Two Voices

It's been a bit frustrating that I've hardly been able to find time to really get to listen to the stash of CDs I bought a couple of weeks back - marking the Year 6 Prelim papers has not been of assistance in this respect. But I managed last night to get a good listen to the White Album, of which I am now the proud possessor for the first time in my life. I can't really explain why I've never bought it. It was one of those albums that someone else always had and played (at university, I mean) and I never felt that desperate to listen to it full time, as it were, despite enjoying most of it. I realised last night that I really didn't 'know' it as well as I thought I did. Yes, the famous stuff I knew, but I was genuinely surprised at how slow the album version of Revolution is, for example, compared to the single version which I know well, almost as if it had quite disappeared from my consciousness. Similarly listening to Helter Skelter I kept noticing the differences from U2's live version (on Rattle & Hum) the original has become so displaced over time by Bono & Co's (excellent) take on the piece. And the more obscure material kept taking me by surprise, almost as if I'd never been exposed to it before (a rather pleasant experience, in its way, like re-reading a novel when you've completely forgotten everything about it.)

I was also leafing through Mark Lewishon's interesting, if anoraky, account of all the Beatles's recording sessions, The Beatles Recording Sessions (nifty title, eh?) with particular reference to the White Album and was reminded of how obsessive John Lennon was about altering/distorting his voice on the later albums. Nearly every album from Revolver onwards (maybe before, not too sure) has him having his vocals processed through some form of technology or other. There's a nice story, and picture, of him singing Revolution flat on his back on the studio floor just to see, or hear, what it does to his voice. What is so extraordinary about this is that the guy had such a wonderful voice - in my not-so-humble opinion the greatest male voice of the last century. Why he chose to sort of hide it is beyond me.

In fact, I think it's Bono somewhere who refers to Lennon having the voice of an angel, and he got that absolutely right. (Being no slouch on the vocal front himself, I'd suggest this is a judgment worth trusting.) I thought the reference came somewhere on Rattle & Hum in association with the great Lennon sort-of-tribute God Part II, but I just tried to look it up and couldn't find anything. Anyway, if I'm making it up I don't mind claiming the observation for myself.

It also occurs to me, while I'm attempting some originality, that so far the greatest voice of this century has to be Dylan's - I mean the extraordinary raddled version we hear on the last three supreme albums - and that too has a fair claim to an angelic lineage - but this time one of the more disreputable angels, the type the Almighty sends to do his dirty work, possibly one of the fallen. But utterly wonderful in its otherness.