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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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Blind Melon's Sophomore LP 'Soup' Turns 25 how-blind-melon-lost-their-minds-made-masterpiece-soup-turns-25

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.

GRAMMYs

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."

GRAMMYs

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.

GRAMMYs

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."

No Self Control: An Oral History Of 'Peter Gabriel III'

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John Lennon in 1970

John Lennon in 1970

 

Photo: Chris Walter/WireImage

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'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' At 50 john-lennon-plastic-ono-band-50-year-anniversary

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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George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50 george-harrison-all-things-must-pass-50-year-anniversary

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.

Celebrating The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's' 50th Anniversary

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My Chemical Romance's 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys' Album Cover

Danger Days Album Cover

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10 Years Of My Chemical Romance's 'Danger Days' my-chemical-romance-danger-days-10-year-anniversary

Look Alive, Sunshine: 10 Years Of My Chemical Romance's 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys'

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Released in November 2010, the band's fourth and final studio album is a bold statement that pushed its creators, and their devotees, to new places
Jordan Blum
GRAMMYs
Nov 22, 2020 - 1:03 pm

Founded in Newark, N.J., in 2001, My Chemical Romance (MCR) were at the top of their game by the start of the 2010s. While their 2002 debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, was a promising and successful fusion of gothic rock and post-hardcore, it was their two immediate follow-ups—Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006)—that turned them into full-blown emo emissaries. In fact, those album covers and concepts remain synonymous with the movement, gracing the walls of Hot Topic stores across the U.S. and being celebrated by virtually every genre fan.

Consequently, that also meant that My Chemical Romance's fourth and final studio album, Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys, largely lived in the shadows of the band's two breakout releases—at least to an extent. Released November 22, 2010, the album evolved MCR's already-winning aesthetic narratively, structurally and musically, which understandably resulted in some polarization among listeners. Ultimately, that's a testament to the boldness and maturity of Danger Days, as it, like all worthwhile artistic endeavors, pushed its creators and their devotees to new places. As such, it's the group's most striving and sundry collection

MCR recorded Danger Days between June 2009 and July 2010. At first, the band worked with producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, AC/DC) on their new material; however, those tracks were ultimately saved for a subsequent compilation,  Conventional Weapons (2013). The group enlisted The Black Parade producer Rob Cavallo once again. Likewise, drummer Bob Bryar—who took over for co-founder Matt Pelissier in 2004 immediately after the release of Three Cheers—officially left in March 2010. Interestingly, he's only credited with songwriting here, with John Miceli filling in on drums and percussion on all tracks except "Bulletproof Heart," which features Dorian Crozier. 

Read: Hayley Williams On Going Solo, Alanis Morissette & Trusting Her Intuition

Stylistically, MCR uphold their trademark alternative/punk/pop-rock foundation on Danger Days while also digging deeper into electronic, proto-punk and even psychedelic elements. According to Way, this was an attempt to offer a "stripped down" sound and pay homage to '60s and '70s icons like The Beatles, Queen and David Bowie. Therefore, Danger Days feels like a sibling to its precursors that also evokes the catchier, freer and brighter power/synth-pop vibes of Coheed and Cambria, Panic! at the Disco and modern Green Day.

Like its forebears, the record is a concept album: Danger Days takes place in a post-apocalyptic California in 2019 and follows The Killjoys, a quartet of rebellious reactionaries composed of Party Poison, The Kobra Kid, Jet-Star and Fun Ghoul, as they try to take down the nefarious Better Living Industries. Clearly, that Gorillaz-meets-Mad Max kind of colorful cataclysm is in stark contrast to MCR's previously bleaker storylines; the fact that the sequence is framed around broadcasts from a lively pirate radio host, Dr. Death Defying, adds to the friskiness. This technique also places Danger Days in the ever-expanding lineage of albums that unfold like live broadcasts: The Who Sell Out, Queens Of The Stone Age's Songs For The Deaf, Janelle Monáe's The Electric Lady, Vince Staples' FM. It's not surprise that Way sees the album as their "defining work."

Throughout the album's elaborately hyped marketing cycle, which included "secret shows" and a fanciful trailer, MCR released several singles and music videos; most of those showed up in other forms of pop culture, too, such as in the film Movie 43; TV shows like "Teen Wolf" and "The Voice"; and video games like "The Sims 3" and "Gran Turismo 5." There was also a corresponding 48-page book and a three-track EP, The Mad Gear And Missile Kid, the latter of which guitarist Frank Iero billed as being "what The Killjoys are listening to in the car as they're having those gun battles." (Way also created a comic book sequel, "The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys," in 2013.)

Danger Days sold over 1 million copies worldwide within its first three months, peaking at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums and Alternative Albums charts and securing gold certification by the RIAA. It became a Top 10 hit on the Billboard 200 chart and gained comparable chart placements in Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Finland. True, The Black Parade fared much better—a No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200 chart and a triple-platinum certification by the RIAA—but Danger Days proved quite popular overall, with outlets like The Guardian, NME, Alternative Press, USA Today and Kerrang! praising it.

