In the first of a two-part interview, we talk with author Eric Wolfson about his fascinating new book Fifty Years of the Concept Album in Popular Music: From The Beatles to Beyoncé (Bloomsbury Academic). Wolfson last spoke with 360°Sound about his excellent 33 1/3 book on the classic album From Elvis in Memphis. In Fifty Years of the Concept Album, Wolfson examines the history of the concept album, covering 25 LPs from a variety of genres. Some of the important albums in the book include The Who’s Tommy, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, and Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. In this interview, Wolfson discusses the massive influence of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Cinderella story behind Donna Summer’s Once Upon a Time, and the prescience of Radiohead’s OK Computer.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
360°Sound: What is a concept album?
Eric Wolfson: I define the concept album in the book as an album in which the songs are all linked by virtue of a theme, central idea, or narrative. It can get pretty loose. A lot of times the songs flow into one another. They aren’t necessarily separate tracks the way singles used to be. There’s often overarching artwork on the album that ties everything together. Oftentimes, a song is reprised before the end, usually the last or second-to-last song.
It was a question of trying to draw the line where it’s virtually impossible to draw lines. There is what I consider a theme album, like the country records from the ‘50s where they’re all train songs or whatever. I don’t consider that a concept album, but I’m not going to tell anybody that it’s not. For this book, I didn’t want to be like, “This is a song all about trains or cars.” There’s something bigger than that. There’s something more artistically driven in the way the songs are programmed that is essential to the concept album.
Why was Sgt. Pepper so influential as a concept album?
[The Beatles] were in that rare position. Their timing was immaculate. Sometimes I feel like luck has to meet you halfway. They clearly had the talent and the ambition, but they also had the timing of showing up in America when we were still mourning JFK. And there wasn’t a lot going on domestically in rock to speak of. It was easy for them to take over the scene in a way that arguably no one’s done since. Because they kept changing and maturing, but still making consistently great music. People followed along with their trip.
They took like six months to make [Sgt. Pepper], which at the time people thought they were breaking up just because it had been like two albums a year and at least three singles. Since it was taking them so long, people didn’t know what was going on. But when Sgt. Pepper came out, it was like, “Whoa, what is this?” It was embraced in an open way that was very unusual and influential. It helped that critics in The London Times and The New York Times both wrote laudatory pieces about how brilliant this music was. It seemed to legitimize rock and roll in a way that no one else had done before.
They were on the cover of Time. Back then, that was enormous. It’s weird because over the years, [Sgt. Pepper] was seen as this hallowed ground for the baby boomers. It was always the greatest album of all time. But when I was growing up, it was not my favorite Beatles album. I thought it was good, but I didn’t think it was anywhere near as good as Abbey Road or even Rubber Soul. It’s interesting because now the baby boomers are aging out and younger people are doing it. Sgt. Pepper has gone from the #1 album of all time to around #25, which is probably more accurate.
[The Beatles] were still figuring it out as they did it. And as John and Ringo both pointed out, the songs don’t all add up. It’s only really the first two songs and the last two songs that are any sort of a show. Lennon always said that none of his songs had anything to do with Sgt. Pepper’s band. But I argue that “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” which was right in the middle of the record, is one of the most evocative psychedelic songs, along with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” They’re taking these sonic experiences and putting them right in the middle of this grand psychedelic carnival show, therefore making it sound like it was more unified than it really was. I think Sgt. Pepper is this master trick because it’s the Beatles. They were so good at working like a four-headed monster, plus [producer] George Martin, that it seemed seamless in ways that don’t quite hold up when you go from song to song.
What’s an example of an album in the book that you think was particularly effective in executing its concept?
There’s one that surprised me because it’s on a record I was not super familiar with, the Donna Summer album Once Upon a Time. I found it remarkable and came to love it. It’s a double LP. She was making these albums with German producers who were pioneering disco. Once Upon a Time is a modern disco telling of Cinderella. There is something seductive about the fairy tale and rock and roll, going back to Elvis and the idea of rags to riches. She’s from Dorchester in Massachusetts, which is a very blue-collar place, and then she gets into the Hair musical and tours in Germany and becomes one of the few African American female singers there who can sing like a soul singer.
Out of the 25 albums I write about, this is the one where, if you were hearing it for the first time, it would probably have the clearest narrative. We all know the Cinderella story, but also because it’s just very clearly laid out. That doesn’t stop it from being really good music. The second side has this very disco, machine feel. It’s very austere. It’s about being in the city and being lost. It’s quite haunting and beautiful. When this record originally came out, the discos would play a side – they wouldn’t just play a song – because each side was like a suite.
There’s something a bit eerie about how she’s fully developed as a narrator, but it doesn’t feel like there’s anybody else in her world. It’s this very isolated story. She writes in her biography, in which she weirdly doesn’t even mention Once Upon a Time, about how, when she was in Germany, she had this boyfriend, and she woke up where the castle of Cinderella was based [Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, one of several castles cited as inspirations for the Magic Kingdom castle]. They were eating this special German biscuit in the morning, and it was snowing and beautiful. And she’s like, “I felt like a princess.” She did have her own version of rags to riches, a faceless-girl to pop-queen story. I found that interesting, how it played into her own narrative, but also how it stood by itself.
What do you find to be the main themes of Radiohead’s OK Computer?
I think it was about the stresses of the modern world. I see it in some ways as a parallel to [Pink Floyd’s] Dark Side of the Moon in that it’s almost a prophetic album. It tells the future in terms of all the stress and isolation that would come with technology. It’s a beautiful record, but it’s very sad at the same time. Depending on how you want to interpret it, it could be seen as a suicide happening toward the end. Also, just the constant white noise of the world, and people not quite fitting in.
It’s weird because [OK Computer] is more obscure as a concept album. I still hear the songs as running together. There’s definitely a narrative in the way the songs grouped together nicely. The first part is about interstellar [“Airbag”] and the android [“Paranoid Android”] and self-denial and aliens, and then the motif of escape found in “Exit Music” and “Let Down.” Then “Karma Police,” “Fitter Happier,” “Electioneering,” and “Climbing up the Walls” take things from a personal stage to a more social and political stage. The last three songs which, for me, make the record, “No Surprises,” “Lucky,” and “The Tourist,” play with the idea of death as a way to silence the noise of society. It ties in really well. It goes back to the “Airbag” opener because in that, he’s the superhero ready to save the world.
It was one of those records where every review I found of somebody trying to describe it, they all had a completely different idea, which I thought was cool. Everyone agreed it was a concept album, but no one could be like, “It’s the story of XYZ, and then this happens.” I still felt like there was a strong enough unity and technological focus that it held true as a concept album. I was in high school when OK Computer came out and it just blew everybody’s mind. I also see “Fitter Happier” in the middle as this thing that ties it all together. It’s the track that everybody hates and skips. But now that I’m older and listening to it, I’m like, “Oh, this is actually interesting because of all the AI.” They’re addressing issues that are still at the forefront, and that’s what great art should do.
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Read part two of our conversation with Eric Wolfson
More from Eric Wolfson, author of ‘Fifty Years of the Concept Album’
