at its release. In 2020, the album ranked at No. 85 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list. "Lennon's [...] pure, raw core of confession [...] is years ahead of punk," the list's album entry reads. 

However, perhaps Lennon acerbically summed it up best in his Rolling Stone interview with four words that remain jarring to read: "The Beatles was nothing."

It's Not Always Going To Be This Grey: George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50

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George Harrison c.1970/1971

George Harrison c.1970/1971

Photo: GAB Archive/Redferns

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It's Not Always Going To Be This Grey: George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50

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On the 50th anniversary of the chart-topping, GRAMMY-nominated album, GRAMMY.com explores all the reasons why 'All Things Must Pass' remains an important landmark in George Harrison's legacy and his most enduring solo testimony
Ana Leorne
GRAMMYs
Nov 27, 2020 - 7:33 am

In 1970, Let It Be, the documentary chronicling The Beatles' final studio album of the same name, hit theaters worldwide, providing a blunt answer to the whys and the hows for those who might still be in denial about the group's inevitable separation. The film unmercifully exposed numerous cracks in their interpersonal relationships, only letting us see fragments of what had once been a cohesive, seemingly indivisible unit. Although incredibly frustrating to many fans, this portrayal proved crucial for an adequate understanding of each member's personal and professional motivations at the time—particularly George Harrison, whose creative persona was undergoing a vital and revolutionary change.

Those sessions, which author Peter Doggett describes in his book, "You Never Give Me Your Money," as "a drama with no movement or character development," showcase Harrison's growing exasperation with the part he'd been given to play within The Beatles' equation as well as a certain impatience and dissatisfaction replacing his acquiescence of previous years. Recently returned from a stay with Bob Dylan at Woodstock to what he would later call "The Beatles' winter of discontent" in "The Beatles Anthology," Harrison continued to see his musical contributions systematically met with disdain from his bandmates. It soon became obvious that challenging the John Lennon/Paul McCartney power axis would be an impossible task while the band was still together—a realization that further accelerated The Beatles' disintegration.

All Things Must Pass is a direct result of this unmaking. Released November 27, 1970, All Things Must Pass was technically Harrison's third studio album yet his first fully realized solo release following two slightly niche LPs prior: Wonderwall Music (1968), the mostly instrumental soundtrack to Joe Massot's film, Wonderwall, and Electronic Sound (1969), a two-track avant-garde project.

The imbalance in group dynamics made evident in the Let It Be documentary is essential to understand the genesis of All Things Must Pass since the two projects are irrevocably intertwined—perhaps more so than Lennon's or McCartney's respective debuts, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and McCartney, which also released in 1970. While his bandmates had long made peace with their prime status as composers, Harrison's mounting refusal to be repeatedly pushed to second best was reaching a boiling point, and his creativity soared in proportion. By then, the material he'd been putting in the drawer was far too vast to fit in a single album alone. 

For The Record: Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass'

For anyone doubting Harrison's ability to stand on his own two feet as a solo artist, All Things Must Pass must have hit like a ton of bricks. Composed of three records, two LPs plus an extra disc titled Apple Jam that mostly contained improvised instrumentals, the album emerged as Harrison's definite and irrevocable declaration of independence. 

Still, the album was colored with references to a painful recent past: These are visible in the cryptic album art showing Harrison in his Friar Park estate surrounded by four gnomes, often interpreted as the musician removing himself from The Beatles' collective identity. There are also the not-so-veiled attacks on his bandmates in "Wah-Wah," the sad contemplation of a breakup in "Isn't It A Pity?" and the inclusion of several compositions that had been turned down by The Beatles, such as "Art Of Dying," "Let It Down" and the album's title track, which Harrison can be seen playing to the other three in Let It Be.

The album, recorded between May and October in 1970, gathered an impressive supergroup of backing musicians that included bassist (and Revolver cover artist) Klaus Voormann, members of Badfinger and Delaney & Bonnie, Let It Be keyboardist Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and even Ringo Starr, the only Beatle who seemed to have no major feud with the other three. 

Although Harrison had a very clear idea of what he wanted, things did not always go so smoothly. By summer, sessions came to a temporary halt as he made regular visits to see his dying mother in Liverpool. At the same time, further pressure came from EMI, who grew preoccupied with the alarming costs that a triple album would ensue. This, combined with Clapton's escalating heroin addiction and infatuation with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, who he would eventually marry, contributed to a strained ambience that might at times have struck a chord of déjà vu for the Beatle. 

Producer Phil Spector's erratic behavior didn't help either: Having been recruited by both Harrison and Lennon for their solo debuts following his impressive work on Let It Be, he was frequently unfit to function or nowhere to be found, forcing Harrison to take production matters into his own hands.

Despite all the delays and behind-the-scenes tension, some of it still resulting from the ongoing legal disputes between the four Beatles, All Things Must Pass triumphed. The album received a nomination for Album Of The Year at the 1972 GRAMMYs, while its No. 1 single "My Sweet Lord," for which Harrison was sued for copyright infringement and ultimately lost, was nominated for Record Of The Year. All Things Must Pass was ultimately inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 2014; Harrison was honored with the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award one year later.

While a triple album could have easily been dismissed as self-indulgence as pop crossed over to the individualistic '70s, the reception of All Things Must Pass was so indisputably solid and favorable that some music critics claimed it eclipsed Lennon's and McCartney's solo efforts. Maybe it was the surprise factor, too. Melody Maker's Richard Williams would best summarize this in his review of the album with the famous line, "Garbo talks! - Harrison is free!"—a reference fitting of how it felt to witness "the quiet one" finally raising his voice. 

All Things Must Pass opened the gates to a world the public had only glimpsed during The Beatles years, proclaiming a coming of age that had been delayed for too long. Encapsulating Harrison's serenity without falling into a trap of passiveness, the album acted simultaneously as epilogue and opening chapter by precipitating both public and personal healing.

But the ghost of Beatles past would still come back to haunt Harrison as he, like the other three, quickly realized one doesn't simply cease to be a Beatle. Recurrent comparisons and undeclared fights both in and outside the charts persisted throughout the years, bringing back the vestiges of a narrative he hadn't fully absconded yet no longer defined him. "We've been nostalgia since 1967," Doggett quotes Harrison as saying at the time of the album's release, commenting on The Beatles' inability to escape a very specific, even if outdated, image that had been crystallized in the public's collective imagination. 

Fifty years later, All Things Must Pass remains an important landmark in George Harrison's legacy and his most enduring solo testimony—something music journalist Paul Du Noyer points out on the text "When 1 Becomes 4" as a slight irony, since the title refers precisely to "the impermanence of things." But more than that, the album is a fascinating and detailed snapshot of the exact moment Harrison officially announced he was willing to move on from a game whose rules had long ceased to serve him.

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