Review - A Hard Day's Night

Album: A Hard Day's Night
Release Date: July 10th, 1964









 A Hard Day’s Night was momentous for several reasons.  It was the first Beatles album without any cover songs, as well as the only one written entirely by Lennon and McCartney.  It also served as the soundtrack for the band’s first feature film.  That’s quite a lot of firsts for just their third album, and it becomes even more interesting when you figure out the proper historical context.  A Hard Day’s Night, both the record and film, is said to represent the state of the band at the height of Beatlemania.  This assertion is so strong that I believed it to be true before I ever read anyone who outright stated it.  It became one of those givens of music culture.

The trouble is that the collective consciousness tends to ignore dates.  I always thought that Beatlemania was the result of years of success, but A Hard Day’s Night was released a little over a year after Please Please Me.  Beatlemania actually happened fast and early. What we don’t often hear is that pop music in the 60’s was not too different than it is today.  It was based entirely on trends, with no act having a shelf life of much longer than a year, at least as performing musicians.  After that, they might find opportunities in TV or film.  The industry was generating personalities, and was perhaps more blatant about it than it is today.  As the Pitchfork retrospective explains, the album’s response to this cynical outlook is it’s greatest achievement.  The Beatles knew that they didn’t have to bow out gracefully if they could prove that they were still relevant.  So they showed that they could write their material all on their own, and they made said material push boundaries that no one expected pop songs to try and bother with. 

So far I’ve admittedly only recycle other, better observations on this record.  Now for my own opinion on its quality.  It’s one thing to say that the band tried to push the pop envelope, but did they actually succeed? And can a modern listener without much musical knowledge tell the difference?  I think so, but it isn’t always easy.  Some of the songs here still have that sock hop sound, with cutesy lyrics and harmonies, but legendary tracks like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” certainly feel more mature and exciting.  The content is not about awkward teenagers, but perhaps somewhat older lovers, dealing with love and life and money and jobs.  They may not sound edgy by modern standards, but they make it clear that the band was now about touch as much as it was look.  Tracks like “If I Fell” and “And I Love Her” are slower and more mellow sounding.  A Hard Day’s Night deals with all the same themes, but childish pining and fictional pain are replaced with something that sounds more like real love and loss.  Compared to past works, there is definitely an evolution in sound and content, and if you  still believe it sounds straightforward, you’re right.  It’s just that the reasons for this are that The Beatles helped establish several decades worth of pop canon, starting somewhere around here.

Overall, I find A Hard Day’s Night to be something I have to listen to from start to finish.  There are no tracks that I cherry pick, nor are there real stinkers.  It is a thoroughly enjoyable event, from start to finish, and I tend to only bring it out every so often, so as not to burn out on it.  Perhaps my favorite thing about the album is how it reminds me that pop music doesn’t have to be disposable; it is simply often made that way by design.  When someone insults The Beatles for being a “pop band”, they’re gonna have to try harder.   

The Prisoner - Recap

So I never finished my Prisoner recaps. Sorry for that. At the very least, the last few episodes are wild and speculative enough that any interpretation I might won't add up to much. There are certain scenes and questions which cannot be answered, and they don't need to be either. Still, this post might have some analysis.

I do want to talk a bit more on my final thoughts on the show. It's been months since I finished the final episode, but I just rewatched a few with audio commentary on, and they provided some insight and observations which have helped improve my interest and appreciation of the show.

There are a lot of reasons to admire The Prisoner, and what I've really come to see is just how lucky we are to have something like it. It was different than most shows of its era, and difficult to write, film, and produce. The fact that it came out at all, let alone managed to be so good, is incredible.

