Monthly Archives: May 2025

Song of the Week – Monkey Man, Rolling Stones

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Ignored             Obscured              Restored

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the Stones kicked in – “Monkey Man” roared through the speakers like a freight train full of mescaline and bad decisions.  Nicky Hopkins, God bless his ghostly British soul, hammered that piano line like a madman trying to summon Satan with eighty-eight keys and a jug of bourbon.  Suddenly, the whole trip made sense.  This wasn’t just music – it was gospel, prophecy, a searing manifesto of the damned.

Rock music wasn’t background noise for Hunter S. Thompson. It was blood in the ink, the sonic chaos that drove the typewriter at 3 a.m. while the walls breathed and the lizards danced.  He didn’t just listen to it — he inhaled it, snorted it, blasted it through his skull like auditory ether.  The man once called Herbie Mann’s Memphis Underground “the best album ever cut by anybody,” and who the hell are we to argue with that?

Far Out magazine, in a rare moment of journalistic clarity, unearthed the gospel according to Thompson: ten albums that lit his brain on fire during the so-called “rock age” – a time of beautiful noise and narcotic truth.  It wasn’t just a playlist. It was a manifesto.

Behold the holy relics:

Herbie Mann – Memphis Underground (absolutely filthy jazz-funk, pure American madness)

Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home (a lyrical fever dream with a harmonica snarl)

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (America on the verge, painted in amphetamine blues)

The Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead (acid-sweat Americana for the true believers)

The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed (dirty, dangerous, and soaked in gin and blood)

Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield (flower-power on the edge of a nervous breakdown)

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (psychedelic lullabies for the chemically unhinged)

Roland Kirk – Various Albums (the sound of a man strangling the cosmos with three horns at once)

Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain (matador jazz played in slow motion by a stone-cold killer)

Sandy Bull – Inventions (instrumental mysticism for interstellar cowboys)

These weren’t just albums.  They were tools – instruments of psychic warfare, necessary for surviving Nixon’s America and the corporate stranglehold of post-‘60s dream rot.  You had to have the soundtrack right, or the whole illusion fell apart.

And then – “Monkey Man.”  That’s not just a song. That’s the anthem for the freaks, the outcasts, the wide-eyed maniacs who chose not to play the game.  “I’m a monkey!” Jagger shrieks.  Yes.  Yes, we are.  All of us.  Scrambling through the ruins of the American Dream, chasing shadows, chewing through vinyl and broken glass just to feel something.  But it’s Nicky Hopkins’ piano that makes it immortal.  That intro doesn’t just open the song – it launches it, like a bullet from a gold-plated revolver fired in a jungle nightclub.

God bless the Stones.  God bless the chaos.  And God help anyone who tries to understand it without a damn good stereo and a suitcase full of dubious substances.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Revolution, The Beatles

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Ignored             Obscured              Restored

The Beatles’ “Revolution,” written by John Lennon but credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, stands out for having one of the most complex recording histories in the band’s catalog.

The song’s genesis traces back to early 1968, when the Beatles were in Rishikesh, India, studying Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  At the time, a growing youth movement was actively protesting the Vietnam War, and Lennon, increasingly politically conscious, sought to express his views more directly through music.  While much has been written about the political message of “Revolution” and the reactions it provoked among fans, this post will focus on the song’s unique and multifaceted recording history.

The earliest known version of the song was a demo recorded at Kinfauns, George Harrison’s home in Esher.  These sessions previewed many of the tracks that would eventually appear on The Beatles (November 1968), commonly known as the White Album.  For years, the demos circulated unofficially among collectors and fans through bootlegs, but the “Revolution” demo was finally released officially on the White Album’s Super Deluxe Edition.

The version titled “Revolution 1” was recorded starting on May 30, 1968. Take 18, which runs over ten minutes, was chosen for further development.  This slower, blues-influenced rendition became the version included on the White Album.  It notably contains audio elements that were later manipulated and repurposed for the avant-garde, musique concrète, sound collage piece “Revolution 9.”

The full Take 18, once a coveted bootleg, was eventually made available on the White Album’s Super Deluxe Edition.  If you are familiar with “Revolution 9” and listen to Take 18 all the way through, you will recognize many of the snippets that were used.

During the “Revolution 1” sessions, Lennon famously recorded his lead vocals while lying on his back at Abbey Road Studios.  Overdubs, including electric guitar, horns, and the distinctive “shoo-bee-do-wop” backing vocals, were added later to arrive at the final White Album version.

“Revolution 9,” one of the most experimental tracks ever released by a major rock band, was heavily influenced by Yoko Ono’s avant-garde sensibilities on Lennon’s artistry and marked a significant departure from traditional song structure.  Though polarizing at the time, it has come to be appreciated for its innovation and its role in expanding the boundaries of what pop music could be.

Lennon had initially hoped to release “Revolution” as a single, but the other Beatles felt the original version was too slow and politically charged.  Undeterred, Lennon reworked the track into a faster, harder-rocking arrangement.  Though recorded after “Revolution 1” and “Revolution 9,” this up-tempo version was released first, as the B-side to the “Hey Jude” single in August 1968.

Music critic Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, described the song’s electric guitar intro as “a startling machine-gun fuzz guitar riff.”  He noted its resemblance to the riff from Pee Wee Crayton’s 1954 recording “Do Unto Others.”  Unterberger leaves open the possibility that the similarity is coincidental. I think Lennon intentionally nicked it.

Like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “A Day in the Life,” “Revolution” illustrates the Beatles’ creative ambition and the layered complexity of their recording process. The evolution of the track across its various incarnations underscores the restless experimentation that defined the band’s late 1960s output.

Enjoy… until next week.