Dancing around the Beatles and Bob Dylan thus far, HardTimes has grown tired of avoiding the obvious. At least one of them can be avoided no longer.
A few weeks ago, HardTimes’s writing staff splurged on some tunes for the office. One writer picked up an early reissue of Two Virgins, by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
What’s striking about the album is that it sounds exactly like a Beatles noise record. For better or worse, this is an avant garde album only a Beatle could produce. Hear me out.
Admittedly, Two Virgins is not the most interesting noise album ever. It doesn’t come off as a self-indulging, as I’m sure many critics hold it to be, but neither does it sound entirely truthful. The album was recorded immediately before Ono and Lennon made love for the first time. That’s sort of an important moment in rock and roll history. Despite the album’s foreshadowing, Two Virgins doesn’t sound passionate. It spins tape-loop after tape-loop of dark pshycedelia. It’s cool. It’s interesting. It accomplishes what decent noise music should. It is not, however, ground breaking.
We should probably ask whether Two Virgins mere association with the biggest rock and roll band in history disqualifies it from the “avant garde” title. Released in the same November ‘68 week as the white album, Virgins is loaded with flashes of ”Bungalow Bill” sounding pianos. Ever-pleasing Yellow Submarine-esque ramblings cut in and out. White noise hisses over Yoko’s improv vocal screeches and a distinct John Lennon chit-chats. It’s out there, but still created by one of pop music’s biggest sensations. It still has the Apple stamp. It will prove familiar to anyone who has explored more than the Beatles 1.
Virgins was not, however, Lennon’s first delve into abstract art. He had recently hosted a show at the Fraser Gallery entitled You Are Here. Johnathan Cott, still a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, asks Lennon about the Fraser Gallery show a few months before Two Virgins would be released. Lennon could just as easily have been talking about Two Virgins:
JC: Your Show at the Fraser Gallery gave critics a chance to take a swipe at you.
JL: Oh right, but putting it on was taking a swipe at them in a way. I mean that’s what it was about. What they couldn’t understand was that - a lot of them were saying, well, if it hadn’t been for John Lennon, nobody would have gone to it, but as it was me, it was me doing it. And if it had been Sam Bloggs it would have been nice. But the point of it was - it was me. And they’re using that as a reason to say why it didn’t work. Work as what?
The band itself began experimenting with film (Magical Mystery Tour), music (“Revolution #9,” “Blue Jay Way,” “Blackbird” (ha)), and spirituality (holing up in an ashram in Rishikesh). As Lennon suggests to Rolling Stone, the Beatles understood the impact their images left on popular culture. If they could stay ahead of the media, independent projects and abstract art albums could still make a statement and gain wide attention so long as a Beatle was tacked on.
When viewed within the context of rock and roll history, Two Virgins is an immensely interesting album. It holds up as an intimate portrait of a commercial pop star dipping his toes in the pool of obscurity. When heard with fresh ears, however, Two Virgins is a cheeky noise record at best. Maybe the real beauty and importance of Two Virgins lies in the fact that John Lennon and Yoko Ono are going bonkers on tape.
Recommended to anyone who thinks the white album (The Beatles) is one of the most important pieces of music composed in the 20th century.
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