THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,473) John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band — “God”
While Lennon (see #29, 113, 520, 522 ) proclaims in “God” that he doesn’t believe in the Bible or Jesus, he says the same about Elvis, Dylan and the Beatles. Rather than an anti-religion song, I take it more as his casting off of the oppressive cloak of rock n’roll messiahdom, just as Dylan had cast off the cloak of protest singer messiahdom years earlier. “I just believe in me, Yoko, and me, and that’s reality”
The Beatles Bible writes:
On his debut solo album John Lennon closed the book on many aspects of his past. Much of the record was devoted to his troubled relationship with his parents, but The Beatles – in many ways his surrogate family throughout the 1960s – still loomed large in his life and career. On the song “God” he finally broke the spell, telling the world that the dream was over with his stark revelation: “I don’t believe in Beatles”. . . .
Having delivered th[at] bombshell . . . Lennon reinforced the message further: “I was the dream weaver, but now I’m reborn I was the walrus, but now I’m John. And so dear friends you just have to carry on. The dream is over.” The section featured some of the finest vocals of John Lennon’s entire career. It was as if, finally free from making myths, casting spells and co-writing the 1960s, he had at last found his true voice. All illusions had been cast off and he had found his reality with Yoko Ono. The rest of the world had to find its own way now.
Anthony DeCurtis adds:
Lennon’s aesthetic of simplicity could not have been more rigorously applied. The song is unsparing in its insistence that people lose their illusions; “And so, dear friends, you just have to carry on,” is as much solace as he is willing to offer. . . . The dream is over . . . and Lennon’s role as the “dreamweaver” — read “Beatle” — is finished.
liner notes to the CD comp Lennon: Anthology
Lennon composed “God” while undergoing Primal Scream therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov. Janov explained that:
[Lennon] rented a house in Bel Air, which is a very ritzy area here, and we talked about things. He said: “What about God?” and I would go on and on about [how] people who have deep pain generally tend to believe in God with a fervency. And he said: “Oh, you mean God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” Just bang. I would go all around it and he was there, just like that. And that was John. John could take very profound philosophical concepts and make it simple.
Classic Albums: Plastic Ono Band
Lennon himself said:
Like a lot of the words, they just came out of me mouth. It started off like that. “God” was stuck together from three songs almost. I had the idea, “God is the concept by which we measure our pain”. So when you have a [phrase] like that, you just sit down and sing the first tune that comes into your head. And the tune is the simple [sings] “God is the concept – bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp” ’cause I like that kind of music. And then I just rolled into it. [Sings] “I don’t believe in magic” – and it was just going on in me head. And I Ching and the Bible, the first three or four just came out, whatever came out. . . . I don’t know when I realised I was putting down all these things I didn’t believe in. I could have gone on, it was like a Christmas card list – where do I end? Churchill, and who have I missed out? It got like that and I thought I had to stop… I was going to leave a gap and say, just fill in your own, for whoever you don’t believe in. It just got out of hand. But Beatles was the final thing because it’s like I no longer believe in myth, and Beatles is another myth. I don’t believe in it. The dream’s over. I’m not just talking about The Beatles is over, I’m talking about the generation thing. The dream’s over, and I have personally got to get down to so-called reality.
Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers
As to the recording of “God”, the Beatles Bible explains that:
“God” like “I am a Walrus” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” before it, was made from three unfinished compositions. Lennon and Paul McCartney often worked in this way, combining unrelated works on songs such as “She Said She Said”, “A Day in the Life” and “I’ve Got a Feeling” as well as much of Abbey Road . . . . John Lennon initially performed the song on an acoustic guitar . . . . He later turned to the piano, and also brought in his old friend Billy Preston to add another piano part. . . . Preston played a Steinway grand piano, while Lennon performed on a honky tonk-style upright Steinway which offered a considerably different sound.
