Fashion in Clothing Now Six Feet Under

This week marked the tenth anniversary of the end of the HBO cable-program Six Feet Under. 

However, I watched the entire five seasons of the show only earlier this year, never having even glimpsed a moment of it before.  

Dead is the New Black.
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At the same time, I was reading Retromania, by Simon Reynolds, a British journalist who reports from the U.S., published 2011. It details how modern pop culture has become in the twenty-first century mainly concerned with reviving the past. 

What struck me about Six Feet Under's first two series (dating from 2000 to '02) was how the clothing styles at least were no giveaway to when the series was made. 

Bulky cathode-ray and white-encased computer monitors, and the models of car, more subtly dated the program. 

The word "fashion" in itself is still immediately identified with the sartorial. 

Yet for the past fifteen years or so, clothing has ceased to be a temporal marker of changing taste. 

The apparently undated feel of Six Feet Under is evoked partly by the fact that the sets (such as for the Fisher family’s funeral parlour) are themselves designed in a retro “Prairie” style. 

Even so, the actors are also costumed in a way that would not, to my eye, be out of place if the clothes were worn today. However, no one would be able to dress in the styles of 1987 in 2001, without seeming passe. 

Changes in fashion, with clothing-styles foremost, has (during modern times at least) been fuelled by status-seeking. Chic styles are established by higher-class taste-makers, which are in turn emulated by social climbers on each wrung of the ladder below. 

Radical Chic.
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When fashions become identified with a certain class, they are quickly abandoned by those on the strata above. Periodically, the fashionable avant-garde will adopt styles identified with the underclass, so as to prevent imitation by those directly below. 

In the twenty-first century, however, clothing has mostly ceased to be a medium through which people define themselves in terms of status. 

Perhaps it is that clothes have become too inexpensive a means for status-seekers to assume the appearance of those of better station. 

Or maybe it is that the possible variations in style for modern clothing-formats (cuffed pants, front-buttoned shirts, etc.) have been exhausted, and fashion designers have to return to the past to come with anything “new.” 

Being in-fashion now focusses on products other than clothing, it seems. Certain information-technology devices have become chic to be seen with, but are at once too expensive to be easily emulated by the lower classes. 

This is the case with the Apple company’s i-phone devices, which are in no way superior to other “wireless” handheld telephones, and are (speaking from personal experience) a great deal more fragile. 

Nevertheless, anyone with a fashion sense wouldn’t dare to be without one (in spite, or because of, the fact that they cost twice as much as equivalent phones that do the job just as well). 

The disparate meanings placed by the fashion and tech industries on the very word “design”, undergo an odd concurrence here. 

For the garment-industry, the designer is responsible for laying down patterns in cloth and colour, creating an aesthetically-pleasing style for the marketplace. This hasn’t mainly to do with the functional aspects of clothing: fashion-design could be described as “useless” (as much as any art or aesthetic has no use). 

With information-technology, however, the designer is more fundamental to the manufacturing process. His work may well touch on the aesthetic features of a silicon-based device (as is the case with the i-phone and other Apple products), but design in the IT world refers to the technical architecture that makes the device functional in the first place. 

Famously, innovation has occurred far more rapidly in computing technology, than in any other industry. The biannual doubling of computer-power (the “Moore’s law” predicted by a cofounder of Intel in 1965) has rendered state-of-the-art information technology, obsolete within just a few years. 

The bulky, white-encased computer equipment seen in Six Feet Under, was outmoded because of newer, more powerful information-processors soon became available. 

But not merely so: during the time the series was in production, desktop computer-cases went from being all-white (or slightly off-white), to all-black. This was not due to solely improvements in functionality, as instead to the desire to make the desktop computer an invisible part of the decor, by rendering it literally opaque. 

If It's Not a i-phone you're a no-account declasse piece of garbage.
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It reflects the personal-computer’s shift from a status symbol (with conspicuous white panelling) to simply another home appliance. As laptop computers became more portable, they were initially marketed in darker colours. 

More recently, however, their cases have been silver-chrome in appearance, making them resemble a jewellery-box or the like. The white or otherwise “ice-cream” tones of the i-phone case, are a striking claim to higher status. 

With clothing, “design” is usually what renders a garment obsolete to wear, long before it becomes worn-out or otherwise dysfunctional as apparel. Obsolescence in computing is also accelerated, by pairing the redesign of basic technical architecture for greater power and efficiency, with changes in the aesthetics of the products themselves.

Some examples of the coverage of the death of Paul McCartney...

Are right here.

Where Have All the Service-Stations Gone?

The Ottawa Citizen recently reported on the efforts to have a service-station located in the city’s Westboro district and built in 1934, declared a Heritage site, on account of its unique “cottage-like” architecture.   

I drove by the location the other day, taking the picture below. What struck me is that there is no “for-sale” sign on the premises – which in fact hadn’t been a gasoline-station for many years. 

