Beethoven's Head

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Beethoven's Head

LP, Orphic Egg,^[1] London, OES 6904 (1972). 

^{Transcription and annotations by Lester Bangs Archive management.}

Beethoven was tuned into the highest frequency wavelength possible to one born of mortal flesh: The Music of the Spheres. William Blake^[2] talks about it, in fact he used to hear its heavenly songs sung by the angels in his head quite regularly, and Ornette Coleman described it well in the liner notes to his Ornette on Tenor album^[3]: "What I've done so far is really just a beginning. Because I hear a sound in my head that no man-made music that I've ever heard has ever duplicated. Some of my music comes close, as close as any and as close as possible for my energies and abilities to date. But not close enough. I still hear that song being sung every night and morning, back in the deepest part of my brain. And that's the kind of music I want to hear coming from some person or instrument right out here. And that's the kind of music I want to play."

So did Beethoven. Listen, you don't think this guy would have ended up a glowering bust on every mantelpiece from here to Paducah^[4] if he wasn't heavy, do you? Of course, anyone with a fair amount of charismatic otherness can go and doo likewise—Hitler's head got around, too—but fortunately Beethoven was tuned into another wavelength entirely, on so far beyond the pretty arenas where nervous little dictators move their armies and borders as to sometimes make you forget that earth and its scabs and aches still exist at all. Till the next Beethoven flashflood brings you right down into the raw loam where the suffering of each sentient being commingles with the rolling movement of nature to give us both art and the need of art. 

Beethoven didn't mess around. School was out forever the day he was born. And while he most assuredly had class and principles, it is equally sure that he created himself. In his holy music created he him. And all the rest of us in the bargain.

Beethoven is the orchestrator of our worst wars and our most pious worships. And whether you consider that paradoxical or merely ironic and telling, the facts remains that his emotional spectrum even within a single piece or single movement of one is so infinitely extensible that two different listeners can take something like the 9th Symphony and simultaneously find the noblest expression of man's reverence for his God in human history (as listeners of Beethoven's time did) and the soundtrack for narcotized front-brain movies of rape and vicarious gore (as Anthony Burgess and the hero of his Clockwork Orange,^[5] as well as the millions who had their brain dented by both book and movie of it, undeniably did). 

The central fact, though, is that Beethoven is not old. Beethoven is not musty. Beethoven is not Music Appreciation 0101. Beethoven is not good spinach. Beethoven is ritual exorcism of the demon hosts. Beethoven is as sensuous as Duke Ellington,^[6] as cosmic as John Coltrane,^[7] as bad as the Rolling Stones, as easy to take as Van Morrison.^[8]  Beethoven is a man who means to take your head and smash it into a million pieces with the violence that is so complete and transcendent in its ultramodern rage that only his music can carry it. Beethoven is a deeply meditative genius who wants to carry your ears and soul farther into the night and the void than they've ever been before, bring you out on the other side with the cleansed, glistening eyes of a rebirth of wonder prophesied by every croaker in the wilderness from Socrates^[9] to Ferlinghetti.^[10]

Beethoven will fill the holes in your soul.

1. Prometheus Overture

It's always good to lead off a hit album with a grabber. A tail feather shaker. A solid slice of high drama comin' atcha like Cecil B. DeMille^[11] and Jackson Pollock^[12] simultaneous. When we sent Rosemary Brown^[13] to Beethoven to ask him should she be the "Rocks Off" or "Like a Rolling Stone"^[14] of this LP, his craggy brow flashed old time brimstone and he spake thunder like Isaiah:^[15]  "The Prometheus overture, of course, though surd! What else?"

The old boy gets a mite testy like that sometimes, but he's always right so there's nothing to do but do it to his letter. And he proves he's one of the master programmers of the ages and could get a gig forthwith at any progressive FM station in the country, because the Pro O. kicks ass. As well it should, since it's about one of the original bad boys of Bullfinch.^[16] 

Prometheus was a Greek dude who got himself in dutch with the gods to such dire degree that he was sentenced to be bound to the jaggedest rock on the peak of the highest mountain in the whole earth, thence to ponder his heinous deed with remorse unequalled fore or aft, as it's no fun to have to lie spreadeagled under Old Sol while carrion vultures tear at your heart and entrails with their beaks for the duration of eternity. 