Overall, Danger Days is awesome. Dr. Death Defying kicks things off with a flashy introduction in "Look Alive, Sunshine," which is peppered with prophetic dissonance. It segues into the anthemic and spunky "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)," a stadium rock gem that embodies how Danger Days frequently repurposes MCR's beloved foundation into a glitzier and freer environment. Similarly, "Sing" places the group's recognizable antagonism beneath a sparser and lighter vibe. 

Afterward, "Planetary (GO!)" offers a bit of unabashed dance-punk that is irresistibly enjoyable. Meanwhile, "Party Poison" incorporates a glam rock edge into its celebratory ethos, whereas "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W" is a shimmering ballad and "Summertime" is a synthy slice of impassioned romanticism. In general, these tracks, among others, do a pleasing and commendable job of infusing new timbres and styles into their formula.

In contrast, the angsty forcefulness and straightforward strength of "Bulletproof Heart," "Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back" and "The Only Hope For Me Is You" recall more of MCR's earlier DNA. There's even a touch of post-hardcore heaviness on "Destroya," as well as some requisite emo fatalism and hyperbolic sentimentality on "The Kids From Yesterday." Closer "Vampire Money," written in reaction to people wanting them to contribute a song to the Twilight films, evokes the British attitude of The Rolling Stones and The Kinks before oozing classic rock 'n' roll charm, albeit with far more sharpness.

Danger Days may have been the beginning of the end for My Chemical Romance—at least until the band's very public reunion last year. Still, it's surely MCR's artistic peak, with an expansively entertaining storyline, a wide breadth of stylistic approaches and clever promotional tactics leading to a cumulatively greater sense of purpose and imagination. Thus, Danger Days stands as both their swan song and superlative release—that is, until we finally get that fifth studio album. 

What It Meant To Me Will Eventually Be A Memory: Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Turns 20

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No Doubt in 1996

 

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

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No Doubt's 'Tragic Kingdom' Turns 25 welcome-tragic-kingdom-no-doubts-masterpiece-turns-25

Welcome To The Tragic Kingdom: No Doubt's Masterpiece Turns 25

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The ska-pop greats' sophomore record not only featured some of the most definitive songs of its era, but its visceral lyrics and innovative genre-bending would make a significant impact on the fabrics of pop and rock music at large
Yasmine Shemesh
GRAMMYs
Oct 10, 2020 - 6:47 am

In the spring of 1995, uncertainty hung heavy in the Southern California air for No Doubt, a spirited band of misfits from the Anaheim suburbs. Their bouncy, brassy 1992 self-titled debut had been ignored and their label, Interscope Records, didn’t really know what to do with them other than pass them to producer Matthew Wilder, of "Break My Stride" fame, for guidance. Eric Stefani, who co-founded the band in 1986 with his sister, Gwen, and classmate, John Spence, was growing more disillusioned with it all every day. The main songwriter and visionary, he wasn’t much for relinquishing creative control. And for a group who found inspiration in the Jamaican ska, new wave and punk of British two-tone bands like the Selecter and Madness, the Wilder paring felt like, as Gwen told Rolling Stone in 1997, "such an invasion, at first."

No Doubt took their frustration into their garage studio on Beacon Avenue and furiously recorded a sophomore effort over a weekend on their own watch. The Beacon Street Collection captured the raw energy that made the band so popular in Orange County’s ska and punk undergrounds and peers of like-minded groups such as Sublime—but, then, Eric left the band in late 1994. No Doubt self-released the album in March the following year. It was embraced more warmly than its predecessor and proved their worth to Interscope, who greenlit a studio follow-up. But without their former captain steering the ship, No Doubt was treading new water.

Read More: Got To Keep On Movin': How Matthew Wilder's '80s Deep Cut "Break My Stride" Broke TikTok

Stefani had already been writing songs of her own, trying make sense of the end of her eight-year relationship with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal. Kanal and guitarist Tom Dumont picked up songwriting duties along the way, too. But it would be Stefani’s heartache and hopeful angst that would really set Tragic Kingdom on fire—and launch No Doubt into superstardom and Stefani as a pop culture luminary, first with the lead single, "Just A Girl." With sunny, swirling opening guitar riffs and Stefani, in her signature vocal quaver, belting about feeling under the thumb of protective parents and the misogynies of society, "Just A Girl" became one of the most important feminist anthems of the decade. Tragic Kingdom, released on October 10, 1995, also earned the band a substantial number of awards including GRAMMY nominations in 1997 and 1998. Producing seven singles over three years, the album not only featured some of the most definitive songs of its era, but its visceral lyrics and innovative genre-bending would make a significant impact on the fabrics of pop and rock music at large. 25 years later, the album endures both as a confessional pop masterpiece and beloved classic that continues to resonate deeply. 