Not even close to the Westboro Church.
Photo: R.B. Glennie

It was most recently a used-car lot, but apparently the land has no commercial value – surprisingly enough, given that it is located right in the midst of one of the wealthiest postal-codes in the city.  

The Citizen story is enigmatic on this point. But given its former uses, it is not too much to believe that the property is too contaminated to be a profitable investment. 

The current landlord had no comment about the Heritage application, although last year ta representative said the land “was currently underused and had more potential to serve the community in the future." 

Building-owners generally object to Heritage-designation, because it severely delimits what they do with the property. Reading between the lines, I think the landlord actually wants the city to buy back the land, apparently because it can’t be disposed of otherwise. 

Here’s another enigma: just three years after its construction in 1937, it was sold for $1 (to be fair, this is about fifteen dollars in contemporary Canadian currency). 

One might think that the land is less so contaminated, than possessed by the Devil. 

The supernatural aside, this whole story brought me back to thoughts I had some time ago about the disappearance of the service-station.  

When I was a youngster, virtually all auto-mechanic garages operated also as retailers of gasoline. Now, there are very few of such businesses, if any. 

There are significantly fewer gas-stations, on the whole, and very few are owned independently of large petroleum concerns. As recently as 2008, though, there was on Ogilvie Road in Ottawa a gas station that had, apparently, an attached auto-mechanic service. 

I believe it was still operated by, or affiliated with, the Shell company.  But the Ogilvie Shell was in fact one of a type that was put all over North America, I presume (or at least in those areas where Shell set up business). 

These were built in a “homey” style, with a wood-panelled exterior so as to remind motorists of old-fashioned, supposedly small-town sellers of petrol. These were so commonplace in my youth part of the background. When they began to go away, they did so without much ado, thus. I remembered them only when I started to habitually drive past the Ogilvie Road place, one of the last of its kind.

They were, in fact, a remarkably brilliant exercise in marketing, using the very architecture of the station itself (which was, it must be said, handsomely spartan, with a facade reminiscent of the split-level suburban family home, so common in the area as it happens) to defray the growing perception back then, that oil companies were up to no good. 

I was able to reminisce this Shell station for a while only, before it was closed, demolished and made way for a business plaza (which includes a drive-thru Starbuck’s location). 

These Shell stations I presume were, during their heyday, franchised to certified auto-mechanics, who may have well been independent operators previously. This was becoming increasingly commonplace, as I remember. 

When I was young, my dad took the family car to a garage on Main Street in Ottawa East, that everyone knew as “Mike’s Fina” (or simply, “Mike’s”). 

Looking back, I don’t believe the name “Mike” appeared anywhere on the sign, but it was indeed run by a guy named Mike, whose son, also Mike, took over later. Evidently, Mike Sr. had some kind of arrangement with Fina, the Belgian oil firm (and later, when the domestic interests of Fina were purchased by Petro-Canada, it became “Mike’s Petro-Canada," or really, "Mike's"). 

Mike’s gas station was closed around the turn of the century, I would guess.  The land on which it was situated, lay vacant for a time before it was also sold to developers to put up condos. Mike Jr. is still in business: evidently with proceeds from the sale of his station, he built an auto-mechanic establishment on a property adjacent to the old place (this located in a building that also contains condominiums). 

The transaction encapsulates the general trend in the auto-repair business, wherein the latter has been disestablished from direct involvement in the sale of gasoline. What, for the first decades seemed such a natural fit, is practically unheard-of now. 

What follows is educated speculation as to the reasons for this. 

Sales of gasoline, and general auto-maintenance services were conjoined originally, because pumping one’s own gasoline was considered too tricky, dirty and above all, undignified for the average motorist (who were originally bourgeois or richer folks) to engage in directly. 

Moreover, it would have been unthinkable to expect women drivers (who from early on, consisted of a large part of the motorist population in North America at least, women operating if not their own motorcars, then those owned by husbands, fathers and other males of intimate relation) to get their own gas. 

Thereby, as the gas-retailing system was being set up in the early decades of the twentieth century, young, unskilled labour was employed to carry out not only this duty, but also to check oil, inflate tires, wash windows, and so on. 

However, “pumping gas” is not only a job-descriptor, but a term with greater symbolic import, denoting a very low-status, unskilled occupation. 

Thus, In order to defray high rates of turnover, and to attract more reputable candidates for employment, service-station owners had the gas-jockeys become informal apprentices to the more skilled mechanics who worked to repair car-engines. 

Not nearly all of those who have pumped gas have gone on to be auto-mechanics. However, virtually all auto-mechanics of an earlier era started out in the business pumping gas, which was in turn considered merely the simplest and least-statusworthy job in a continuum of filthy (and thereby to many, vulgar) activities involved in the repair and maintenance of cars. 

As the "century of the car" progressed, and business became more concentrated (with firms such as Shell and Texaco becoming national and continental in reach), service-station concerns sought competitive advantage through the employment of polite, friendly, uniformed (and most importantly, relatively clean) staffers. 