What was Pro's crime? He gave mankind fire. So it's no wonder that Beethoven would identify with that boy. Beethoven hocks a greenie at Zeus in monumental disdain, because Beethoven showed up Jehovah and Ra and all them mumbo-jumblers for the pile of Marvel Comic mytho-kaka they are.^[17]

2. Seventh Symphony — Last Movement

Ludwig V. told Rosemary Brown that Herb's 7th^[18] is his fave rave among extant 7ths, because Herb knows it's funny. Who ever told you that all this stuff was supposed to be serious? That man was a lying skunk! The hell with all those old croaks holed up in universities from her to Guam, telling you this sound's what it's not! And what's it not? HISTORY1 UNTOUCHABLY SACRED! (It's holy, but holy just like that great two piece statue of holy Lingam and Yoni^[19] in the one and only museum in all of Nepal, which visitors are invited to shove across the floor in and out of full penetration.) GOOD TASTE! "GOOD" MUSIC! TEXTBOOK STUFF! ART, EVEN! (Except insofar as the Lingam and Yoni are too.)

Because it ain't. It's bop. What we have in the Seventh is L.V. set free and grooving high all the way to the steps of the Kingdom. The celestial congregations are just out of sight over the next cloudbank, because No. 7, unfettered as it is, remains rooted in the earth just enough that there's no mistaking its utterly human whoop of triumph in the face of all the demons of the firmer terror. The real ice-heat flash of cosmic bliss beyond the pleasure principle and all memory of pain had to wait till later, when Ludwig brought us all back home (which, if you lived in any century pre-20thth, was Heaven) on a nonstop glory bound train with no signals no crossings no tracks or trails or ties. Look for Symphony No. 9 in Beethoven Boogie Vol. 11.

3. Piano Concert No. 1 — Last Movement

Meanwhile, back at the Chicken Shack^[20], Scott Joplin^[21] and Cecil Taylor^[22] are having a little howdown [sic] which is getting more competitive by the minute. Started out as just a friendly little jam session, but musicians always gotta jack their chops up higher than the next guy, and right now these two bozos are straining theirs out of all recognition. Just when it looks like both are about to burst like overripe pimples simultaneously, Ludwig Van strolls casually through the door, toothpick in his mouth and just the faintest trace of talcum and cue-chalk on his fingers, sets hisself [sic] down at the old beatup Steinway^[23] in a recess of the room, which neither Scott nor Cecil would consider using because they know that no real musician degrades himself by playing on an axe as obviously hoary and out of tune as this one is. But Big B pays 'em no mind, just cracks his knucks one by one like Eubie Blake^[24] used to do and blams right into some more of tatty old Concerto No. 1 

From him, it sent out a shivering ray of solid musical overlordsmanship that set the Steinway straight in two blinks of a bug's eye and made it sound like the celestial keys of the Milky Way were being plunked instead of some pawnshop castoff. You don't get to hear it here because only Beethoven could make a derelict sing like Caruso.^[25] Backhaus^[26] plays the best piano the Continent has to offer, though, and he knows the LVB universe from the inside out and can tell you like it was as well as any manjack walking this earth concurrent. Including Cecil Taylor and Scott Joplin, who have abated their squabble just as they were about to cleave each other's skulls open with tuning forks, and now sit each on his piano bench, jaw hanging, eyes glazed, staring with awe and rapture beyond measure at Ludwig Van as he takes the Eternal Boogie for one more turn around the charts before both he and we must ride the last groove out and say goodnight. And go out and watch the sun come up and really know:

There were giants in the earth those days.