Another point of merit is that the show's subject matter is easy to fuck up. Everyone loves referencing 1984 and Brave New World, and calling things they don't like "Orwellian", but it is easy to miss an important point of these classic books. Orwell and Huxley were against the terrible dystopias they created, but they also emphasized just how powerful they are. Neither novel's protagonist succeeds in the end, and in the case of Brave New World, the only person who really fights against society is someone from outside of it. I find that people seem to cling to stories like The Matrix, in which the heroes are pure and virtuous, being fully disconnected from the societal machine, and having little to no care for the poor "sheep" (or if concern does exist, it is so half assed as to be irrelevant). They like to believe that if they were in the story, they too would be free and enlightened. This, of course, is entirely bullshit. Orwell and Huxley knew that we're all part of society to some extent, and once you're a part of it, it is extremely difficult to break away. The answer, then, may not be to escape and destroy, but to prevent these nightmare scenarios from ever occurring. Most of the supposed "free thinkers" I am referring to are more like the Huxley's character Bernard. He has the ideas, and he thinks highly of himself for this, but he doesn't have the guts to act upon them. In the end, he's a flake who crumbles due to fear and jealousy.

The Prisoner, on the other hand, very much gets the point. For most of the show, we see Number Six find new and more clever ways to try and escape, and every one of them fails. He finally understands that the people behind The Village have influence far beyond it. There is no getting out; instead, all he can do is pretend to play along, while trying to fuck with them in any way he can. In the end, he wins the battle of the minds, but by the end of the final episode, it isn't clear that his efforts have done anything. The Village is destroyed, but there's no definitive proof that Six has escaped his captors for good. The cycle will continue, and escape is likely impossible.

I also found that, despite what you might expect, The Prisoner is friendly to the plight of its victims. Number Six is the most individual of anyone in The Village, and his plight is very much his own, but he isn't the only person who tries to escape or fight back. He often tries to enlist the aid of others who have seen through the lies (none of whom last very long), and those that have bought in to the system are not looked at as sheep ripe for collateral damage, but as people whom are worth saving. He has contempt for those that work towards keeping the prisoners at bay, but both he and the viewer can tell that the people are being trapped by very powerful mechanisms which a single person can't hope to break. In the end, Number Six very much wants to escape The Village, but he also wants to put a stop to it. This level of concern is rare, but it is important in that it shows that while The Village is the result of man's evils, it's success is caused by failings weaknesses of man which cannot simply be prevented.

This brings up an apparent contradiction - in the end, a single man does manage to defeat the system, at least temporarily. The key here is to understand that Number Six is more of an allegory for the human spirit, the fight for freedom, than he is a person that we can hope to perfectly emulate. Indeed, the only reason he succeeds at all is because he is able to learn from the failures of those who acted before him, and because The Village considers him so important that his rebellion is met with only mild punishment. Six is treated specially compared to everyone else, and this isn't because he is some special person. Rather, he is treated as such because he represents an ideal, one that is so powerful that they do not wish for it to spread. In most fiction of this nature, the viewer is tempted to see themselves in the hero, to believe that they too are special compared to the rest of humanity. That isn't the point of The Prisoner; we will never have the constitution or the lucky breaks that Number Six is gifted with. Yet he is someone we should all aspire to be like, because if enough people stand up and fight back, then we can cover our individual weaknesses and work together as a cohesive whole. I believe this interpretation works well with the ending, which shows that, alone, the ideal as man is only able to inflict temporary damage to the system. The only way to truly break it is for people to come together. This sense of inclusion is what makes The Prisoner so powerful and unique. It doesn't tell us to save ourselves and abandon the world, and it doesn't want us to hide behind a mask (which is why I still loathe the popularity of the V for Vendetta film adaptation). We must stand up and make our faces known, but we must do it together if we want to succeed.

A lot of people hated the ending to The Prisoner. Everybody wanted a proper reveal. Who is Number One? What does he want? How is he stopped? These are the questions viewers wanted answered, and McGoohan rejected them all because they were never the point. He wanted it to be an allegory on society, while everyone else wanted a traditional "good versus evil" yarn. If the show was leading up to a proper ending, with escape and victory, it probably would have built up to such an event, with clues and reveals being sprinkled into each episode. As it is, the show has little to no continuity between episodes, and no one can agree on an official ordering. It makes sense that viewers of the time were upset, but in the modern era we should know better. The Prisoner echoes many moderns shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, which fail to create a satisfying ending and often fall back to the "story as metaphor" explanation. The difference is that these shows spent several seasons previous behaving as if there is strong continuity and development within the plot, and that a resolution is forthcoming. The Prisoner was victim of audience expectations, but modern shows are victims of trying (and failing) to address those expectations. In my mind, they deserve far less sympathy. McGoohan had something he wanted to say. The writers on Lost simply fucked up.