The professed commitment to good service naturally extended to the auto-repair part of the business, with the mechanics given customer-relations training and at least rudimentary understanding in the academic side of their trade (so as to present to the public framed “diplomas” allegedly certifying the expertise of in-house auto-mechanics). 

As these innovations were costly, only larger firms could afford them. But as they were also successful with the public, independently-owned service-stations were less able to compete with the combines, and went out of business or were bought up by the big players (as apparently occurred with Mike’s station on Main Street, Ottawa). 

The old-fashioned design of the Shell stations of the ‘60s, was a concession to the fact that the “neighbourhood mechanic” was a thing of the past, and the company succeeded to a great extent in making people forget that Shell was the proverbial “faceless corporation.” 

Going against the grain of economic history, though, wherein business in most sectors tends toward oligopoly — auto-repair and gasoline-sales have undergone dis-aggregation.  
In contrast to decades ago, most auto-mechanics are today independent operators, and the business itself seems to resist concentration. There are of course, larger players involved in the auto-repair business. 

The Canadian Tire chain offers not only auto parts and products for sale, but each outlet has a garage for auto-work as well (more recently, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart has got into the auto-mechanic business in Canada as well). 

However, both Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart make most of their money in the sale of general, non-auto merchandise (the ad slogan for the former chain was for many years, “There’s A Lot More than Tires at Canadian Tire”). 

Whatever the dominance exercised by Wal-Mart especially in the retail sector, there seems little prospect that it or Canadian Tire will become oligopolistic actors in the auto-repair industry. 

The Canadian firm is even referred to as “Crappy Tire” in large part for its reputation for substandard and inadequate repair and maintenance services, and is patronized mainly due to its promise of relatively cheap rates compared to the independents. 

But peer into the garage at a Canadian Tire, and one will find very few veterans of the trade. Like the workforce inside the store, the mechanics are young and inexperienced, and underpaid as well; if they have any talent, they will move on to better-paying jobs at independent operators, or else open their own businesses (I’m sure this the case at Wal-Mart garages, too).

Auto-companies also offer car-repair services, so as to (as in the ad slogan of one of them) “offer genuine GM service and parts at the best prices”. Most of contemporary auto-makers have large service-centres in major cities, attracting customers based on the knowledge and skill that allegedly comes from specializing on engines belonging to a certain brand. But this branch of business was set up largely in fulfilment of warranty services offered on the sale of new vehicles.  

The car companies insist on in-house work being done, so as to control discretion as to whether the repair fulfils the terms of the warranty. As new-car warranties are really a type of car-insurance, auto-mechanics employed by automakers must act as adjusters, as much as servicemen, in order to save costs as much as possible, for their employer. It may be that car-maker service-centres are not profitable in terms of their gross expense on labour and materials (I know this to be the case with appliance-repair for Sears Canada,for example), less the sales accrued through the purchase of extended-warranties to be included in auto-financing (this is why Sears sales-people must concentrate on these “extended protection agreements” when selling washers, dryers, fridges, etc.). 

Aside from this, it seems that there are no examples of an auto-mechanic firm expanding from a single owner-operated outlet, into a regional, provincial or national chain. This has occurred in most other forms of business: as with, say, McDonald’s in the fast-food sector, or Starbuck’s in the sale of “premium” coffees. 

Certainly, national and continental chains have developed around relatively simple and quick repairs and maintenance on automobiles (such as Speedy Muffler or Oil Changers). But there is no large concern that I am aware of, in Canada, the United States or elsewhere, that as its major line of business, is devoted entirely to the comprehensive maintenance and repair of cars and trucks. 

The reason for this resides in the fact that cars are probably the most sophisticated engineered technology sold to a largely consumer marketplace. Fixing them thus requires a high level of skill, a sort of expertise that apparently is never completely grasped in theory, and requires at least several years of practice and tutoring, in order to achieve true professionalism. 

As well, working on cars is intricate enough (at least, when done professionally) so that it cannot be easily rationalized and routinized (making the tasks achievable by those of average or below talent) — excepting with the aforesaid muffler- and oil-change concerns. It means, paradoxically, that this thoroughly modern workplace — the auto-repair garage — has had to operate something on the lines of a medieval guild. 

This was especially true of the owner-operator full service-stations of the earlier part of the automobile era, when novices would taken on, based on their perceived interest or ability to work on cars. Most would move on, but the few who remained would progress through menial tasks — like pumping gas — to more responsibilities in the garage, until in a few of these cases, the completion of apprenticeship for auto-mechanic. 

This process was essential in the initial years of the automobile, when no schooling was available to certify auto-mechanical proficiency. The modern auto-repair garage, shorn of its functions as a retailer of gas, has no ready method of informal apprenticing in this manner. 

Accordingly, auto-mechanical knowledge has been subject to credentialing (though car-repair has never been undergone official or even informal licencing — basically, anyone can set up shop as an auto-mechanic, regardless of any schooling or apprenticeship). 