4. Eighth Symphony — 2nd Movement

So where do you end up when you set your eyes too long on the panacean oasis? Right back in slings and arrows valley, natch. What we have here is the simultaneous consideration of the pain of movement and the impossibility of stasis. The strings are champing at the bit, zooming straight up the cliffs of circumstance, never quite hitting the summit of reprieve. The horns tell us more about jurisprudence on the plains of the conscience than all the sawbooks in Borges's Library of Babylon....^[27]

5. Third Symphony — Scherzo^[28]

No albums of class(ical) jamz would be complete without at least one scherzo in it. Scherzo neighbors schizo, and we all know who they are, but shizo ain't always scherzo turf, because there's gifted shizos and dud schizos. Dud schizos are you and me and all the other shambling citizens who have to roll our neuroses up in balls and kick 'em down the block a few times after we get home from work. Genius schizo is all great artists blessed with the outlet of their Calling by the Muse. Don't ask me how or why the Muses pick on Ludwig Van in his cradle and not you or me; I'm just a reporter. But anyway, when they DO, the schizo boils high and revelatory, showering the world with reprocessed conflict in the form of scherzos. And the result is moving as hell, because the conflict was endured and processed by the gifted schizo's innards, so we get all the emotional exorcisms sans the distracting pain factor. Lucky us! And the result is that all the unresolvable twists of consciousness are somehow rendered unsnarled for the brief duration of this performance, split personalities that haven't spoken two words to each other for decades [sic] are reconciled in new prospects however illusory of peace and harmony, and everybody's happy.

SIDE TWO

1. Coriolanus Overture

As even Herman's Hermits^[29] and Cannibal and the Headhunters^[30] know, side two is just as important as side one. You need a getoff gasser to open the door. Well, if "Coriolanus" don't grab you by the yarbles and shake you just as hard as old "Prometheus", it can only indicate that you are so stunned by side one as to be rendered senseless. If so, go recuperate with some Black Sabbath^[31] and epsom salts.

We'll wait.

No we won't. I lied just so we could get rid of the psychic sadsacks and crank this Beethoven Boogie up full throttle. Now, "Coriolanus" is probably the most dynamic track on this deck yet, so listen well. There is a story behind it, too:

Concerning Beethoven's cousin in Prague, Hermosilio Coriolanus, who was the foremost taxidermist of his time^[32] and sat by the heels of royalty. No less an entity than Napoleon Bonaparte himself once summoned Hermo Corio, as we called him for short down by the humble cow and horse-stuffer (Roy Rogers^[33] took the freshly deceased Trigger to his great-great-great-grandson, who plies the trade in Duluth to this day) the signal honor of getting to stuff Napoleon and the entire Royal Family of France, each upon the appointed day of his or her demise, preparatory to installing all umpteen royal stiffs in the the [sic] Cemeterie de Gall,^[34] bent by Ludwig's cousin's own hands into mannekin [sic] poses of true nobility set to endure in state in full view of all who came to peer in the skylights above or buy Viewmaster reels of the tomb,^[35] for all of eternity. 

Unfortunately, Hermo Corio fell afoul of Napoleon's mood when he started buying stiffs fresh from the guiloteen [sic] on the sly, stuffing them and selling them to traveling carnivals with the heads of horses, oxen and goats sewn on in place of the originals lost to the blade. This, as you may well imagine, was not quite the epitome of the socially approved second job in the France of the early 1900's... Well, suffice to say that that [sic] H.C.'s fate was not enviable. He lost his head in a way that Nicholas Monsarrat's tribe^[36] and compulsive gamblers on a streak in Vegas never dream of.

2. Fifth Symphony — 3rd Movement

It's fortuitous that Ludwig Van and Rosemary Brown^[37] were kind enough to see that this old standard was included in this set, or an awful lot of members of the International Beethoven Fan Club would have been up in arms right now. They didn't, however, run the first movement which everyone knows too well. They gave us Movement No. 2, where the stupendous declarations made in Movement No. 1 are sorted out less frighteningly. 

