Pepper Pot

Sgt. Pepper’s Pot Plants

One of the most irritating things I know of is when a complete error is repeated ad nauseum! If you think the flowerbed on the Pepper cover looks like an “open grave” I suppose that’s your choice. Having seen a good many open graves in my life, it looks like an odd flower border to me. (I do think the floral clock in Paul’s design would have looked a great deal better.) However, it’s the endless repitition about the “pot plants” shown on the album cover that makes me want to recommend that the writer change his focus to George W. Bush where mythology is a requirement.

Of course, I suppose city people may never have actually seen a marijuana plant and therefore be unable to recognize the leaves, but a very little research of T-shirts could quickly amend that ignorance! For one thing, cannabis is a rather tall, rangy plant; one as fully leafed-out as those on the album would be two or three feet tall. For a final thing, these plants in no way resemble pot.

The first photograph at the head of this entry is of a marijuana plant; the center graphic is an enlargement of one of the plants on the Pepper cover; the third photo is of Aluminum Plant, Pilea cadierei, a popular house plant originally from tropical Southeast Asia. There are a couple other common houseplants that might be the ones we see on the cover but they are far less common and a good deal less likely.

I’m sorry to disappoint all you heads out there but this is one of the stupidest Beatle myths going, possible even less rational then the Paul Is Dead hoorah. At least this one is so very easily shown to be mistaken while proving that someone is alive is difficult unless you can arrange to meet them face to face – and Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people actually have met Paul face to face since 1967 (or whenever) there seem to be a few people who still treasure the idea.

In the case of the pot plants on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, please remove it from your mind. No doubt the living adults in the room at the time the photograph was taken would have liked the idea of using cannabis plants, but they didn’t.

Interview With The Grand Old Man Of Rock ‘n’ Roll

It’s tempting to wonder what a 66 year old John would say about the celebrations last month of 40 years since Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band was released – worse yet, the rather sentimental observations of the 50th anniversary of the day the Quarry Men played at the St. Peter’s Church Fete in Woolton. The day that Paul McCartney taught John the words to 20 Flight Rock and tuned his guitar. So, donning my reporter impression with my battered fedora bearing a dog-eared cardboard Press pass, I walked up to him as he was entering his apartment and asked:

“Good morning, Mr. Lennon” (I don’t call him “John” because I’m from the south and we just do it that way.)

Good morning Mr. Lennon” (I wonder, wouldn’t it possibly be “Sir John”? Oh well, this is America and we don’t have knights and such.)

“Good morning, Mr. Lennon, would you mind letting the world know how you feel about this anniversary?”

John Lennon, looking at Yoko; “Is it our anniversary or something? You’re supposed to remind me of those things.”

Me: “Oh no, Mr. Lennon, nothing like that. It’s the 50th anniversary of the day the Quarry Men (fill in ad lib please)”

JL: “Well, shit man, that’s, why, it must be 50 60 years ago now! Why would you still be on about that. I apologized for that, I KNOW I apologized for it. Why would I be celebrating getting my life mixed up with that fooker? You see what he did on his last excuse for a record?”

“They don’t make record like they ought to, cost $30.00 and all you get is this dinky little silver colored thingy. What the hell happened to that nice black vinyl we used to have? Those were records, damn it!”

“Kid in the apartment downstairs told me he recorded and mixed his very own album just sitting in his bedroom. That’s not what we did in our bedrooms in MY day. He didn’t have a guitar or anything, just typed it all in .. well, that’s what he said. I don’t know what the fool was on about. Gave me one of those dinky disc things but Yoko hasn’t had time to play it for me. I’m not allowed anywhere near all that electronic and computer stuff. Yoko says my energy is wrong for them and it fucks them up. What good is a fucking new millennium anyway if a man can’t even get a fucking record to play?

John Lennon moves into the door but I hear him muttering as he climbs up the white freestanding circular staircase: “That fucking little shit, Paulie, That Was ME too!”

Yoko gave me a look and I figured that was as much story as I’d get for the day.

This is your on the story reporter signing off for the day.

Reviewing

I have really tried over the years to keep in mind that when someone has decided that they don’t like someone or something, he or she is unlikely to admit it even if they happen to find something about it or him to like or if he or she accidentally does something that they do actually like. It’s entirely to be expected that when Paul McCartney puts out a new album there will be as many opinions as there are people paid (or not paid) to write about music. Somehow the ones who have decided not to like it seem to be just as eager to spread their opinion around as everyone else. The best technique is not to talk about things you dislike and maybe the world will forget about them. That’s the best way; I didn’t say I followed it.

I’m also learning that it’s completely foolish to try to guess who Paul wrote this or that song about. I’ve read a dozen or so reviews of Memory Almost Full today and there’s one guy who thinks the whole album is about how much Paul loves Linda. I think one person or another has named every single song on the album except Dance Tonight as being about Heather Mills. Come to think of it, why on earth did they leave that one out considering that she was on that silly dance show? The truth is for the most part I don’t care who or what Paul thought he was writing about, the question is does the song do it for me?

The second best cheap amusement for the day is reading all the articles (and comments on them) marking the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. Here the range of opinion isn’t nearly so great: there are those that feel it was both important and great and there are those who thing it was only one of those things or neither. I only have two things to dsay about that: if it’s so unimportant and not great why are we still arguing about it 40 years after the sales receipt went into the trash? The other thought is that my mother taught me to keep an extra around in a brown paper bag, there are some people you just don’t serve the good stuff to.

My opinion of Memory Almost Full? Great, marvelous, exciting, scary, nostalgic, prescient, fun, sad, terrifying and visionary. In other words, I like it a lot. It is quite definitely an album to listen to several times before you start forming an opinion. The arrangements are intricate, layered and full of color and texture. My favorite? House of Wax and then Mr. Bellamy. I’ve always had a weakness for dramatic music. After that I like Feet in the Clouds a lot. I like the way he winds over and under, around and through without quite touching the melody. I’ve liked an awful lot of Paul McCartney songs in my life but I can’t say there are very many I like more then these. He also proves it truly can be done, a wild and free electic guitar solo without feedback or distotion!