But the head-mechanic’s skills, much like the medieval master, is not something that can be conveyed in full academically. It must be learned by direct exposure, and is somehow unutterable (it may be treated as trade secret). It just reinforces the fragmentation of the auto-repair marketplace, with no one firm growing so much larger than all the rest. 

The divestment by gasoline-retailers from the auto-repair business, occurred incidentally it seems, as service-providers sought to save rising costs brought on by the “oil crunch” of the 1970s. 

Installing self-service pumps at busier stations, petrol firms came to understand that people — even women! — didn’t really mind pumping their own gas, especially as it took a motorist as much as half the time to do so, than to be waited on by a potentially unfriendly or unsanitary attendant. 

Soon enough, exclusively self-serve gas stations were opened, gradually taking over as the standard until by now, perhaps one in a hundred gas stations is full service. Unanticipated or not, gasoline firms realized that self-service was much more lucrative than the alternative. 

They were significantly less expensive to operate — requiring a single attendant per shift, instead of half-dozen or more, for a full-service centre. They could also be kept open round-the-clock, without the worry for paying staff overtime. 

As the self-serve station employee’s duties were restricted to cash and custodial duties, he didn’t have to any auto-mechanic skills at all. 

Appropriately redesigned, the self-serve gas-station was rendered into a kind of assembly line, wherein motorists became casual-labourers on their own behalf. It was part of a more general trend of automation throughout the “service” sector, which saw consumers taking a hand in the work process, such that the dispensing of services could achieve something approaching a mass-scale. 

Thus, the invention and spread of the auto-teller machine, has turned the stolid, columned bank of the past, into today’s “banking centre” through which file hundreds of customers each day, most of whom do not interact with any of the staff on hand, a far greater volume of business for an average outlet, than even the largest bank of yesterday could accommodate. 

The shopping cart turned the neighbourhood groceteria into the supermarket, while self-service cashiers do away with even minimal contact between shoppers and employees on site. Many parking lots have dispensed with the exit cashier, as motorists retrieve their own tickets, and pay their own exit. As for the gas station, in older times when it was inevitably linked to the service garage, it had one or two pumps, with larger outlets having three or four. 

Self-service gas-stations rarely have less then half-a-dozen pumps, while many have a dozen or two, accommodating several times the number of customers per day as the average service-station of yore (with the self-service stations occupying usually no greater amount of real estate than the older stations). 

The interesting point to be made is that, in order to achieve economies of scale in the service sector, consumers had to become involved, at least menially, in the productive process. 

Self-service, at least in gasoline retail, comported awkwardly with the auto-repair function of the business, just for the latter being a workshop activity. Gas stations purpose-built for self-serve, virtually never were connected with auto-maintenance. 

Full-service stations that converted to self-serve, eventually gave up either on auto-repair, or selling gas completely. The inherent graduality of car-repair, along with the space required to park vehicles, the awkwardness that comes from manoeuvring broken-down automobiles onto the lot for repair, the need for customers to loiter for long periods whilst they wait for their car to be ready, not to mention the filth that accompanies this line of work, militated against the very advantage of the self-service station, which was to fill as many gas tanks, in as little time as possible. 

In all major cities, there remain the old service-stations, long ago taken over by single-proprietors for auto-maintenance and repair purposes only, but the areas where the gas-pumps once stood leave a visible impression on the pavement. 

Full-service stations that were converted to self-service, have come to use the areas once devoted to repairs, for inventory devoted to a different, high-volume product — general merchandise as found in a convenience store. 

During the age of full-service, the only non-automotive products found at a gas station were bubble-gum and soda machines. Early in the era of self-serve, merchandise sales were restricted to chocolate bars and cigarettes kept under and behind the cashier. 

Today, stores located at gas-stations have so many non-automotive goods for sale, that much of their business must consist of pedestrians and passersby not purchasing gas at all. Usually, only the most basic auto products (like engine oil or windscreen fluid) are available at self-service stations, and they are usually kept separate (for hygienic purposes) from the other products, placed beside the gas pumps or outside the entrance. 

Thus, it is that the auto-service garage has once again become the neighbourhood and local concern that it was at the commence of the era of the car. 

Here’s something that struck me many years ago, when I first got a car of my own and was subsequently faced with the high cost of car repairs: if the auto-repair and maintenance field is so fragmented between many single-proprietor operations, why is it so expensive to get even relatively minor work done on an automobile? 

It isn’t that the materials used for car-repair have become more expensive. On the contrary, spare parts have become all the less costly to consumers. It is the “service” part of auto-repair which has become so dear, the labour charges that usually take up two-thirds or three-quarters of the bill. 

It is an illustration of the economic principle (introduced, so far as I know, by Steve Antler) that during modern times, the cost of services has steadily increased, whilst those of goods has been on a steady decrease. 

For work that cannot be readily automated — like auto-repair — labour costs never decrease (it is the same with, for example, medicine and law). But unlike white-collar professional vocations, working on cars involves at least a couple of things that boost the premium on labour costs in this field. 