With Eric at the helm, quirkiness was a defining quality of No Doubt’s sound. Though a bit scattered, his zany compositions carved out a fearless approach the band would continue to carry after he left—which worked in their favor, since the departure made space for the artistic idiosyncrasies of the other members to shine. Dumont’s technical dexterity, for example—the result of a varied background of playing in heavy metal bands and studying classical guitar theory in college. Fan-turned-drummer Adrian Young, with his feverish yet nuanced pummel executed in the vein of Rush's Neal Peart. Kanal, who had absorbed '80s rock from his pre-Angeleno childhood in England, played in his high school jazz band, and found profound inspiration in Prince. And Gwen, a self-proclaimed "ska chick" who loved The Sound of Music, old Hollywood glamour and the Police. While the group retained the madcap spirit that had always made them so much fun to listen to, this version of No Doubt was more structured than ever—a cohesiveness partly in credit to Wilder, to be sure, but they found their sweet spot within each other. The band’s amalgamation of influences and individual strengths created a fresh sound that was so distinct and yet so hard to define, which is what made it—and continues to make it—so brilliant. And it set them apart from the heavy broodiness of contemporaries like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Hole that then ruled the alternative mainstream.

The shift is heard immediately on "Spiderwebs," Tragic Kingdom’s opener, which combines a new wave-tinged melody with bubbly reggae bass licks and a mosh-inducing chorus. It transitions perfectly into the rapid-fire punk of "Excuse Me Mr.," a song about desperately vying for unrequited attention, the sonic blistering of which is similarly channeled in the angsty "Sixteen." Then, there's "Happy Now?," a guitar-driven rock track detailing a certain painful breakup with acerbic lyrics like "Now you must adhere / To your new career of liberation / You've been cast all by yourself / You're free at last." Hints of horn blast throughout the album adding a brightness to songs such as "Sunday Morning"—one of the Tragic Kingdom’s best, with ska and pop elements, ascending drums and a deliciously bitter Stefani who sneers, "Now you’re the parasite."

The consummate song about Kanal and Stefani's relationship, of course, is "Don't Speak." Originally, Dumont told Complex, Eric wrote most of it. Only after working on it together as a band was it elevated to a rock ballad with Spanish guitar, with Gwen rewording the lyrics to reflect what was happening in her life. It took on even more meaning as No Doubt was blowing up and Stefani began receiving significantly more attention than her bandmates—the simmering tension of which is played up in the song’s music video. The song’s popularity—and, to a larger extent, the album’s—made it challenging to keep revisiting the breakup each time they did press, Kanal said. But, he added, "The fact that we got through all that stuff and we persevered through all that is a real testament to our friendship. I think it’s also a testament to how much the band means to us. We didn’t let it break us up as a band, and we just kept going and it made us stronger."

Tragic Kingdom is widely considered a breakup album, and it is, but the heartbreak also extends to more than just Stefani and Kanal. The band faced so much tragedy in their formative years, starting with suicide of co-founder John Spence in 1987 when they were only a year old. Spence shared vocal duties with a then-bashful Stefani and was a charismatic frontman who did backflips on stage. Days before No Doubt were to perform at the Roxy Theatre, a gig they hoped would be their big break, he shot himself. The Roxy was announced as the devastated band’s final show. They reunited a month later because, Stefani told Interview, it’s what Spence would have wanted. The unreleased song, "Dear John," pays tribute to their friend.

And then there was Eric’s exit. While it set No Doubt on their course, it rattled their confidence emphatically. It was traumatic, Dumont said. "We were just a group of friends who were really tight, and we had our band for years. Our band just got rocked with this intense, personal stuff." And, Stefani admitted, it almost made them give up. "We were sitting there saying to ourselves, ‘O.K., we are 26. We’ve been doing this for eight years. Maybe we should finish up and get adult lives now.’ Then the record came out and people thought it was good, which was really weird, because we were always the dork band from Anaheim." "The Climb," a psychedelic slow burner that alludes to overcoming obstacles, is one of Eric’s two solo offerings to Tragic Kingdom—the other being the freaky title-track, which describes a dystopian Disneyland and Walt’s cryogenically frozen tears as dripping icicles—and has emerged as a fan-favorite over the years.

But while No Doubt’s early years may have been flooded with drama, plumbing the depths of it helped them find their voice. Collective agony cultivated the strength of their bond and dug into an honest narrative about navigating loss that is not only powerful, but universally relatable. We all experience pain. It’s an intrinsic part of the human experience. And we tend to relate to art that, even if ever so slightly, taps into our grief because it expresses it in a way that we perhaps exactly can’t. It hits a nerve. And that’s deeply comforting—which is arguably why Tragic Kingdom continues to endure in the powerful way that it does: yes, it’s poetic, gorgeously dynamic, and sounded fizzy and fresh against the band’s radio contemporaries. But it’s also a symbol of hope in the wake of tragedy.

"Hack The Planet!" An Oral History Of Hackers' Soundtrack & Score

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