Klaus Voormann recalled that:
John actually said, “Come on Billy, do a little of your gospel piano, it’s about God, you know.” So it inspired him to something that’s his upbringing; Billy learned piano playing and organ playing in church. He really believed in God and that’s the way he played on this song. It’s beautiful.
Classic Albums: Plastic Ono Band
1,474) David Peel and the Lower East Side — “God”
David Peel (see #45), NYC street prophet/agitpropiteer/freak and protege of John Lennon, is “alone in the studio with his acoustic guitar’n’yammer fest . . . where he ap-PEEL‑s to an authority even higher than himself” (Seth, https://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/the-book-of-seth/david-peel-and-the-lower-east-side-the-american-revolution) in a “God” song that came out way earlier in 1970 than did Lennon’s (February/December)!
Peel’s “God” is hardly an anti-religion song, unlike another query from a kid to God song, XTC’s “Dear God”. Peel sings “I don’t want to bе your enemy I want evеryone in this world free I don’t give a damn if you’re hip or square Love is something everyone got to share God, why are people mean? God, can’t you change the scene?” Peel explains:
It’s about God from a young boy’s point-of-view of what was seen right now that destroyed mankind. Not necessarily wars, but through the greed and power and control and being out-of-control. I said, “It’s my life here. Do what you want.” But it’s from a kid’s point-of-view, a boy’s point-of-view, of why we’re involved with all the holochasms and calamities and pain and I’m saying right now “I deliver myself to you, and you get me out of this big mess. It’s your job to help me out because you’re God, and I’m only a little boy.” I say “I am only five, can I stay alive? Can I stay alive? I wanna survive.” So what do you wanna be when you grow up? Alive. That’s basically all I was saying.
Of Peel, Piero Scaruffi writes:
Peel was a sort of modern white minstrel of the slums, terrorizing the Lower East Side with street corner performances, ever-accompanied by a small group of homeless musicians like him. He was basically one of those crazy preachers who stand in crowds and shouts at people, but his religion was drugs and his Bible was rock and roll.
(translation by Troy Sherman) https://www-scaruffi-com.translate.goog/vol2/peel.html?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Lindsay Planer adds:
The politically charged David Peel & the Lower East Side directly contrasted their 1968 acoustic live debut, Have a Marijuana (see #45) . . . with 1970’s American Revolution, an amplified studio outing. The real similarity between the two remains Peel’s no-holds-barred, in-your-face attitude and staunchly liberal espousing. . . . Although Peel’s earlier effort hinted at the band’s proto-punk and garage rock leanings, the aggressive electric bashing . . . allows them to bring that restless spirit to complete fruition. . . . His music deals candidly with their attitudes regarding Vietnam (“I Want to Kill You”), the repression of local law enforcement (“Oink, Oink, Oink”), hypocritical drug laws (“Legalize Marijuana”), sex (“Girls, Girls, Girls”), and even more contemplative esoteric concepts (“God”).
https://www.allmusic.com/album/american-revolution-mw0000843322
Seth writes:
[Peel’s] second and last album on Elektra wound up sounding more like a Noo Yawk version of England’s premier underground band, The Deviants [see #564, 1,402] Angry, stoned and squeezing out pus, The American Revolution differed from their previous Have A Marijuana album by virtue of being recorded in the studio. And although it exhibiting more polish, it maintain the same degree of raging defiance . . . [S]ince the lineup was now pared down to [a] trio . . . Elektra suggested electric instrumentation and backing musicians in order to . . . keep the album from becoming an addition to the . . . stack of out-dated protest albums in the folk idiom. So . . . [players] were roped in . . . [to] make [the LP] rock out in a fashion Peel never could’ve dreamt of just two years prior when The Lower East Side were playing for spare change in Washington Square Park by endlessly barking out countercultural odes to marijuana, sex, marijuana, welfare thrills and more marijuana against refrains strummed out on broken acoustic guitars. . . . . [Following American Revolution, Peel was] soon dropped along with all the other troublemakers on the label who weren’t gonna toe the line . . . . [He] re-emerg[ed] two years later signed to Apple records through his associations with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Apple released his third album, The Pope Smokes Dope and its contents were so offensive that it caused Peel (so the story goes) to be banned from practically every country on earth except for The United States and Canada.