For one, interest in car engines seems to be restricted to a certain subset of the population — so-called “grease-monkeys”, disdained by more than a few and infamous to others — those who, even from early childhood, take an avid interest in engines. 

If public schools in North America (which is acknowledged to be the world-centre of car culture) were more inclined toward mechanical education than is actually the case, more boys (and grease-monkeys are almost by definition male, even today) might take to the mechanical world. 

Instead, since its origins in the nineteenth century, public-schooling has been script- and book-based. To the degree that the physical and tactile has been reintroduced into pedagogy since the 1960s movement toward the “whole child” and so forth, this has not in the main been to expose children to the mechanical, even in principle. 

Auto-mechanic courses, as with the learning of other skilled labour, were reserved for the secondary level, in vocational and technical schools of lower-status in the educational system (which through high school devotes its resources to academics), wherein were typically placed boys from troubled, broken or poorer homes, those regarded by their elementary teachers to have little prospect for book-learning. 

It is another paradox, that a civilization literally driven by engines, teaches a curriculum which is in the main quite divorced therefrom. The disreputable air lent to auto-mechanics and other sorts of technical education by the organization of modern pedagogy, was reinforced by the inclusion of these subjects in the curricula of reform schools, an enlightened notion so as to give juvenile delinquents a useful and legal way to make a living. 

Perhaps it did for some, but it also inevitably meant that adult criminals were disproportionately represented among the skilled trades. It contributes to a situation in which a lesser number of youth choose to be involved in auto-mechanics — and in the skilled trades generally, which is why Canada and most other technologically-sophisticated societies have continued to witness shortages of such workers (the Canadian and Ontarian governments have recently put into place apprenticeship programmes at the post-secondary level to make up for these shortages). 

All forms of skilled labour also suffer in prestige, due to their being to a degree and more, inherently dirty. 

This applies especially to auto-mechanics. Engine grease, which ironically consists of soap mixed with mineral oil, is an unavoidable part of the job. As a “handicraft” vocation, car-repair is intricate enough such that it cannot be accomplished most of the time, wearing gloves. 

Auto-mechanics is one of the filthiest lines of work ever devised, perhaps less so than coal-mining, but more so than most others even throughout history, including butchery and latrine-cleansing. 

Blood and feces wash away more easily than the matter found within a car engine, which is not only lubricant, but the oil and dirt that accompanies the normal operation of an automobile (to say nothing of motorists who neglect basic vehicle maintenance). Cleansers can remove most of the greasy aftereffects of engine repair. 

But grease becomes very fine under constant exposure to the heat of the engine. Microscopic particles of the lubricant, oil and dirt, enters the pores of the auto-mechanic, and cannot be removed without damaging the skin. Ultimately, auto-repair is so expensive not only because of the relative lack of supply of mechanics. Even those involved in the trade will not accept remuneration that will not make them prosperous, given that the work makes auto-mechanics never appear entirely clean.

The Psychedelic Mother Of All Rock

The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has made headlines with his assertion that the Beatles' 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is "a mishmash of rubbish."

Sgt. Pepper is often rated one of the best albums of all time.Yet, the album has always attracted its share of naysayers.  

Groovy.
Frank DeFreitas

Richard Smith, writing in the Guardian newspaper in 2007, called it "the most overrated album of all time." Even the editors of the Beatles' Illustrated Record (originally published in 1975) considered it "outdated." Just a year after its release, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention lampooned the famous Sgt. Pepper cover (while satirizing hippies and the counterculture as a whole) on We're Only In It For the Money.  (Never to be outdone, Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed said in a 1987 interview that the Beatles themselves "were garbage").

Less noticed about Richards' comments, however, was the fact that he called the Stone's own Satanic Majesties Request, released a few months Pepper, "a load of shit."

Psychedelic rock, of which Sgt. Pepper and Satanic Majesties are considered leading examples, is held in low-esteem generally, even by those who helped create it.

This might explain the remarkable brevity of the psychedelic trend: talked up as a new dawn in music in ‘67, it was entirely passe a year later. 

This is in spite of the fact that the basic “psychedelic” style — a relatively hard-rock beat, fronted by harmony-vocals and unconventional (for rock) instruments — continued to be remunerative. 

The genre endured into the early ‘70s as “bubble-gum” rock, suitable for young teens and pubescents. Ironically, music that began in acid-drenched rebellion against convention, ended up as the epitome of lightweight. 

Don't turn around Billy!
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Still, by 1968, the pioneering psychedelic-rock acts, the Beatles, Stones, Byrds, and so on, shed psychedelia like last year’s groovy threads. 

This is witnessed no better than with the most documented of all rock acts, the Beatles. The Pepper-costumed high-flying days of ‘67, were replaced by jeans and corduroys, and full beards, by the time the band recorded Let It Be a year-and-a-half later. 

Helping to popularize psychedelia, the Beatles were in the avant-garde of its quick abandonment.  


