I’m beginning what I’ll call the Mother-In-Law series, which is merely a handful of long-players that she brought to me because she knows that I like music.Evidently, this is a common phenomenon; I’ve heard that my cousin’s in-laws also hand over the occasional vinyl album and my father is also a fan of the “Here’s some scratchy old albums that you beat to hell when you were little” gift.
“I remembered that you liked The Beatles,” she said as she handed over the records.
As I noticed the familiar cover of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack and chuckled a little.
It was this album that ignited a passionate hatred for the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Alice Cooper and it caused me to think that Aerosmith may indeed have a problem with drugs.
Understand that I liked all of them up until that album-hell, I even tolerated the shitty I’m In You for Frampton-and now he does this to me?!
The movie is awful, but the soundtrack is just as bad with Aerosmith throwing out a decent cover of “Come Together” and Earth Wind & Fire offering a nice version of “Got To Get You Into My Life.”
These have proven to be the only two good tracks on the album,
Did I mention it’s a double?
Every thing else is just awful and with George Martin’s name on the project, it’s an embarrassment.
What I don’t understand is how even at that young of an age (12) I knew this thing was going to be a bust. So how did a group of smart adults let this thing get started?
Who knows? But Robert Stigwood dropped a fortune on this thing to the tune of “bankrupt” almost immediately after people started to notice that this thing smelled like a turd.
It worked for a moment; the album reference, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and that wild and crazy guy Steve Martin got us all excited to see the movie. The trouble was, nobody could remember what the hell the film was about only five minutes after we left the theatre.
I wish I could say the same thing for the soundtrack.
3 comments:
Dude, in the early '80s I booked this movie for a fundraiser, hoping the Beatles connection would help us draw some folks. In a word: no.
It's been on cable lately and if you haven't seen it in a while, let me tell you, it just might be worse than you remember it.
On the positive side, I still like the front cover art; and for my money, EW&F's version of "Got to Get You into My Life"--which is always included in their Best of/Greatest Hits packages--surpasses the original. (And, as you may already know, I'm a Macca follower and Revolver fan.)
I've never a) heard this album all the way through, or b) watched more than 3 minutes of this movie. I just haven't found the stomach for this.
Todd, I know you've read the book Hit Men. My favorite story vis a vis this whole fiasco is that the album actually sold two million copies, which under any other yardstick would be considered a very successful record. Too bad someone at RSO in their attempts to be proactive decided to press up SIX million copies (the cocaine logic must've gone something like, "Saturday Night Fever did so well, the Beatles did so well, A+B must automatically equal a very large C, right?").
Ah, thanks for bringing up Hit Men, DJM. Sadly, with each passing day that book seems more and more like the music biz's version of an ancient history tome.
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