As even TV babies^[38] know, the Fifth was the official victory tune of the Allies during World War II (what was the official V.T. of the Axis? The history books won't tell you. Why? Because the lyrics were dirty), and not without good reason. Macho music to end all crockrock, this, its message of monolithic dominance is like the booming of some great God from the night of prehistory come to visit his wrath upon us once more. His footfalls will be wanderin' you may believe, and where they go you'd best be scamperin' aside. In this 2nd Movement, though, we find the Victory God pausing, having set himself down for a brief rest in one of the verdant back valleys of the Nordic Plain. So take a close look: you won't get the chance again.

3. Fourth Symphony — Fourth Movement

As if Victory Dieties [sic] from out of time can take a holiday, so can mere titans like Ludwig V. Which is what happened in the fourth movement of his Fourth Symphony, his rumination conceived whilst dallying with his lady in the fields of Alsace Lorraine,^[39] and executed while tearing his hair out in his lair in the city. It's laid back mellow, green, gentle-on-my-mind music, but not like the current vogue for laid-back-as-pretext-for-mere-lameness. Not like puerility masks as sensitivity. Beethoven knew what beauty and nature were about in their essence, and even if he never grew his own dope and threw the I Ching^[40] on his teepee floor in upper Vermont,^[41] still he knew the hills and plains and each bud and speck of earth as part of the great indestructible carpet beneath that Sistine sky^[42] some still remember. And if you listen to this, you will too.

4. Zwischenakt No. 4 From Egmont

Beethoven soars. Beethoven tears. Beethoven howls. Beethoven slips out onto the highway and disappears like a rake on the run from the hellhounds on his trail. Beethoven on the missing persons list, in full flight from the eyes of the multitude. Somewhere in his journey Beethoven just skipped out, made it down to the levee to drink a few with the boys himself, ragged and anonymous at last and sighing in the relief of it. As he trots down the cobblestone highway, he comes upon a small town in the hills of Germany. A local festival is in progress, with beer flowing endlessly and pigtailed maids with perfect mountain pale skin and blue eyes that would melt you, all dancing in the town square entwined with flowers and the open faces of stolid lives in ritual celebration feast day. Beethoven stops and stays long, listing and looking into one pair of blue galaxies after another, searching for some intangible extra jolt that will mark the One. The One that will be so complete as to heal his life and steal his brain so far that he will never have to write another note. But he doesn't catch any such eyes in this throng, though he drinks more beer than ten burghers and holds each blushing beauty on his knee in turn. So disconsolately he treks back to his urban lair and wets the experience down in notes proximate both to the folk tunes heard at the festival and the raw overtones of winds whistling down the gorges of the mountains that surround that village. 

LESTER BANGS Writer and Critic for Creem

^[32] _{"Hermosilio Coriolanus, who was the foremost taxidermist of his time": Bangs is, of course, fancifully creating his own comic universe here; Ludwig had no such cousin, nor is anyone named "Hermosilio Cariolanus" a noted taxidermist. Beethoven's "Cariolanus Overture" actually draws its inspiration from Roman General Caius Marcius Coriolanus, the titular character of William Shakespeare's tragedy Cariolanus.} 

^[33] _{Born "Leon Franklin Slye," Roy Rogers (1911-1998) was the singing cowboy actor best remembered for his appearances with wife Dale Evans on The Roy Rogers Show, which also starred his palomino horse, Trigger (originally called "Golden Cloud"), arguably the genre's singlemost famous horse in film. (Trigger died in 1965 at the age of 30).}

^[34]_{"Cemeterie de Gall": a nonsense reference alluding to the disposition of Napoleon Bonaparte's remains. Bonaparte died in 1821 and was initially interred on the banks of the Paris Seine, then, in 1840, was entombed in Les Invalides. It's possible that Lester Bangs was conflating the reference to Les Invalides with the recently deceased President of France, Charles de Gaulle, who died in November 1970.}

^[35] _{"Viewmaster reels of the tomb": View-Master is a trademarked plastic stereoscope popularized in the 1950s and 60s as an educational toy. It made use of reels, cardboard wheels containing small color photographic slides which, when examined through the device, provided a stereoscopic 3-D view; the reels frequently showcased popular historical locations and tourist destinations.}