The song Across the Universe, which appeared on the Let It Be album in 1970, was not originally from the sessions for that record, from early '69.  Instead, it was recorded a year earlier, at the same time as Lady Madonna, Paul McCartney's catchy r'n'b number.  

Sensing the change in popular taste, though, Madonna and not Universe, was selected as the new Beatles' single (a version of Across the Universe different from that on Let It Be, was relegated to a charity album for the World Wildlife Fund in 1969).

By the time the band recorded the eponymous "White Album" later in '68, they were fully immersed in what came to be known as "roots-rock."  

Let It Be (originally called Get Back) was intended to go even further in this direction, showcasing the Beatles without the studio "trickery" characteristic of the band's albums back to Rubber Soul in 1965.  This is why Across the Universe sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to all the rest of the "rootsier" music on Let It Be.

It is similar to how the song Burning of the Midnight Lamp seems so anomalous when compared to the rest of the two-disc Electric Ladyland, by Jimi Hendrix, released in late 1968.

Midnight Lamp was originally recorded and released as a single, in the U.K. only, during the "Summer of Love" in 1967.  Like the rest of Hendrix's music from that year, it is strongly psychedelic in flavour (it even features a harpsichord).  

But by the next year, Jimi had fully retreated from psychedelia for the heavy blues-rock that characterizes the music on Ladyland.

Other former psychedelicans branched in contrary directions. 

Many American musicians took a sudden love to old-fashioned country music (often, as with Missouri-born ex-Byrd Gene Clark, or the Louisianan Gram Parsons, this was their first love). 

In Britain there emerged in psychedelia’s wake, a whole crop of acoustic-based ensembles devoted to British and Irish folk music. 

Britain was also home to the new hard rock sound, which shucked the unusual arrangements of psychedelia and beat-harmony of British invasion groups, for a striped-down guitar-bass-drums, fronted by a domineering vocalist. Deep Purple symbolized the change. First appearing out of London in 1968 as a power-pop outfit, a couple of years later they were fully-fledged hard-rockers. 

Without a doubt, the kings of the hard-rock genre were Led Zeppelin, who underwent an even more telling transformation from the debris of the Invasion-era Yardbirds, to become the rock supergroup of the ‘70s. 

The post-psychedelic hard-rockers and country- and folk-rockers dressed virtually alike: in denims, leather jackets, cowboy boots, very long hair, often with mustaches and beards. However, hard rock was much more successful, at least initially, than either country- or folk-influenced rock. 

This was evidenced by the sudden transformation of Tyrannosaurus Rex, a British folk duo led by Marc Bolan, which released albums with titles such as My People Were Fair, and Had the Stars In Their Hair, into teen-rockers T. Rex, which had the smash Get It On (Bang A Gong). T. Rex’s “glam-rock” was another offshoot of psychedelia, as was “progressive” rock, which incorporated the classical flourishes of psychedelia, into composition and performance. 

King Crimson was formed as a folk-rock group with a female vocalist (as with Pentangle and Fairport Convention). However, by the first album, the Court of the Crimson King (an unexpected hit from 1969), the band had incorporated a sax and mellotron into the lineup. Crimson’s lead vocalist was, on Crimson King, Greg Lake, who having left the group soon after the album's release, teamed up with Keith Emerson, formerly with the psychedelic Nice, to form the Emerson, Lake and Palmer progressive supergroup. 

Both hard- and progressive-rockers had million-selling albums in spite of a lack of AM airplay. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon remained on the Billboard 200 chart for 740 weeks after its release in 1973, in spite of a lack of hit singles for the group. Led Zeppelin increased their own sales, by cagily dabbling in traditional folk (most famously with the Battle of Evermore, featuring Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention on vocal, from Led Zeppelin IV). But the relatively poor sales of the band’s folk-dominant III, from 1970, compared to I, II and IV, attests to the success of hard rock as opposed to contemporary acoustic music. 

The commercial potential of hard rock was demonstrated in 1968, with the release by the San Diego group Iron Butterfly of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, the 17-minute title track to which became a smash hit single (appropriately edited for radio play), and the album itself went on to platinum sales. In-A-Gadda could be looked upon as the transition between psychedelic and hard rock. 

The British group Black Sabbath, which started out as a blues- and folk-oriented band called Earth in 1968, took a more sinister direction by 1970, with the release of their self-titled debut, fusing Alister Crowley inspired imagery and lingo with very hard rock (Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was an acolyte of Crowley’s as well). 

Sabbath were the direct ancestor of the heavy metal that emerged in the late ‘70s and 1980s, and they too, were part of the trend, after Ronnie James Dio replaced Ozzy Osbourne as the group’s lead vocalist (Osbourne also had a successful solo career at the time). In a real way, then, psychedelia was common ancestor of virtually all popular music of the fifteen years after its wake.

Neo-psychedelia.

But the experimentation and eclectic instrumentation characteristic of psychedelia, didn't re-emerge until a decade after 1967, when New Wave music became the new Big Thing.