And so it pains me to see that in the decades since, the TV critics who are supposedly concerned with the quality of modern programming continue to regard The Prisoner as a wacky footnote in the history of the medium. The truth is that it's themes, its tone, and its delivery are all far more powerful, interesting, and viewer friendly than most of today's failed serials. We compare it to so many other works as if they had anything in common, yet if we spent more time looking at what this show was trying to achieve, we'd see just how much different it really was. If we truly learned the right lessons from it, and improved upon its ideals, then I'm sure that TV storytelling would be worlds better than it is now. Like it's main character, the show was merely a dent in an ever moving machine.

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady are one of the great polarizers in modern music. Rather than trying their hand at some postmodern experimentation, they play straight up classic rock, inspired heavily by the sounds and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It's a familiar, fun sound that has given them the infamous title of being the greatest bar band around, something to play while the drinks are flowing among friends. Naturally, such a sound is considered unworthy of any deep examination or critical acclaim. As the albums kept coming, and the band continued to play songs about teenagers in peril, music fans began to stop fighting over the band, and simply stepped onto one side of the line, knowing that this schtick was the only sound they knew how to make.

Being a fan of both classic rock and sincere music, I find myself being pro Hold Steady. They may not shake my musical world, but I find them to be a necessary comfort food in an age where modern music doesn't know what the hell it wants to be. Furthermore, the band is a fine example of how age of a song or act can affect our view of it. No one faults an old and rich Bruce for singing about hardships and youthful mistakes, so it seems silly to make this claim against The Hold Steady.

Be that as it may, there can be striking levels in quality in even such a straightforward theme. my first Hold Steady album, Boys and Girls in America, had a sound that was far more fun than sober. It was as if the band was saying "take a look at our youth today. Aren't they so crazy??!?", at the same time that you could envision the keyboardist slamming back a brew between furious solos. This is probably why Pitchfork media gave it such a favorable review - the hippest and coolest of the music indsutry seem to latch on to bands where you aren't quite whether they're looking at you with stern seriousness or a wink and a nod.

Meanwhile, time has gone on since "Boys and Girls", and while the band is still covering the same topics, their approach has definitely changed (I won't say evolved, exactly). Critics have described this as The Hold Steady sliding into a position as elder statesmen of modern rock, looking back at the trials and tribulations of youth while no longer being apart of it. At first, I thought this was a bizzare statement to make. The band's first major release was only back in 2004, meaning that singer Craig Finn has been in his thirties the entire time. In music years, it seems like he should have been an elder statesman all along. But we live in an age where everyone is growing up slower, and you can bet your ass that a 32 year old can still be found partying hard, or at most, is starting to grow out of that phase. Now that Finn is closer to 40, play time is definitely over. The fact that we didn't see The Hold Steady grow out of their twenties doesn't negate the fact that people of any age can change a lot in the span of six years. They may not have followed the traditional rock band narrative, but how much does that really mean? In any case, regardless of what labels the band has been stamped with, the songs themselves are all you need to see that they really have done some growing up (more on that in a future review).

In any case, this transformation of sorts has led to the usual results. Their last two records have met with increasingly lower grades from the hipster critics, all the while gaining more praise from mainstream outlets such as Rolling Stone. This is due to the fact that, depending on where your music tastes lie, the concept of "growing up" means either giving in to wild experimentation, or settling down. Personally, my own tastes are far too unpredictable for me to agree with either approach wholeheartedly, so I tend to judge each band's progress on a case by case basis. In regards to The Hold Steady, their newest album is out, and I think I'm ready to hold court.