The End of Metaphor

...and their magnificent, flowing pulse...

...Jagger describes his "nasty habits" in "Live with Me," his filthy and freaky menage, all the while imploring the lady, "Don't you think there's a place for you/In between the sheets...

...While Jimmy Page's lead guitar is very competent throughout and some of John Bon-ham's percussion work is interesting, everyone will be listening to Robert Plant's vocals...

...Again Led Zeppelin, the British group which has been making it big, provides an example...

...When anything as crass as sex enters the purview of c, s & n, it is offered up as fairytale symbolism ("Guinnevere" [sic]) or fireplace fantasy: "The brownness of your body in the fire-glow/Except the places where the sun refused to go...

...One such group is the Band, whose success in last year's Music from Big Pink is repeated in their present offering, The Band (Capitol stao-132...

...Life is all "hard knox and durty sox," according to the liner...

...Squeeze me, baby till the juice runs down my leg./The way you squeeze my lemon, I'm gonna fall right out of bed...

...The music is mostly quite good, although there is some silly studio rapping, or conversations, which should have been left out...

...All the emphasis on extramusical sensation, from drugs and sex to business, is what makes the rock scene roll...

...Sensible people have long ago given up the sterile practice of explicating mysterious metaphors in Beatle songs...

...it has power and assurance...

...We are given a song sheet of lyrics that only serves to underscore the vapid nature of the poetry...

...Much of this is caught in Let It Bleed, a deserving successor to the Stones' previous great disc, Beggars' Banquet...

...The idea is to overwhelm the listener by sheer volume, star personnel, explicit reference to things sexual...

...Here it is a careful garnering of traditional country themes (verbal ones), musically modernized in a subtle, low-key style which preserves the old context even while considerable formal variation is going on...

...A few concluding observations on the Beatles and their latest, Abbey Road (Apple so-383...

...Among other things, it's a whole lotta laughs...

...In "The Lemon Song," Plant importunes...

...The Midnight Rambler" is Boston Strangler, gambler, rapist, and cutthroat rolled into one, a hyperbolic madman out of the folk ballad tradition...

...the often impenetrable, hollering vocals (no song sheets provided here...

...Such subtlety is almost matched by the Toronto reporter who amiably wrote that Plant is now "the most significant sex idol since Jim Morrison...

...A list price of $6.98, however, is disingenuous, to say the least...

...Let It Bleed (London nps-4), which bears the injunction "this record should be played loud," as do quite a few other recent releases...

...Another thrust is seen in the Rolling Stones' newest...

...But the two strongest members of the group, leader-guitarist Carlos Santana and organist Gregg Rolie, produce a fine balance with the three percussionists (timbales, congas, drums, etc...

...Given the state of their careers and their astonishing musical attainments, the Beatles obviously do not need to pursue sensation, significance or "superhype" promotion...

...It's part of the search for total experience begun by the Doors and Jim Morrison, picked up by almost everybody, and encouraged by promoters who like to talk about "supergroups" and "plastic music...

...Automobile horn coda, and out...

...more recently, the absurd rumors of Paul McCartney's death were carried to the grotesque by Life magazine and F. Lee Bailey's inept tv documentary...

...That is, their promotion seems to have become their reality...

...The James Gang, a new group from Cleveland, has done a more typical thing in their first release, Yer' Album (BluesWay bls-6034) and that is to put porno-surrealist drawings inside the double-sleeve cover...

...The first disc contains a full side of Yoko singing, with various kinds of horrific nasal stridor, "aaaaaaaa" over suitable feedback noises—in other words, total echolalia...

...Equal assurance but a lot less power is projected by Crosby, Stills & Nash (Atlantic sd 8229...

...That goes even more for the art work, which includes stalactitic penises...

...The new album has all the characteristic pounding ensemble force (as in "Gimmie Shelter") that used to be the stock in trade of rock music...

...In fact, the vocals are weak, and some of the writing shows little imagination...

...Pursuing or pursued by their public, the Beatles are finding that they have reached the end of their metaphor...

...In "Country Honk" the boys really tear into country music, with scraggly fiddle and a lot of down-home nonsense, some cliche moralizing about honky-tonk women in bars, New York City, etc., and then Jagger's line, "She blew my nose and then she blew my mind...