James Paul McCartney (18 June 1942 - 8 November 1966)

Turn me round dead man,,,

Or was it 7 January 1967?  Or even, 26 December 1966?

The documentary Good Ol' Freda, is about a secretary to the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein who also became president of the group's fan club.

At various points throughout the movie, Freda Kelly reads articles from the monthly fanzine, The Beatles' Book. One of these is entitled, "Paul is Alive!", and denies rumours that Paul McCartney had recently died.

Though it isn't made clear, this didn't come in response to the famous reports of McCartney's death in the autumn of 1969; rather, it was published in the February, 1967 edition of the fanzine, when an earlier (and comparatively obscure) rumour emerged that the "cute Beatle" had perished in some kind of accident.

At whatever date, though, the idea that the co-leader of the most successful rock group in the world had passed away, is a fascinating study in what is called the "sociology of knowledge."

It is not entirely correct to characterize "Paul is dead" as a "rumour."  It started out as such, but (at least in 1969) it was picked up by the mainstream press as an "unconfirmed report."

Nor was it a "hoax", which implies that someone deliberately set out to disseminate the false idea that Paul McCartney had died.

"Paul is dead" is more so accurately described as an urban legend or myth.

The latter are not mere fabrications: as portrayed in the Tim Burton movie Big Fish, tall-tales do have some basis in reality.  But myths or legends exaggerate what actually occurred, so that the stories they tell do seem entirely fantastical.

This was the case with the "Paul is dead" legend.  But what was the factual basis for it?

There are a couple of versions.

One tells of a Beatle flunky who, in January 1967, was given the job of transporting illicit drugs from McCartney's London home to a country estate owned by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

Using the Beatle's custom-made motorcar to move the contraband, the man (who bore some resemblance to McCartney) instead crashed the vehicle on the M1 highway north of the metropolis.

He was only slightly injured.  Nevertheless the unique appearance of the car prompted rumours that McCartney himself had crashed the vehicle; and somehow, this was turned into the idea that he had died in the crash.

The other story goes that on Boxing Day, 1966, McCartney was riding around on a scooter he had given his younger brother Mike for Christmas.

Crashing the vehicle at slow speeds, Paul had minor injuries and received treatment at a London hospital.  

McCartney was quickly discharged.  Nevertheless people started to whisper that Paul had died because, simultaneous with his admission to hospital, another young man of McCartney's age and description was treated for fatal injuries there as well.

Whatever the source of the legend, I think this earlier rumour is key to the more grandiose mythology about McCartney's death that arose about two-and-a-half years later.

Not coincidentally, too, the idea that Paul McCartney had died emerged just after the Beatles themselves had perished, at least as a musical act.

According to this Wikipedia article, Lennon had advised the other three that he was leaving the group on 20 September, 1969.  Since the group and its management were in the midst of negotiations with their record company for higher royalties, it was decided that the "divorce" of Lennon from the Beatles should be kept secret.

Not even a month later, a Detroit-area disk-jockey, and then an article in the student newspaper at the University of Michigan, publicized "evidence" of the death of Paul McCartney.

Thereafter, the story spread like wildfire.

Here is my theory as to why this occurred.

While the report from early '67 about McCartney's death was quickly dispelled, it no doubt persisted as a meme thereafter (keeping in mind that the term "meme" wouldn't be coined until nearly a decade later).

Internet memes reach the far corners of the world in a matter of days or hours (or even minutes). During the late 1960s, however, information was transmitted from person-to-person (as opposed from a few to many) at rather slower speeds.  It could well have taken a year or two for the idea that Paul McCartney had passed away to spread from London to the U.S.: even long-distance, transatlantic phone calls were very expensive in those days, and so it probably was conveyed by face-to-face contact between people travelling between the two continents.

The demise of the Beatles was the "tipping point" for Paul McCartney's death to turn from a rumour into a report.

The fact that the band and their management opted to keep the breakup confidential is, however, key to the affair.

Perhaps it was an errant comment in the days after Lennon left, or even the generally mournful atmosphere around Beatle headquarters in London, which gave new life to the old rumour that McCartney had died.

Crucially, Paul McCartney himself was unavailable to disprove his own death in the period when the myth underwent germination.

Following Lennon’s announcement, McCartney had retreated in depression to his Scottish farm, which had no or unreliable communications with the outside world.

When the news-media began to inquire with the Beatles' press officers about the reports, they were reassured that, in fact, the whole idea was nonsense.

But, the band's representatives went on, it was not possible to actually speak to McCartney, because he was incommunicado with his family.

One can imagine that a seasoned reporter might well react with scepticism that an ultra-rich music star didn't own a telephone.

There was thus confluence between those who knew entirely too much about the Beatles and their music, and those, in “official” society, who knew not quite enough to see through the holes of what was potentially an explosive story: the death of a major celebrity.

