The Beatles
Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane [7'']

I don't know if DeBaser has ever reviewed a single, but there are singles that have made rock history, and there's one in particular that has a special story behind it, the kind that gives music enthusiasts an existential thrill. Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane by the Beatles was released in February 1967, and if this particular plastic disc had not existed, rock history would surely be different. What happens to the Beatles at the end of 1966? It happens that in August they released one of the most incredible albums ever, that Revolver that definitively takes them out of the pack and puts them on the podium of the best, on the Olympus of the outstanding, a group that manages to place in the same album the harrowing Eleanor Rigby, with its severe string quartet, and the definitive psychedelic anthem, Tomorrow Never Knows, characterized by effects and studio tricks that would remain unsurpassed for years.

The Beatles are enthusiastic, they are launched, they are loaded like a slingshot, the rivalries and internal strife - which were the order of the day when they were doing their apprenticeship - are erased, John and Paul compose and fit their respective contributions as if they were a team, and it won't last long. But at that end of the year, the two have an absolute light in their minds and hearts, and they are designing a concept album together about the places of their childhood, an idealized Liverpool that can be transformed into a locus psychodelicus: Lennon realizes he can resolve many of the knots he has inside, and Paul is no less (they are both motherless since adolescence, and it is easy to imagine what kind of re-emergence, regret, and at the same time happiness and creativity they envisioned, in the reenactment of the places and days of a still happy childhood. I know something about it, for the record). Not surprisingly, John takes the name of a Liverpool orphanage and builds a spell of poignant poetry around it, working dozens of hours in the studio and forcing George Martin into incredible balancing acts during the mixing phase, in an attempt to capture that which eludes him, to forget the tears, to reclaim time, because he knows that now the Beatles can really do anything. (Two years later he will close the emotional circle by writing for the White Album a delicate ballad dedicated to his mother, in whose text he intentionally overlaps her with Yoko Ono: John has finally found the Woman of his life, whom he had lost). Paul is more austere and introverted, more typically English, and writes a beautiful song describing the shops, characters, scents, colors, and stories of Penny Lane, a track that alone is worth all the britpop yet to come, with sumptuous arrangements of vivid color, the deep serenity he knows how to infuse in his compositions, and voilà, the first two songs are done, a bombastic start, the two are thrilled and so are George and Ringo. The masterpiece is around the corner. However, it happens that Paul and John have always been in fierce (jovial) competition over the conquest of the A-sides of singles, John knows that Paul is more musically gifted, Paul knows that John is more genially intuitive, a blessed rivalry because it has given us incredible pearls. They decide to release the two songs (American Capitol is hungry for Beatles editions) and to show the world where the Fab Four are heading, but Martin also recognizes that both pieces are of high and equal level and the single triumphantly comes out with two Side A, this time it's a draw. Needless to say, sales go sky-high, and I don't even think it's necessary to describe the two songs, if anyone doesn't know them they must have lived hermetically sealed in a washing machine, I think.

The twist is yet to come, everyone is preparing to compose, Martin tidies up his tapes, but someone alerts the Beatles that they made a mistake. There's a rule in the English record edition world of the time, according to which tracks released in a single cannot be subsequently published on an album within the same year. The Beatles are astonished and stuck, it's February, and the concept album wouldn't be able to come out for another eleven months: too many for anyone in the sixties, an absurd anti-commercial pause for the Fab Four, who moreover have always moved quickly and thought they would release the long-playing record in the span of three or four months at most (at the time it was quite common, no one took a year to finish an LP). Paul gathers the band, they are all bewildered, but as always, it's McCartney who points the way out: they are on fire, as said, they are the best, it means the creative energy will be channeled differently. The idea of a concept album about Liverpool's places is dropped (who knows what album it would have been!) and Paul, joking about the fact that the Beatles cannot release their tracks as they want, launches the provocative idea of doing a record in the name of an invented band, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with uniforms and all, I don't have to illustrate the most Famous and Important Record in Rock, I hope: which, to confirm the Beatles' incredible pace, comes out on June 1, 1967. Exactly: the Record of Records comes out less than four months after the Beatles had to throw overboard the previous project, without being able to save a single note of what they might have already had in mind. (They didn't, actually). A record that, we reflect with horror, wouldn't have been conceived if a trivial hitch hadn't diverted John Lennon and Paul McCartney's intentions, a bit like discovering that Beethoven had to compose the Ninth because he lost a bet, or that Mozart composed the Requiem for a misunderstanding... which, being said by the way, is exactly what happened. This story, together with the terrible and moving chronicle of the premiere of the Ninth Symphony (indeed), has made me daydream many times. Suffice it to say: if in 1972 a jerk hadn't set fire to the Montreux Casino during a Zappa concert, we wouldn't have Smoke On The Water.