...Initially, Led Zeppelin was all Page but now, with Plant doing a great job of turning on the girls, the band has found a much wider acceptance...

...the images of sex, madness and, sometimes, violence dropped in with matter-of-fact casualness—as if no one could possibly question the Stones' Weltanschauung...

...Their second album, Led Zeppelin II (Atlantic sd 8236), uses the by now commonplace devices of tape distortion, tone clusters and echo effects to embellish the driving ensembles, with occasional excursions into blues ("The Lemon Song") or a country-and-western lope ("Bring It on Home...

...The five musicians are experts, all of them doubling on several instruments, and guitarist Jaime Robertson, who wrote virtually the whole album, is a master in many modes of folk—from Civil War nostalgia to Tennessee Mountain ballads to the union song...

...is the name of Led Zeppelin's song publisher— apt in its slangy awareness of the self-serving promotion any group must use to get to the top...

...The second, in a boxed set, consists of the couple's press conference during their week-long "bed-in for peace," 22 minutes of "John" . . . "Yoko" recitative, plus a facsimile marriage license, wedding pictures, a booklet of press clippings, a picture (inserted in a plastic bag) of a piece of wedding cake—in other words, total con...

...a vagina or two, and what seems to be an engorged colon...

...One of the few rock bands able to cook a proper sensational stew is the Rolling Stones...

...Still, I like much of the music on these discs...

...Though I missed their Thanksgiving concert in New York, report has it that leader Mick Jagger was still in top form, cavorting with the group in outlandish costumes, urging them on to new heights of Satanic humor, burlesquing every musical form in sight...

...s V»/ ince most rock bands cannot do without sensation-seeking or gimmickry of one kind and another, the emergence of a group willing to put its faith in musical values is a genuine event...

...I would call this record a rather pure example of folk-rock, if that term has any meaning left...

...Because real candor in Pop music has been a long time coming, heavy sex overlayed with heavy, hard-rock sound dominates with a vengeance many an album today...

...It is impressive stuff...

...Touted as a new supergroup—David Crosby comes from the Byrds, Steve Stills from Buffalo Springfield, Graham Nash from the Hollies—these gentlemen, in spite of their hardy apprenticeship, are content to bask in the romantic ooze of soft-rock...

...Enjoy yer' album...

...Santana's typical music, as in "Soul Sacrifice," stresses the incantatory power of repetition and slight variations over a first-rate, flexible rhythm section...

...Finally, in "You Can't Always Get What You Want," the London Bach Choir joins with the Stones and three female voices, who alternately sound like prim schoolgirls and funky gospel shout-ers, in a climactic put-down of feminine pretention...

...and we accept this because burlesque and humor make the ironic perspective clear...

...One further dimension of total experience consists of album covers, or paper sex...

...Superhype Music, Inc...

...Yet last March, Lennon and wife spent a week on public display in bed, demonstrating for the cause of Peace and Love...

...Because the rhythmic element has lagged so far behind the development of melody, harmony and tone color in rock, their album, Santana (Columbia cs 9781), sounds like more of a revelation than it actually is...

...The Beatles, you may remember, had John Lennon and Yoko Ono pose nude for the front and rear sleeves of their 1968 album, but the photos were flagrantly suppressed...

...The only other group of a comparable "purity" that I have heard recently is Santana, which has brought rock to a logical union with Latin rhythms...

...Whole Lotta Love" is a frenetic gesture to orgasm, replete with accelerating moans and lyrics like "Way down inside . . . I'm gonna give you every inch of my love...

...While this syndrome offends a lot of people, it is surely essential if rock is not to turn into art music...

...First, it is clearly their best performance so far: There is not an inferior cut on the record, and the variety of material presented is a more personal distillation of that compendium of rock styles they offered in their last two-disc set...

...The emphasis is heavily vocal and, while some of the harmonies and voicings are attractive, prettified sentimentality dominates...

...The group's first album (sd 8216) carried a cover picture of the dirigible Hin-denburg crashing in flames at Lake-hurst, New Jersey, which must have turned the girls on too, since the record has sold over 500,000 copies...

...Now John has had his revenge in Unfinished Music No 2: Life with the Lions (Apple st-3357) and Wedding Album (Apple smax-3361...