It should be noted that the word "fan" is a contraction of "fanatic."  Perhaps more than any pop-culture act before and since, the Beatles have attracted a devoted and dedicated following, a significant number of whom have sifted through the band's music for profound meanings and messages (only Bob Dylan's music has undergone more persistent lyrical exegesis).

Coming down fast but don't let me break you...

Infamously, one of these fanatics was Charles Manson, the Los Angeles cult leader who believed that the song Helter Skelter (released on the 1968 eponymous or "White Album") described an imminent race-war (when in reality it was about a spiraling children's slide found at British amusement parks).

Manson directed his followers to murder the actress Sharon Tate and her friends as a means of provoking all-out conflict between whites and African-Americans (coincidentally, this occurred on the evening of August 8, 1969, the very day that the Beatles were photographed crossing the Abbey Road outside EMI Studios in Westminster, which became the iconic cover of their final recorded album) .

Beatle-fans' discovery of hidden meanings not only in the band's songs, but on the covers of their albums as well, was almost otherwise more benevolent.

Indeed the practice was common enough to be lampooned by John Lennon, who on the song Glass Onion from the White Album, sang: "Here's another clue for you all/The walrus was Paul..." (whereas Lennon had previously declared, I Am the Walrus).

The "Paul is dead" meme was fuelled in large part by Beatle-maniacs finding clues as to the demise of McCartney in songs and on albums back to 1966.

The Abbey Road record itself seem to offer hints of it.  

The two biggest singles on the album, Something and Here Comes the Sun, were not (for the first time) Lennon and McCartney tunes at all, but composed and sung by George Harrison.

It was obvious: Lennon could not write songs without McCartney, his now-dead songwriting partner (by that time, of course, “Lennon and McCartney” was a copyright fiction, with the “partners” mostly composing individually for several years). 

The cover itself was full of clues: the white suit worn by Lennon was symbolic of... Jesus; the fancy suit worn by Ringo was indicative of the priest; the denim outfit of Harrison, the grave-digger.  McCartney was attired in a suit, shirt unbuttoned, without a tie, and wearing no shoes — which is how they bury people (or so it was said).  

The licence plate on the Volkswagen parked some distance up the Abbey Road, read “28IF”: that is, McCartney would have been 28 years old, if he were still living (he was only 27, and the licence actually reads "Two-Eight-One", followed by the letter "S").

On the back cover of Sgt. Pepper (1967), McCartney has his back to the world, while the other Beatles face the camera; in a booklet photo contained in the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour, also from 1967, McCartney is wearing a white suit with a black carnation, while the other three have white suits with red carnations; if one looked from a right angle at the front cover of the album Yesterday and Today, which depicted the band sitting in around a large trunk, it appears as though McCartney is laying in a coffin, his eyes closed and hands folded across his chest.

The songs too, were examined as to any hint of the demise.  Doesn’t Lennon sing, “I buried Paul”, at the close of Strawberry Fields Forever?  (It was, in fact, “cranberry sauce.”)   On A Day in the Life (perhaps the last true Lennon-McCartney song), John sings, “He blew his mind out in a car” indicating the manner of McCartney’s death, a car accident.  (This lyric referred in fact to the suicide death of a young heir, while he sat in his car at a stop light).

Why did the Beatles stop touring in 1966?  Because Paul was dead.  The plausible but improbable (that McCartney had died sometime recently, without anyone knowing it), became the implausible, even supernatural or sci-fi, when these hints were assembled into narrative form.  If McCartney had died in 1966 or before, who was it that was appearing as him on albums that were released since then?  An imposter, the identity of whom was variously proffered as Mike McCartney, Paul’s brother, or a look-a-like named “Billy Shears”, hence the line in Sgt. Pepper - or an android.  Isn’t the singer on post-1967 Beatles songs emphatically Paul McCartney?  These songs were recorded before his death, and the thus the inability of the band to tour to support the music, and the need to dress it up in studio effects.

On the other hand, the reporters sent to investigate the Paul-is-dead rumours, were themselves from an older demographic than the Beatles.  While in the main charmed by the Fab Four, but they weren't fans of their music, either.  So they weren't thus knowledgeable enough about them music to bring any critical scepticism toward the fan-detectives making these claims.

In the end, a clutch of international reporters were dispatched to Scotland, and reluctantly guided to McCartney’s primitive farm, where he was compelled to emerge from private life to “prove” that he was alive (posing for pictures that, appropriately, ended up on the cover of LIFE magazine).

What amazes me is that, long after McCartney verified that he was still alive, the "Paul is dead" legends continued. 

I was prompted to write these thoughts down by a Facebook post promoting this web site.  Even before the Internet became a public utility, however, I was amazed at seeing my roommates gathered around listening to a radio program in which the narrator went over the "evidence" proving that Paul McCartney had died (played to a loop of the guitar riff from I Want You (She's So Heavy).

These young men, either about to graduate from university or (like myself) just having done so, lapped up this stuff as though they were listening to a prophet's revelations.

This was in the early 1990s.

The magazine died soon after.