George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass – more ambitious than the White Album in scope – is just brimming with rock beauty. Masterpiece is so cliche, but that’s more or less what it is. It’s easily the best of all the Beatles’ solo output. I hope one day we’ll hear a version of this with a deconstructed “Wall of Sound”®️ . It’s just too cluttered in spots, but nothing could keep these great songs from getting through. Let’s hope in another 48 years, people are still digging it.
Out of nowhere, this song raced to mind. I had forgotten there was a video for it. More than that, I had forgotten that it looked like it was shot on American Bandstand (it wasn’t.) I never really considered this a disco tune, but watching the video, with all the the funky-polyester-clothes-long-hair-wearing people grooving to the slow beat, I don’t know how I could have ever thought of this as anything but a disco track.
It goes without saying that the Beatles defined their times (with the help of others of course.) The farther away the Fab Four, as individuals, got from their Beatles days, the less they remained innovators and the more they became imitators. This was McCartney’s shot (one of several maybe) at making a disco hit. It worked, too. This was a monster song. I loved it as a kid but I never associated it with the Beatles.
Ten years after the White Album, which sounds timeless, McCartney was making music that, while entertaining, captured (only) a small window of time. To put it somewhat critically, he made hits that were almost guaranteed to sound dated within a few years. And they do. They’re still fun, and maybe that’s all they need to be.
The Sound of the Pounding 