With Rubber Soul, the Beatles proved their durability as a band capable of growth and change, thereby cementing their position as one of the most(if not the most) consequential acts of the remaining Sixties. It was a significant achievement because they’d burst upon the scene and rode the waves for a couple of years. However,... Read More

The sensibility of an era may be unified – even though it’s never uniform. Those who forget it are essentially visionaries, incurable romantics, prone to melancholy – an inextricable quality of genius, according to Aristotle. John Winston Lennon, self-styled working-class hero, prodigal son of a lower-middle-class fragmented family, may be qualified as the unifier of... Read More

When McCartney’s second solo album, Ram (credited to Paul and Linda McCartney), came out in 1971 I ignored it. The single that hit big in America, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey came across as a lazy pastiche, a collection of bits that McCartney apparently couldn’t resolve into individual songs, or blend into a compelling whole, as he... Read More