Finally, William Grimes:
Peel — a reference to banana peel . . . . was born David Michael Rosario. According to his F.B.I. file, he was born . . . in Manhattan to Puerto Rican parents. . . . [He] served two years in the Army, which stationed him in Alaska. A fellow serviceman from New York excited him with tales of the developing folk scene in Greenwich Village, and after completing his military service he made his way to the neighborhood. He could play the harmonica, and after learning a few basic chords on the guitar he was off and running. “I loved playing music, and I saw all the musicians standing there in Washington Square Park,” he told Goldmine in 2000. “I got involved and had a great time with the older people, playing all those oldies, from camp songs to calypso. And that’s where I began.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/arts/music/david-peel-dead-composer-of-i-like-marijuana.html
John Lennon talks about Peel: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GRRVgKNHxF4&pp=ygUmRGF2aWQgcGVlbCBhbmQgdGhlIGxvd2VyIGVhc3Qgc2lkZSBnb2Q%3D.
Oh, and talking about protest singer messiahdom, Scaruffi writes that “Peel even founded the ‘Rock Liberation Front’ and publicly accused Dylan of having betrayed the cause”. ((translation by Troy Sherman) https://www-scaruffi-com.translate.goog/vol2/peel.html?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc)
Here is XTC:
1,475) The Holy Ghost Reception Committee #9 — “Hey Lord”
These kids at NYC’s Regis (Catholic) High School (see #604, 934) give us an “acid-punk” (Psychedelic Rock ‘n’ roll, https://psychedelic-rocknroll.blogspot.com/?m=1) “rhythm punker” from an album that “remains a good yardsick for sizing up similar (usually inferior) late ’60s christian folkrockers”. (Ron Moore, The Acid Archives (2nd Ed.))
Per UnderappreciatedRock:
The music came about when one student at the Catholic Regis High School . . . wrote a song that he wanted to sing at their weekly Mass meetings in place of the boring traditional hymns. Others soon followed and (as the CD liner notes proclaim): “The result was a revival, a whole new spirit with music, a kind of song prayer. The words were loud and clear. The beat made sense.” . . . The students were encouraged in this work by one of the teachers, Anthony Meyers (who is a Jesuit). He assembled a group of musicians from the school to be the Holy Ghost Reception Committee #9 . . . . The liner notes describe their sound as “unique, Christian yet with a Beatle-esque psychedelic sound.” . . . The Holy Ghost Reception Committee #9 did so well that they were signed by the Paulist Press to produce an album in 1968. Paulist Press is primarily a publisher of religious books and was clueless as to what to do with this music; they gave the album a description rather than a name, Songs for Liturgical Worship. The album is primarily songs of praise, with some retelling Bible stories. The music though is straight psych. . . . Two years later, a second, tougher album, The Torchbearers, followed . . . .
https://underappreciatedrock.org/holy-ghost-reception-committee-9
The main man Tony Meyer himself said:
Two years ago, I decided that we wouldn’t have songs at Mass unless the kids wrote them themselves. I forced a few out of them by assignments, then it got to be the thing — so-and-so’s song for Mass this week. A few good writers emerged, and I relied more heavily on these. I hunted up a few good guitar players and got something going there. By the end of last year, we had forty songs. We put on a concert at Regis chapel to lick the best ten. I taped these. We got a name for the group — a student made it up . . . . Paulist Press heard the songs we taped and decided to go into the record business. Elmer Jared Gordon got the kids ready for the studio and was in charge of production. He was great. Many of the good things on the record are due to him. By relentlessly demanding perfections, he got peak performances from the kids.
Original liner notes to The Torchbearers
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 900 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 